In charge of running our space operations business unit.

Aerospace - "Dishmaster" for Awarua StationBroadband wirelessBroadband fibre-optic cableRenewable energy for Stewart Island

Managing DirectorThemocell was a family-owned applied thermodynamics research start-up. We brought to market a number of innovative products based on heat-pipe heat transfer, including the Thermocell heatsheet solar hot water panel, and passive cooling equipment for electronics. I became Chairman of the Board and acting GM at short notice to save the company from going into liquidation; I put in place urgent cashflow measures, recruited a new general manager and brought in an independent director. I negotiated a takeover of the company by SolarCity in 2011.

Working with my Tokelauan counterpart, I was in charge of a project to provide Tokelau with modern telecomunications, including network design, all engineering, setting up the accounting and billing system, legal aspects, deciding on an ownership model, setting customer charges and preparing the telephone directory. When I started, Tokelau had a short-wave radio link from each of the three atolls to the others and back to Apia, and an unreliable Peacesat satellite link through Hawaii. When I finished, we had everything one would expect to find in a modern country, with individual telephone service and Internet access supported by three satellite ground stations and three telephone exchanges (one for each atoll).

I provided telecommunications engineering expertise, including to Venture Southland for its highly successful "Southland Whole of Community Broadband Project", Christchurch City Council, Antarctica New Zealand and others. I can brag that the Y2K audit I did for Tonga Telecoms Commission was for the first telecommunications network in the world to enter the new millennium (Tonga had decided to have 2 hours of daylight saving to make it the first country in the world to come into the 21st Century).

I variously was in charge of engineering staff, ranging from 12 to 120 (a good number) to 420, as Telecom lived first through the glory years where we did fantastic engineering and sorted out the operational problems we had been frustrated by under NZPO, to the later limiting environment where cutting staff was the prime instruction. We went from lots of fun to mild misery. I read "Heart of Darkness" while part-time studying for my BA, identified with Marlow and left. I still bump into my old staff and I find that they still hold me in high regard, which is nice.

I started as a graduate engineer and by the time New Zealand Post Office turned into Telecom NZ, I had become the youngest ever Supervising Engineer in NZPO (there is a little debate over this—years later a colleague maintained he had been the youngest, but as our appointments came out too late to find their way into the last-ever "List and Index of Permanent Officers", we will never know for sure).