Work
Work
First and foremost, I'm a geographer. I am trying to make a career out of using my love of geography and maps to help people do things.
I've spend about 30 years working in various parts of the tech industry. Most of it has been in the mapping, geospatial and spatial analysis world. For a big chunk of that time I was a software developer, or leading and managing a team of developers. I've also worked in consultancy, pre sales, business development, product development and developer relations. Most of my work has been on web and mobile platforms.
Key moments in my work life:
Working in the Interactive Voice Response tech sector, writing scripts and code to answer automated premium-rate phonelines for newspapers, TV and radio. After a spell at News International I was asked to join the Mirror Group to help set up an in house operation there. This is where I learned to manage Unix servers, write simple C programs, and make websites.
Asking my then Managing Director (in 1998) if it was OK to create a company website, as there was a domain name but no site. I had no experience of web development skills but he said yes. I used the Hotwired "Webmonkey" blog and tutorial run by Dave Thau to learn how to do write interactive JavaScript driven web pages.
Sitting opposite a man on my commute who wore an Esri shirt. That made me look up Esri and decide I wanted to do GIS.
Being shouted at by Piers Morgan as the uploaded audio of his interview with Michael Jackson sounded terrible. He couriered me his Sony Walkman so I could play the tape back at the same speed as he'd recorded it. At 1am. This made me want to do GIS even more.
Completing a Masters degree in Geographic Information Science at UCL. Turns out the coding part of the course was in C, which I happened to be using in my day job. Satisfyingly hard. I loved my year at UCL and feel it changed my life, putting me on a new path.
Getting a job at Esri UK, setting up a new SaaS mapping service, requiring every skill from coding to setting up servers, pre sales, tech support and consultancy. And 11 interviews.
Meeting the man from the train with the Esri shirt and telling him he inspired me to work there. We were desk buddies for years!
Seeing Google Maps for the first time in 2005. I couldn't believe how fast the maps loaded, especially draggable directions. I thought that was more or less impossible due to the amount of RAM needed to store the whole world's road networks - never mind the cost of buying the data from Navteq and TeleAtlas.
Seeing Google Earth the first time in 2007. And seeing Esri's internal reaction to it.
Joining Google as an Enterprise Geospatial Sales Engineer in London in 2012. Like stepping through a portal into another world.
Meeting Dave Thau in a microkitchen at Google GWC2 in Mountain View circa 2019, and thanking him for unwittingly helping me to achieve almost everything in my career up to that point.