My background includes both practical and educational grounding in electronics, programming, media, business and marketing. My experience ranges from work with large multi-national and regional companies in positions ranging from sales and marketing management, MIS Director and CEO, to work as an individual consultant with customers from all areas of business.
I enjoy writing and public speaking, and have found that my multi-discipline background allows me to work with people "in their language", be it accounting, programming, engineering, management, regulatory or bureaucratic. My most favoured position is one where I can plan, design and oversee implementation of fully integrated systems; hardware, software, marketing, sales, distribution, support and accounting.
In the early 1990's my diverse background came together to put me at the focus of the regional and national scene of the then emerging commercial Internet. More recently it has brought me to the focus of the movement from proprietary embedded operating systems to the wide use of Open Source and Linux in embedded devices of all types, and the new interactive and multi-media web experience. My work in the past several years has focussed closely on live streaming internet video and support systems.
Over the past two years I've been focusing more on marketing and administration for my clients but still provide technical and security consultation to several small firms. I keep up with a diverse range of topics surrounding the use of computer systems in today's networked world including, copyright and digital rights management, email security and legal implications surrounding use of this medium for marketing and sales, live streaming video and its use in all manner of business activities, and the use of active content systems in building and maintaining market awareness of businesses and products.
Executive Director - Hancock Wildlife Foundation. Responsible for project planning and documentation as well as all fund raising activities.
Technical Operations - Hancock Wildlife Foundation. Responsible for all technical operations including creation and hosting of various web systems, creation and installation of streaming video systems "in the wild" including live streaming video from eagle nests, heronries, underwater cameras, solar-powered installations and wireless installations. Webmaster and head of the discussion forum including creation and training of initial cadre of moderators and administrators from raw volunteers.
CTO - Hancock House Publishing. Responsible for creation and mainenance of in-house major server systems (multi-terabytes) for book publication and ongoing web site integration with legacy accounting system.
CTO/Marketing/Operations - The CEN-TA Group - From 1983 to date I've been involved in all aspects of this multi-office operation, from office management and general marketing to creation of new tax preparation software (including remote update across Canada) to creating their web presence through which we established and continue to maintain a dominant position in their chosen cross-border tax preparation business.
VP Operations and CTO, Solara Technologies Inc. providing computer and network automation including cashless transactions, inventory control and security to the vending machine industry. Solara was a startup where I put a team together to create and maintain leading edge products aimed at the manufacturers of vending machines world wide.
CEO, Belcarra Technologies Corp. Belcarra specializes in USB device drivers and software for embedded devices of all types and for a diverse list of operating environments. As a shareholder I continue to be involved part-time with Belcarra.
CEO, FirePlug Computers Inc., sold in 2000 to Lineo Inc. of Utah. FirePlug's products included some of the first Linux-based software firewall products as well as embedded systems with specialization in USB devices. I continued with Lineo until early March of 2002, working on embedded Linux systems including software development tools, PDA system design and other Internet and automation systems.
VP Internet Products, Citywave Corporation. Citywave was on track to become Canada's first national wireless-infrastructure based CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier) when its founder backed out of major financing by both a prime hardware vendor and an international infrastructure construction company, for reasons only he can explain. My duties included product design, budgeting/costing, vendor negotiations and integration of the Internet functions proposed with the "traditional" telephony aspect of the CLEC. Initial deployment including machine rooms and facilities had begun when the plug was pulled.
Director, MIS, iSTAR Internet Inc., Canada's first national ISP. I was given the challenge of integrating companies with all three major computer systems, Windows, Mac and Unix.
CEO, Wimsey Information Services Inc., the first commercial ISP in Canada. My uniquely broad background gave me the ability to deal at all levels of the business from the nuts and bolts, through product development to marketing and corporate management. The communications industry in general and the Internet in particular were in such rapid transition that my ability to analyze the impact of changes on all aspects of the business and move quickly proved extremely valuable.
For much of Wimsey's life it was at the center of the non-academic Internet communications for all of Western Canada, passing E-mail and UseNet News to virtually every BBS and company that claimed connection to the 'Net at that time. In building Wimsey and the public's perception of the Internet during 1993 to 1995, I garnered publicity in all manner of media including print (Sun/Province, BC Business, Macleans), TV (BCTV, Dotto's Data Cafe, Discovery), and Radio (Bill Good show, Dotto on Data), and many more.
During this time, Wimsey was not only a regional ISP, but also very much a creator of software and solutions for other ISPs. We developed and had begun marketing a software system called VPO and VPO+ (Virtual Post Office), including preparation and remote site management of 4 systems installed in Beijing China in mid 1995. The VPO+ software installed in these and other systems we sold and installed allowed users from one VPO+ ISP to roam into the dial facilities of any of the others with no additional requirement other than a change in phone number; a technology that was well ahead of its time.
Wimsey's customers included many regional and local governments, TV radio and print outlets, and virtually every large business in Canada that had either a regional or head office in Vancouver. Every one of our eventual competitors started out as our customers including both of the other companies that iSTAR purchased in the Vancouver area. The Wimsey Web site won the first Canadian web award for best business site in 1994, and was generating nearly 1 million page hits per day by mid 1995. During this time the Wimsey servers were also rated in the top 50 servers in the world for the amount of transited news, and handled E-mail for more than 30,000 users with message volumes in excess of 50,000 per day (this may sound like small potatoes in light of today's multi-million user ISPs, but at the time was one of the largest regional ISPs and certainly the most efficient in terms of numbers of users per server.)
After the purchase by iSTAR, I should note that 3 of our ex-Wimsey people remained for several years as the only work-at-home people in iSTAR, and all 3 were critical to the continued good operation of their respective pieces of iSTAR's infrastructure. They and all of the others have now been snapped up by others in the Internet industry.
Hancock Wildlife Foundation
January 2006 to date
Technical Operations (contract)
Executive Director (part time)
Hancock House Publishing
January 2000 to date
CTO (contract)
The CEN-TA Group
June 1983 to date
CTO/Marketing/Operations (part-time)
Solara Technologies Inc.
December 2003 to 2006
VP Operations, CTO
Belcarra Messaging Corp.
April 2002 to November 2003
CEO, Marketing
Lineo Inc.
May 2000 to March 2002
Product Marketing Manager
Business Development Manager
Manager, Engineering Operations (Geek Herder ;)
FirePlug Computers Inc. CEO, General Manager
Feb. 1997 to May 2000 - includes the consulting done to Citywave.
ISTAR Internet Inc. Director, Corporate Technologies and Communications and MIS Manager
Dec. 1995 - Feb. 1997
Wimsey Information Services Inc. Director, CEO, General Manager
Wimsey was a customer of Pacific Data Capture in 1989, and I bought in in 1992.
Pacific Data Capture Computer Consulting/Unix System Administration
Pacific Data Capture has been my personal consulting name for over 30 years. During the times when I have not been specifically employed by others I have, using at times a staff as high as 5, designed, written and marketed multi-user systems in:
Taxicab accounting including multi-company payroll
Dental practice management
High-school attendance and student administration
Canadian Income Tax preparation and E-filing
Data Based full accounting package - A/R, A/P, G/L, OE, Payroll, Sales
Real Estate Property Management
Internet Services Billing
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Retail Store Management (Computers and Audio), Business Equipment Sales, Business Systems (Forms) Design, Timeshare Computer Systems Sales