In response to Jon Mark’s personal meme tag… ID 42a4263e9ae40c23da79bd43370fd814

1. My interest in the web and communications technologies is driven by my chosen profession of marketing (22 years now) but also very much due to a genetic problem of premature deafness that has plagued my family for generations. Having grown up with two disabled parents (my father who is profoundly deaf and my mother, who has had Multiple Sclerosis since I was born) my interest in technology has been shaped by how it can help disabled people lead better and more fulfilled lives. The point here is that, for me personally, something very positive has come out of a difficult childhood and a growing disability – namely an exciting and fulfilling career.

2. I am a feminist. My household is female dominated with my wife, two daughters, a male cat (neutered) and a goldfish of indistinguishable sexuality. I have grown to accept my place but actually do believe the world would be much better off with more women in authority. Case in point – what is currently being described as a testosterone fuelled ‘male recession’ and also the appalling repression of women in Afghanistan.

3. Probably the most bizarre thing that has happened to me so far is ending up in a decompression chamber in Perth Hyperbaric Medicine Unit on Christmas Day and Boxing Day in the year 2000. I’m sure there aren’t many people who can, or would even want to claim this, and it is a lengthy story involving my brother-in-law (an experienced divemaster) and a dive computer enabled multi-level wreck dive on the HMAS Swan off the coast of Australia – that all went wrong!

4. I love writing. My education was disrupted at times by family circumstances (see point 1) but my main interests at school were history, art and writing. This was also the key theme of my early career where, as a public relations person, I wrote articles for lazy journalists. The buzz of getting articles published (more than often completely unedited) was a strong one and I guess a compliment but I hated the ‘relations’ side of it all – so moved on.

5. Whether it’s by luck or judgement I seem to have been on the spot a number of times when history has been made during the digital revolution of the last two decades – from being in the House of Commons when the first Digital Terrestrial Television transmissions were demonstrated, helping launch the first cable modem service (broadband) in the UK, to promoting some of the first 3G mobile phone services in the world – can’t claim much more than having just been there doing marketing stuff – but it’s been a lot of fun and provided some major learning experiences

6. I can still mono-ski. I learnt to water-ski when I was younger and have been delighted to discover on a number of occasions that this is a skill like riding a bike (ie you don’t forget how to do it). Even though I have added several stone to my 6’3” frame over the years I can still deep water start on one water ski. I’m completely exhausted after one lap of a lake but I can still ‘get up’ on one ski – that’s ‘get up’ by the way!!!

7. I love knocking walls down. Grand Designs is an inspiration and has led me to removing around 5 walls in my house so far to ‘open up the space’ – the problem is that after that new space is achieved I tend to lose interest and I’m terrible at finishing off all the fiddly bits – probably a bit like my approach to web projects 😉

8. I live in a strange hybrid world where my marketing colleagues think I’m a ‘techie’ and technical colleagues think I’m a very dangerous marketing person who knows a bit about IT. I guess this is akin to sitting on a fence – which at times is both painful and frustrating – but I really think our pioneering digital space would be made easier if more people would make the effort to cross what is often a wide divide – in both directions!.

9. My specific interests and experiences in content management started when I helped build NTL’s first public website www.ntl.co.uk in html way back in 1994/5 (where the URL directs to now shows the onward history of this). I still have that original site on a floppy disk and have looked at it from time to time to see just how wrong it was in the context of audience focused web development and engagement we strive for today. It was a frustrating experience to say the least – akin to my programming efforts on my Sinclair ZX Spectrum as a teenager (really showing my age now 😉 )

10. I am a frustrated biker. I learnt to ride motorbikes a long time before learning to drive a car and once you’ve experienced that exhilaration on two wheels – four wheels will never do – even several ‘track day experiences’ in very fast cars have failed to match up to it. I’m sad to say my choice of bikes was inspired by what became known as ‘the Top Gun bike’ – unfortunately I couldn’t quite afford the insurance on the 900cc version so had to settle for the 750cc one but it gives me a gratuitous reason to put a picture of that beloved bike on my blog – hooray!!! Why frustrated? Well having to weigh up the desire to own another big powerful bike with my daughters’ pleas that they don’t want daddy to die, is a tough one.

I’ll pass this on to some former blogging colleagues who may or may not wish to play but will be interesting all the same – @matthewgoode, @dmeineck, @rich_allen consider yourselves tagged