My role at LobsterPot Solutions is two-fold, as I am both the owner and a consultant.As the business owner and sole director, I am ultimately responsible for every aspect of the business. I have employed a General Manager who I work with to set the company direction and internal culture, and to ensure that we have the structures in place to develop the employees and look after the needs of our customers.As a principal consultant, I provide consulting and mentoring/training in the Microsoft space, specialising in data and Business Intelligence. My work includes performance tuning critical systems on cloud-based and on-premises installations, troubleshooting issues, developing DW and analytical systems in Power BI & SSAS, creating strategies around data integration and movement between systems, as well as developing new data-related processes. All of these include both technical and cultural change, as our consulting involves seeing how people do what they do, and why they think what they think. Much of our work involves training and mentoring so ensure they pick up the skills they need to progress.Our customers have included government bodies, not-for-profit organisations, and commercial outfits both large and small, across a wide variety of industries. When Microsoft was selling the high-end system Parallel Data Warehouse (also known as the Analytics Platform System, now part of the Azure Synapse Analytics ecosystem), they turned to me to work with customers and partners to make sure that the best experiences were had by all.The company started as just me, and has twice grown up to seven people. We are most suited to being a small of top experts, and have resisted the temptation to grow further as it risks diluting our expertise.My time at LobsterPot Solutions has been very rewarding from a personal perspective as I've been able to make a difference in the lives of employees and customers.

I work as Father Christmas at shopping centres and for organisations in the holiday period. It's incredible rewarding to bring joy to children and families. One of the highlights is interacting with adults who have special needs and still believe in the magic of Santa Claus.

I have led the user group since before SQL Server 2005 was released and seen the group grow into a strong community of data professionals. It's an informal gathering of people who meet to listen to presentations about SQL Server and the wider Microsoft data platform, with a networking time to foster the community. Many of our presentations include remote speakers, often from the Microsoft product groups in the US. During Covid time, the gathering became online, but we still try to prompt the conversation and networking aspects.

I was appointed to the PASS board in August 2011 based a recommendation from Microsoft, and was subsequently elected to the position of Director-at-large in late 2011, a role which I served in for a further two years. PASS was an organisation created to support professionals within the Microsoft data space, and I was brought on to assist with globalisation matters.

I was a mentor/trainer, delivering training and consultancy in the SQL Server space. This included developing courseware myself and, and delivering courseware created internally and by Microsoft.

I developed Microsoft official exams in March and July 2006, January 2007, and was approached to 'fix' some exams in 2008. The highlight was being asked to develop interactive questions to better assess candidate's skills.

I managed the Application Development Department, and was often hands-on, designing/writing software myself. I built confidence in our internal systems and developed custom tools for monitoring and issue-management.

I managed programmers and designers in Windows and Web environments for cScape's client base, primarily within not-for-profit organisations. I also acted as the go-to person for database technologies, particularly Oracle and SQL Server, due to my technical ability.

I was a consultant to many large corporates. My key skills were seen as developing customer relationships through problem solving and programming expertise. I was primarily involved in database-related projects, with a particular focus on Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server.

As a research assistant in the Computer Science department, I wrote software to realise some of the research done by various professors in the department. This involved code in Java, CAM/L, Tcl/Tk, and others.