A quick bio…

Life

I’m English, born in 1978 and grew up in the leafy countryside of Buckinghamshire about halfway between London and Oxford.

I didn’t travel far for my university, taking the short trip up the M40 to Oxford at the beginning of each term. Oxford inhabits it’s own unique place in the world though and I very much enjoyed my 3 years there before returning briefly home for my first job coincidentally 6 miles away from my family’s house.

In 2000 I moved to London and didn’t really enjoy the bustling city at first. Over time though I grew fond of it and in time came to think of it as home, and probably still do to some extent. I took 6 month breaks away from the big smoke though, first in Boston in 2003 and then Auckland, New Zealand in 04/05.

In 2006 I moved to New York City, where I currently have an apartment in downtown Manhattan.

Tech / work

Since the age of 7 I’ve been keen on technology, and software specifically. My first program was written in Logo and moved a robotic turtle around the classroom floor. Most of my childhood coding was in BASIC (BBC, GW, Quick and Visual) and by the time I left high school I’d already had my first payed job as a part-time network administrator of a local school and had entered the world of ‘enterprise’ software creating database applications.

My university studies were somewhat formal, but I was lucky to be in the vicinity of some outstanding minds. I was lectured by Tony Hoare once but unfortunately was far too ignorant (hungover?) to understand his lectures. The most practical elements of my degree were a short course on OO with Java, and also on the crossover between software and hardware design which landed me my first ‘hardware compilation’ job at Altera.

That role didn’t quite turn out how I’d hoped though so I took a 6 month Sys Admin position before leaving Altera and moving to DigitalRum, a startup firm which developed and hosted mobile commerce web and WAP sites. This was my first ‘real’ software job and taught me plenty of how (and how not) to design good software and run a software team. I left DigitalRum after 18 months to join ThoughtWorks where 4 of my DigitalRum colleagues worked with me for some amount of time (Mike Mason, Joe Walnes, Ian Bourke, Paul Hammant.)

My 4 years at ThoughtWorks were a fantastic experience and learning opportunity. I got to travel, work on some great projects, learn new technologies and agile methodologies, and meet some people that became amazing friends. While at ThoughtWorks I also managed to start writing a little, presented at some conferences, and also lead the CruiseControl.NET (with Owen Rogers) and Tree Surgeon open source projects, now used by thousands of teams across the world.

On moving to New York I joined another software consultancy, Finetix, where I worked with traders at a Wall Street (literally) investment bank. In early 2007 I moved to take-up the opportunity to join-up with friend and former ThoughtWorks colleague Murray White to manage a software development team at the New York Stock Exchange.