A Little Bit About Me

Originally from Melbourne, Australia, I relocated to Oslo, Norway in 2019 where I am currently employed as a full-stack developer.

I started my journey by working as a Help Desk consultant in a large insurance conglomerate. As part of this role, I was assigned to a major internal project to provide first level technical support to users of a brand spankin' new claims management system that was being delivered nation-wide. This was my first exposure to working in a software delivery team, and immediately I was hooked.

I like to solve problems - particularly problems that affect my day to day life. And especially problems that pop up more than once that I can automate away.

When a user reported some suspicious problem or if I found some strange functionality in an app, the first thing I'd try to do was understand the problem. Was the problem a bug because there's some sort of technical problem preventing the user from doing what they need to do in the system? Or is it because maybe the user interface wasn't as intuitive as the developers had assumed? And rather than just reporting it, maybe I can help fix it?

This is why I choose the path I took to become a developer. Along the way, I got to experience first hand all the complexities that go into building software, and learn what it is that makes the difference between good software and excellent software.

I'm forever curious about how technology can be used to help us, and as a developer I want to be as closely connected to the product and it's users as possible.

One of my most memorable projects I was fortunate enough to work on was BeanCounter - a digital payment system build as part of a hack day at REA Group (pictured). BeanCounter allowed REA employees to make a donation to a charity of their choice, in exchange for coffee and other products from the REA Community Cafe.

The idea was simple - all employees carried a building access card, so why not use this as a way to track donations made at the Community Cafe, and then later take the total out of the employee's salary.

The tech was just as simple - a Ruby on Rails app running on a Raspberry Pi and connected to old iClass card reader that was kicking about.

BeanCounter was a success, and even contributed to REA Group taking home an award for Workplace Giving.