Mar 12, 2022The death of KayOn the 5th of October 2021, my wife & partner, Kay Blenard, took her own life. She was all of 42 years old. She left behind a lot of communities in pain, hurt & confusion, a family, including her 2 children, J & L, a 15 year old boy and…Grief11 min readGrief11 min read
Published in Smart Pension Technology·Jul 27, 2020Smart Pension Engineering Culture“What’s the Smart Pension Engineering culture like?”. This was the main question I asked Sam Barton when I was interviewing with Smart Pension in August 2018. We then had a rather enjoyable conversation about what the culture was at the time and where we wanted to take it. …Engineering Culture8 min readEngineering Culture8 min read
Published in Smart Pension Technology·Jan 23, 2020Smart Pension work experienceOccasionally we have someone spend a week’s work experience with the Smart Pension Engineering teams, as part of our wonderful goal of encouraging people to try something new, change careers, or learn more about how an Engineering team delivers amazing software. Recently, Danielle Inkster, spent a week with one of…4 min read4 min read
Published in Smart Pension Technology·Mar 6, 2019Hiring Developers at Smart PensionHiring is always a difficult thing to get right. …Recruiting6 min readRecruiting6 min read
Published in Smart Pension Technology·Dec 7, 2018London Rails Girls 2018Rails Girls is a free workshop aimed at making technology more approachable for women — https://railsgirls.london/. It’s a free workshop where participants can learn sketching, prototyping, basic programming and get introduced to the world of technology, in a safe environment. Smart Pension was one of the sponsors of the event…Tech3 min readTech3 min read
Published in The Hotels.com Technology Blog·Jul 16, 2018The information must flow!Occasionally I get asked, “So what does a Manager of Technology actually do?” Apart from looking rather dashing in a kilt (which isn’t mandatory), there’s a few things. A bunch of regular management stuff around being available, setting the overall vision, supporting your team, enabling autonomy, supporting experimentation, promoting fairness…Engineering Mangement4 min readEngineering Mangement4 min read
Published in The Hotels.com Technology Blog·Jun 29, 2018Developer ExchangeOne of the challenges with a large engineering organisation, is that each individual team works slightly differently. …Engineering Mangement3 min readEngineering Mangement3 min read
Jul 31, 2017Servant Leadership and Agile Methodologies in Unusual PlacesServant leadership is the leadership model where those in charge share power, putting the needs of others first and primarily focus on helping other people grow so they can perform to their best of their ability. …Leadership22 min readLeadership22 min read
Sep 11, 2016Crisis@ChristmasPlease remember, this isn’t anything official from Crisis, it’s my ramblings about the incredible project I’ve been lucky enough to be involved with. I’ve been volunteering with them for the past 6 years, 3 years as a “Green Badge” (so called because of the green colour of the badge). …Christmas10 min readChristmas10 min read
Jun 5, 2016The SETI Program and How Amateur and Crowd Sourced Projects have Helped the Search for Extra-Terrestrial IntelligenceABSTRACT The history of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Program from 1959 until 2016, describing the searches conducted and how the projects developed. We look at how the SETI program evolved and examine the history of crowd sourced or citizen science projects and the challenges that amaetur research projects face in…Astronomy36 min readAstronomy36 min read
