Biography

I can’t really believe that many people will be interested in this, but I’m told that an author’s website needs a biography – so here goes. I can’t tell you about all the books I’ve written, because I’ve only written one (so far). However, a bit of background might help to explain my interest in telecoms.

I was born in Ayr, Scotland, and I’ve got the kilt to prove it. My Dad was in the army, so we spent time in Yorkshire, Malaya (now Malaysia) and Glasgow. In order to provide some stability, I was sent off to boarding school at the age of eight. Maths and science proved to be my favourite subjects, and by the time I had built a home telephone exchange out of Meccano it was pretty clear that I was destined to become an engineer. After studying Electrical Engineering at Imperial College in London, it was time for a bit of adventure. I headed off to the Sahara to search for oil, and eighteen months in Libya were followed by three months in the Sultanate of Oman. By then, I had had enough of desert camps, and I returned to the UK for a master’s degree in digital electronics at Manchester University. It was there that I met my future wife, who was working as a radiographer at the Christie Hospital. Manchester suddenly seemed like a pretty decent place to be, and I signed-on for a PhD in computer architecture. After another two years as a student, I had to face-up to the fact that I was about to get married and needed a job.

I had a burning desire to design computers, but the opportunities to do this in the UK were pretty limited. However, it was clear to me that computers and communications were starting to converge, and I decided that there might be some interesting opportunities in telecoms. This turned out to be one of my better decisions. After a series of jobs in R&D and product management (including 18 months working in Connecticut), I joined a new network operator called Energis. This was my first experience of working for a start-up, and I loved the informal, slightly anarchic working environment. However, the excitement started to dissipate as the company grew bigger, and I eventually moved on to a small telecoms consultancy called Mentor. This gave me the opportunity to work with a large number of start-up technology companies, and the Channel 5 retuning project introduced me to the world of television broadcasting.

Mentor boomed in the dot.com boom and collapsed in the subsequent bust, but I still work in the telecoms consultancy field. It gives me the opportunity to work on an extraordinarily wide range of assignments – and then to move on to the next one. I’ve got used to the travel, and it gives me some time to write. . .

Comments are closed.