About me

I dropped out of Computer Science at Leeds University in about 1981 and ended up wearing brown (we all did), programming a fridge-sized DEC PDP/11 in a PR company and running their media department back when press releases were sent on parchment. That's where I learned to write and to dislike marketing people who had no substance.

I ran my own payment by results PR company for a decade, employed lots of people and survived two recessions until it met its destiny at the hands of a big and serial nonpayer and I moved to Scarborough: enterprise capital of Europe (no, I'm not joking).

I took the Internet Computing degree at the Scarborough Campus of Hull University when (2000-2003) the only other course like that was at Cambridge Uni, and I got a first which I'm very proud of. That got me into Linux and open source.

With all that knowledge combined with the ability to take a decent photograph and write persuasive copy, I was a dab hand at websites for a while until I spotted that my extra special powers lay not in technology, but in people and how they interact with technology (and, just between you and me, how to help people to buy your stuff*). All the Internet really does is connect people.

So whereas your normal SEO company can't sort out your Information Architecture problem, and your normal geek hasn't a clue about the lumpy bits of flesh using their software and the shiny designers love anything that looks great and pay no heed to how anything will actually work .. I combine the best bits of all of those skills into one glorious and easy-to-work-with human.

But enough about me. I want to hear about you and where you want to go with your online business. I'm all ears**.

* it doesn't have to be about selling. You might be a church wanting to connect with your parish, or a club where you just want people to sign up and join in.

** not literally

PS. I'm not into gambling, so no need to call me about gambling sites and I don't play computer games. But I'm open to almost everything else and I've lots of experience of GPS/mapping, tourism/hotels/B&Bs, deeply technical engineering stuff, kitchens, antiques, housing, all sorts of ecommerce of course, crafts people, jewellery, organic food, local council websites, art, insurance, languages (I'm very slowly learning Spanish), finance, even hair loss and sex aids (not the same site). I know something about web page languages HTML & CSS, programming language PHP, database mySQL, operating system Linux, ecommerce software OSCommerce, CMS Joomla, blogging softwares Movable Type and Chyrp and photo library Pixaria among plenty of other tech nonsense.

PPS. In my spare time I'm a marathon runner (well, once so far), a drummer, I like butterflies, and my partner has CFS.