My life on a single page

I was born just before PCs became mainstream in an English market town. The youngest of three boys; my mother an amazingly creative lady, my father a technical wizard.

As a child, when my father lugged in a monstrous steel box, opened Q-Basic and showed me how to program a calculator I felt my world change. "Divide by zero", so I did and...the app crashed. "Dividing by zero is infinity so, we need to protect against that".

I was intrigued. I felt anything was possible. I wanted to understand everything about this machine. During my teenage years, I built computers (with the necessary blood sacrifices), fixed my friends computers, hacked away at drivers for performance, hosted LAN parties, automated an office full of workstations, and even produced DVDs with custom menus.

I loved technology so, after grammar school went to Bournemouth University to study Multimedia, Network, and Computing Systems. There, I found a particular affinity with Web Development; I came out feeling ready to take on the world! I got a couple of gigs freelancing but, given the financial crisis found steady work tough to land.

It was when I was up working late through the night at 4AM when one of my best friends who was teaching in China at the time, asked if I was interested in joining him. It took only five minutes to decide that I was going to go; to try and start a life half way across the world. I got my TEFL qualifications, hugged my family, and hopped on the plane with just a suitcase and strong spirit.

I was teaching in a kindergarten, tutor center, and High school at the same time. The students ranged from 3 year olds where it was about song and dance to adults with the desire to communicate professionally. I built the groups website, made sure the computers were in good order, and built games to make classes more interesting. These were some of the favorite times, but after a few years felt I should get back to my calling.

Hong Kong became home, it seemed a combination of all my experiences up to that point and so much more. So long as you have the energy, there is always something to be done; it was living life in fast-forward. On my very first day walking in to the office as a web developer, I wasn't so much greeted; I was met by panicked faces. "The internet is down and noone can work, fix it".

That buzz of being thrown in to the deep end with high responsibility became my career. I chose to work at companies having issues because they were successful but, were having trouble keeping control of the tech and development.

Life continued that way for the next decade at ever larger institutions; I got heavily involved in back-end, front-end, infrastructure, automation, project management, team leading, and even business operations.

Then I became a father and everything changed. My priorities instantly changed: I couldn't immerse myself in the job like I used to. I had a new love to care for, to nurture, and help grow. I helped my baby learn to walk, went on new adventures, and wanted to do something right for the world.

I thought about what caused me the most issues during my career and came to the conclusion I would try to do something to make onboarding simpler. I gave myself one year to research, to experiment and saw the potential / psychosis happening around AI.

That leads us to the present, building JoyDX. A tool that allows new coders, new joiners all the way through to Tech Leads and strategist to save time and effort all throughout the Software Development lifecycle promoting collaboration through GIT you control, no SaaS.

There's still much left to do but, I'm excited to do my best for my daughter, for tech, and for health and happiness. I'm incredibly grateful to all the people I have met and shaped my life's journey and look forward to seeing what the future holds in store.