My year in 2013

2013 has been a successful year.  It has been a good year in both my personal life and my working life.  I worked for two large corporate banking clients, had the biggest turnover for my consulting company, I passed the PMP-RMP exam and have seen both my children continue to grow into pleasant little creatures and are both excelling at school and extra-curricular activities.

Introducing me

I am from a development background. I gained my BSc (Hons) Computing for Real-Time Systems from the University of the West of England back in 1997. This was a tough, technical degree and only 30 of us passed of the original 150 (just 20%).

For the last 12 years I have been working in the Lotus Notes arena and have worked on a multitude of projects for various industrial sectors and in many countries. I have blogged within this technology and have enjoyed the life as a Lotus Notes consultant. There is not much that I do not know about notes, and if there is, I usually know someone who will know the answer.

In the last few years, I have been mentoring developers and leading projects. I have found that I enjoy this more than the actual development. Leading projects and teams gives me a buzz and is rewarding when things go from bad to good. I like to solve problems and enjoy joining companies with problems and leaving them in a better state.

I am keen to study. If there is ever an issue that I do not understand, or there is a technology that I have been using, I try to be the best. Examples of this are my qualifications as a Prince2 Practitioner, and IBM Advanced Application Developer and recently ITIL.

I try to study for 30 minutes per day. This means that I try to keep up with the latest industry news, technology and best practices. If I miss out on my 30 minutes, I do not carry it over to the next day as this could affect my workload, but feel guilty for missing an opportunity. 30 minutes a day does not impact your work, but it actually broadens your outlook.

Finally, I enjoy being a contractor because I have had the opportunity to work with various companies, with a variety of projects. I am always surprised at how many companies (big companies) fail to have simple procedures and workflow for the simple tasks. It also amazes me that some large companies do not have a complete handle on their full assets (hardware, software and people) to enable IT project to work with fluidity.... hopefully that is where I make the difference.