The Past

After graduating from the University of London with a degree in aerodynamics, I first worked on commercial research in fluid mechanics. I soon got bored with this, and applied to the British Antarctic Survey, where I spent the first half of a 10 year involvement in polar science. This continued within the Remote Sensing Group, Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London. During my time there, influenced by the enthusiasm of group head Chris Rapley, I also become very interested in the potential of desktop multimedia, which became a key factor in later activities. In an ironic twist, Chris ended up as the Director of the British Antarctic Survey.

To make a lifelong career in Polar research, like pretty much any scientific discipline, you need to be (a) a genius and (b) single-minded (being a total bastard isn't mandatory, but it can come in handy). Not being either, I guess that a ten-year run wasn't a bad result. You can find references to various published works on Google, but probably the most satisfying result was leading a 3 year international project to establish a baseline map of the Filchner-Ronne ice shelf. A small but hopefully useful contribution to the ongoing study of climate change.

Having spent quite some time working as a University consultant on European Space Agency projects, a natural progression was to join a company I knew well and had worked with, ESYS Ltd. For the first year or so it was a bit dull, but after a while I became more involved in hands-on projects. After a year of writing reports, even Microsoft Access is interesting. However, the early years taught me to consider commercial constraints alongside the attention to detail and rigour expected in scientific reasearch. Later, with the increasing support and (sometimes exasperated) tolerance of the directors, Mike Dillon and Sally Howes, I was able to exploit my personal interest in multimedia in a commercial environment. A series of pilot projects in various applications of satellite broadband technlogy culminated in the rewarding but exhausting Multimed satellite distance learning project.

I made the big decision to move to the Fantastic Corporation in Switzerland, which specialised in my chosen broadband telecommunications, and was appointed Director of Broadband Applications. In May 2002, following the slow uptake of the products, and factors in the evolution of broadband which started to make the concepts look outdated, events conspired to make me leave the company. For some months I carried out private research and consultancy in the field of next generation mobile communications - in between various expeditions around the world - before ending up at Vilkas.

Vilkas, of which I was a co-founder and VP Technology, was a technology startup. Not a dot-com, though, as we couldn't buy the vilkas.com domain so ended up being a dot-ch. We created software which works behind the scenes in the mobile data world - basically SMS and MMS messaging. In relative terms the mobile data market is a boom area - I said relative - but a lot of other people noticed and competition was hot. Despite having some good products and a great team, we could not build enough critical mass and were badly let down by a major backer. The company had to cease trading in late 2004.

In 2005 I joined UBS, a Very Large Swiss Bank, as a "concept developer and project manager", with a focus on usability. I theory I was a usability consultant. I also worked a lot on requirements engineering. It sounded like an interesting prospect, but it didn't really work out for either side. At least I now have first hand experience of a mega-company. And the associated politics. Life's too short to waste on that stuff.