About

I’m from North Yorkshire in the UK but I’ve worked all over the world in various roles including Finance, Data Analysis, Product Management, Artificial Intelligence, Training and as a Tech Freelancer. I have that entrepreneurial freelancer mentality that is based on constant learning, adapting to new roles and finding solutions to problems. Since 1995 I’ve hosted, designed, developed and managed thousands of digital products (web sites, apps, projects, campaigns).

At this site you will find photos, media and a blog on tech and interests mainly due to travel, learning, training others or hobbies.

From being an accountant, running my own businesses and my long time interest and experience in digital technologies and education, I specialise in; digital transformation, project management (Agile & PRINCE2 Practitioner), data and simulation modelling (Excel expert) and optimisation, entrepreneurship, educational technology (Moodle, Apple & JAMF expert), technical digital marketing (specialist in SEO), web and mobile app design and development (Graphics and Technical WebMaster), coding (Markup, PERL, Swift & Python), databases (MySQL) and finance (projections, cash flow, funding, investing, budgeting and financial statement preparation and interpretation).

More on my tech background

My interest in tech first started when my father took payment on a job in the form of a Commodore VIC-20 computer, in 1983. Gaming came first and after I started to code in basic, then machine code.

This progressed onto a BBC Micro, as they were used at school, and I was totally obsessed by the game Elite on this computer (in 2013 I contributed to the Kickstarter campaign to remake Elite: Dangerous, with my dog’s name as a planetary system).

Next came DOS on a Tandy PC until, in 1987, my sister brought an Apple Macintosh SE home and my interest in graphics and media rocketed. I would spend my time gaming, coding or desktop publishing.

Things went a little quiet while at university, 1988 – 1991, due to lack of funds for tech but it kicked off again after graduation when I trained as a Chartered Accountant (it never occurred to me as a teenager that I could work in tech, so, being OK at mathematics and pressure to have a professional career made this decision for me) and began to be drawn into systems support and networking for accounting systems.

In 1993 I decided to enter the IT world professionally when an opportunity presented itself in Switzerland and I spent 5 years learning the IT department inside out; networking, messaging, security, viruses, helpdesk, hardware and software support and tech management. I also started to train people in software use; spreadsheets were a speciality.

I began to change again in 1995 when I came across HTML and decided to learn it by writing a web site for my then employer; after this I was hooked on web development and learned PERL, CSS, PHP and MySQL and wrote my first PERL-based ecommerce system in 1997. This is when I decided to become a freelancer and work with the web so I returned to the UK and setup in business.

I evolved my skills with new technology, even managing a LISP based piece of Artificial Intelligence based software for a publishing company that we made multi-million and global revenue for the company who owned it.

Since then it has been a constant process of learning and developing and I’m currently particularly interested in machine learning using Python.

Currently I’m an EdTech director, full-time mentor and professor of practice in higher and professional education. I also work with non-for-profit organisations as a UN Online Volunteer and small businesses in web, mobile and digital marketing, to keep my skills up to date.

Live Chat v ChatBot Systems

Blog Tags