The Past

Trained as an economist, I spent the first 20 years of my working life in building materials before stumbling upon GIS. A chance conversation led to me becoming General Manager of GDC and Head of Professional Services at whereonearth.com during the wackiest part of the dot com boom and bust.

In 2002 some colleagues and I bought out GDC with investment support from nearly all of the employees. 4 years later GDC had grown to be one of the leading suppliers of e-Government solutions and corporate GI to Local Government with a strong reputation for innovation and customer service. MapInfo bought the business in 2007.

After working for MapInfo for 18 months as UK MD and Director of Product and Industry Strategy, EMEA I branched out to look for the next big thing.

15 years later I am semi retired but still advising tech startups and mentoring CEOs!

What I am up to now

Through my consultancy KnowWhere, I work as a non-executive director, a strategic consultant and an investor, advisor and mentor to technology startups. I am currently

• Strategic advisor to Navin, an indoor navigation business
• Chairman of geo.me, a Google Maps Partner
• A member of the Advisory Board of OpenCage Data
• A Charter member of OSGeo and  I was the chair of the organising committee for FOSS4G 2013 and the treasurer of the OSGeo:UK chapter and deputy chair of FOSS4G UK

In the last few years

• Strategic advisor to the board of Astun Technology, the UK’s leading Open Source geobusiness
• Chairman of Exprodat Consulting which provides geo-services to the oil and gas industry until it was acquired by Getech plc in June 2016
• A non executive director of OpenAddresses UK
• Non-exec director at Streamserve Inc acquired by Open Text in 2010
• A Special Lecturer at the School of Geography at the University of Nottingham until the end of 2014. I helped to start the OSM-GB project there.
• I was a founder and initial Champion of the Geovation program for Ordnance Survey

Interests and links

When not working, I blog, twitter, talk about geography, technology, things open and politics and follow the Arsenal.

You can follow me on Mastodon or by the contact form below.

You can have a look at my background and some recommendations on LinkedIn

There are some more pictures of me here, this one is my favourite it makes me look thoughtful and possibly even KnowingWhere I am going

Presentation Decks

Some of my conference presentation decks can be found here

If you want to contact me

Be in touch if you want to KnowWhere you might be going