About
Overview
When I’m not jet-lagged and eating delicious Thai food with Beth Kanter (and being video blogged by her kids!) I used to currently work at ruralnet|uk as a Project Manager, looking after things like Experts Online and other projects that help rural (and non-rural) organisations do what they do better.
A lot of the time this is online using this new-fangled web gubbins, but it also covers training, workshops, facilitation and all the real stuff that actually makes it work.
Techy stuff
I know enough to be dangerous. And if I don’t know what I’m doing I know who to ask. I could blurb on about MySQL, PHP, CSS but if you’ve heard of all these things, you may be least as well informed as me. Any anyway, they’re just tools, it would be a bit like a gardener going on about spades and trowels. If you do’nt know what these things are, I can explain them to you and let you know how they can help. I enjoy (most of the time) using open source software like Wordpress(MU) or Drupal but if something proprietory pops up and does a job – I’ll fiddle with Yahoo Pipes to aggregate a feed for all the activity on a conference website.
Twilight zone
I often inhabit a strange world between the hardcore techy types (who you’d think twice about taking home for a cup of tea with your mother) and normal people who just want things to do with computers to work. I can translate between the two groups (who rarely meet except in dire circumstances – or when they are ‘building a website’) and work out how to get the most out of each other. It’s not just about the technology but you need to understand what it can do and how it works to make the difference for the organisations I work with.
Social Media stuff
Since I turned up at ruralnet|uk in 2005 and suggested that a blog would be good idea for their annual conference, I’ve been blogging, videoing, twittering and most importantly blending all this stuff together so that it makes sense.
I’m also really interested in the role of the social reporter as coined by David Wilcox. The huge value of face-to-face events is so often often lost or restricted to the (relatively) few people that can fit in one room in one place at once. Getting that stuff online is a hugely exciting potential, if challenging role. The mix of technical aptitude, practical workflow management and subject matter knowledge is one i’m trying to refine (and this blog is part of).
Other Stuff
I was once described as ‘hyper-connected’ and apart from a holiday in New England in 2008, I’m online in one form or another an awful lot of the time. This means I have a pretty good idea of what is going on in a wide range of fields especially social media. I’m also a bit of a news junkie, following several hundred RSS feeds covering everything from gadgets to gorillas. Hopefully I’m going to make more use of this habit by sharing this particular portion of my brain with my delicious bookmarks.
Photos
Having worked with some amazing photographers, I started to learn how to make pictures while living in one of the most spectacular places on earth – Hawaii. I photograph lots of things, but especially people, cricket, abstract shapes and patterns in nature and human environments. Despite the rise of video and services like Qik that turn your mobile phone into a live streaming TV station from virtually anywhere in the world you can get a signal, the power of photography to tell a story is still sometimes overwhelming, and something I try to do in a small way. My pictures are on Flickr.
Things I’ve done in the past
Volunteered for the US Geolgical Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory helping to plan and build an archive of over 100,000 electronically accessible images.
Worked for the world’s oldest international conservation organisation Fauna & Flora International as a Communications Assistant.
I’ve helped set up and produce during a number of (award-winning) student and community radio stations in Manchester.
I did a chemistry degree at Manchester University and could probably still titrate things if pushed (but not to within half a drop like we had to back then).