the team/profile

more information about me

I currently have two job titles. My first is ‘Software Guy’ which is a title that has fitted for most of my life. My second is ‘Super-Dad’: I currently spend half the week as a stay-at-home Dad with my two young sons and attend my local PlayCentre. In addition to my skills in C#, Java, and C++, I can also make four different types of play-dough in any imaginable colour!

I have been involved with software for most of my life. My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81 with the 16KB memory expansion. And yes, I do mean kilobyte, so my iPhone has a million times more memory! I grew up in an era where the computer booted up to a command prompt and one wrote their own programs. Software is virtual Lego; creations are only limited by imagination. So I spent my childhood writing software as a budding computer enthusiast. I was fortunate in my final school years to meet an entrepreneurial man with some interesting software product ideas. This eventuated with me writing my first commercial software package called “EasyWord” which was sold to schools around New Zealand. We made a number of sales and had good feedback, but unfortunately we were ahead of our time. This was the era prior to the ‘Internet’ and ‘email’ and even though the software was popular, the major issue faced was distributing and marketing a niche product.

My professional career as a software developer started in 1996 when I joined the Auckland based Dialogic R&D group as a C/C++ software developer, developing computer telephony middleware. Again I was fortunate: I entered the industry a few years before the feverish dot-com boom. As part of this, Dialogic was purchased by Intel in 1999 and I relocated to Austin, Texas to join the Intel Consulting Group. This was a fantastic opportunity that involved a lot of travel and exposed me to many different commercial environments and projects, and allowed me to explore the US. Since 2002 I have provided independent software development services as ‘Adaptive Development’. This has involved developing a call-center engine over a period of 5 years, a peer-to-peer high security network application, a web-application that scraped and populated secure sites, among others. On these projects I have been involved in all aspects of the software development lifecycle, project planning and management, as well as customer negotiation and relationships. The core of my experience is in developing real-time event-driven multi-threaded and distributed systems, with experience in C/C++, C#, and Java (I am a Sun Certified Java Programmer).

I love to learn and explore, which means that I am not someone who is content to be a specialist in one technology area. My love of learning has also led me over the past couple of decades to graduate with 4 university qualifications. My study in the early 90s centred on computing and mathematical sciences culminating in an MSc, while my recent study has been business focused with interests in accounting, finance, economics, and commercial law.

Like many software engineers I like good coffee to be part of my day. I am always interested in new and exciting projects, so if you have one, give me a call and let me buy you a coffee!