Working with some of the coolest guys in IT taught me, don’t let your familiarity with one product stop you from using something better.
I have never struggled with alternative thinking, it’s just that sometimes I think too far out of the box.
I’m Phil, I’m not going to see 40 again and if your going to label me use technologist. As it implies someone with an understanding of technology rather than just the knowledge of it’s application.
I have a long 20 year career in IT that could described in one word as, varied. Often in at the deep end I developed talents for creative and flexible thinking and a drive to see my ideas through.
Experience
Sales. A self taught programmer, who studied analysis and whose first job in computing was sales (1992). My early career began in in a small peripheral designer/manufacturer soon going in at the deep endgoing from almost zero sales experience to negotiating with UK IT Distributors after the sales director left. Here I developed an easy confident sales manor and an ability to present often heavy technical features in a simplified way. Able to sell at all levels I even joined a National Computer Retailer to get some end user experience, becoming one of the top UK salesmen. Until I realised what I was selling was crap, I am however a little blunt and often a little to honsest for my own good.
Marketing. Again another skill learned in the face of necessity within my first IT job. A crash course in marketing, learning desktop publishing and using existing talents for art and design, produced a raft of brochure content for our suppliers and overhaul of the companies internal sales material late 93. Although pretty succesful I would not get back into marketing seriously until 2000.
Wearing my marketing hat again and gaining an interest in digital media, I began Managing a few web projects including a Flash to hard code HTML conversion for Clive Christian Kitchens in 2003 (clive.com). With the company looking to incorporate newly available big screen Plasma TV’s into their range, I proposed and delivered a unique High Definition demo reel to play within their network of Global showrooms. This was to evolve into an advanced Digital Signage solution and the first commercial demonstration of HD720 video playback to JVC Profesional in 2003. The project would later benefit from working relationships from Fujitsu PlasmaVision, NEC and SHARP.
Product Design. Ashamedly I got into product design again in my first job only to get free advertising from product reviews. Developed from bits we had in stock they were little an electronic equivalent of stocking fillers. However my first offering was to cause mayhem as it extend parallel printer cables from 15m to a massive 305m. First met by laughter when I ordered the test cable, then by upset Germans who were making 50m cables out of Gold and then angry IT experts who had been telling everyone data cables were limited by capatatence…no thier not.
A realist first visionary second, my following products adapted and re-purposed existing products and technology to lower development costs. From 2000 I designed PC media centres for Loewe VGA equiped TV’s, moving onto 4 multi-room home audio servers using embedded web-apps running on WiFi PDA’s for control and evolving through digital signage to Smart Home systems in 2005/6.
1993 I think it was Tuesday.
It’s not often your day starts with a “heavy” waiting for you in reception with serious NDA and a mysterious parcel.
Did I read it… breifly it said something about jail in the US but all this security meant it had to be really cool.
Imagine my disapointment only to find a metal ring with a handle, a control box and what looked like a smooth golf ball. However the ring was an electro magnet, that inducted the balls chip, that broadcast it’s ID back through the magnetic field.
A bit big for pet tagging as yet! But if we could get a cow to swallow it… BSE/mad cow disease was rife this would have been invaluble, but MAF missed the point completely (Ministry of Agriculter/Fisheries).
More Experience
Project Management.
