A bit about me:

I was born in 1952 at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, lived in Hong Kong from 12 to 16 years old, before returning to the UK with my parents.

I got a degree in "History and Social Studies of Science, with Physics" (2/3 and 1/3 of time, respectively), before getting bored with a PhD on "Developments in the Building Industry from 1950 to the present".

So, I worked, self-employed, in a "work collective" (like a coop, but a bit different) for 17 years, learning and doing pretty much everything to renovate houses in Sussex, from 50 to 400 years old. That was interesting and useful!

I am currently living in Brussels, Belgium.

I have been a founding Director of several companies, including one of the first web authoring companies in the UK.

For marketing AND community purposes, we also started "Virtual Manchester" www.manchester.com - maybe the "first reflection of a city on the web" - back in 1994. People in Manchester and globally liked it - which was very satisfying.

In 1996, I worked with another excellent team to create XTML Ltd - the highest quality permanent (leased line only) internet connection company in the UK - mostly for serious business users. We were VERY high quality, but not cheap - the first to qualify for 5 x 9s = 99.999 up-time - that interested banks, trading markets and insurance companies. We sold the company for £30 million - nice!

In my "spare time', I co-created the first, and maybe only, "self-funded community Intranet with Internet connection".

I put a small amount of money in, and looked after the servers in my flat, others did serious miracles with old computers and command prompt LINUX, while yet others slung Cat5 cable to other flats, mostly through the trees, and introduced "poor people to computers - most were terrified at the beginning - that soon passed!"

I left for Brussels, back in 2000 - and have had no input since, and it's still going fine - www.redbricks.org

After "lying fallow" for several years in Brussels - I am now getting active again. Beginning to work locally and globally, principally on 2 projects, - all "open source".

1 - "Co-Created (and designed) Community Forest Gardens" - A very specific Permaculture design structure to grow a forest, that largely looks after itself, once established, full of fruit, nuts, vegetables and salads. All bio, and effectively free - possibly only for people who have done something useful ;-)

2 - Multi-Language, Multi-LETSystems ( money / trading systems - NOT conventional money, NOT Bitcoin like stuff). for smart phones and computers - it probably needs database servers online too, BUT with "user privacy" as a default. THOUGH, I want anonymised statistics - so we can see how individual users, people, businesses, and not-for-profits, are doing, and offer help / support if they are getting lost,

Can be used by poor people locally and globally, and rich people, and companies too - if they want to.

ALL at "cost of service" - which, when built, will probably be 0.001 per transaction recorded, in LETSystem Euros (or whatever "conventional currency equivalent suits the users for that transaction).

If you are interested in any / all of the above, get back to me by email, and I'll explain more.