Technology for good, sustainability, environment and society
Hi! Below is a little about me, stuff I'm doing currently and things I've done past. In a few words, I'm a tree-hugger who has found himself chained to a keyboard, though I'm fortunate enough to be able to write code that satisfies my inner hippy.
Demand Logic makes big buildings more energy efficient and improves maintainability, making them more sustainable and comfortable for tenants. I'm incredibly proud to be part of this amazing company.
My day-to-day role at Demand Logic involves advancing the data stream modelling, working with this model to deliver tools and visualisations and supporting data scientists using these data, eventually using machine learning to gain more insight from the billions of data points we receive.
I've been fortunate enough to work with some great and leading tech companies, highlights below.
Working to build Piclo, a peer-to-peer energy trading product. A pilot conducted with Good Energy (GE), my role was integrating data flows with GE, creating and using APIs in our micro-services, resolving issues around data discrepancies, timezone handling, user-facing tools on the customer website including a one-page “app” navigating and visualising the data. I worked closely with the design team and with other developers to keep a tight feedback loop and continuous improvement of all aspects of the product.
Developing a platform to engage communities – from the occupants of a single floor of a building all the way up to the city-wide scale – in reducing their carbon impact and living better at the same time. Leading the tech team, we had interesting architecture and build challenges to solve, trying to bring fresh and improved solutions to some quite old and some quite new issues in the field. We dealt with a full stack of very technical (in-house and 3rd party) systems integrations, all the way up to the UX/UI issues that affect users.
Streamlining the site’s core features, allowing greater re-use of data (including re-usable data renderers & visualisations) and products, easing use for both clients and colleagues. I worked on data ‘scorecards’, risk-calculators, ethical supply chain tools and played a key role in developing SEDEX’s Risk Assessment Tool.
Stuff I've made to solve some problems
AshTag is a citizen science project developed with UEA's Adapt group to track the spread and effects of the ash tree dieback disease. AshTag 1.0 was built very quickly on top of my previous project "IAS-ESS" (Invasive Alien Species - Exotic Specimen Sightings), and AshTag 2 was then developed separately and open sourced.
The project has been taken over by the Sylva Foundation.
Built as a response to growing evidence that fracking causes significant water quality issues, in order to help citizens of Britain gather data before they get fracked.
Incomplete due to time constraints.
Built to assist with monitoring and management of invasive species, this was, at the time, a novel project that allowed for any invasive species to be photographed, identified, geolocated and reported to experts, with geo-fenced campaigns pushed out to iOS and Android apps.
Here's a slide deck of features.
This site was inspired when I became annoyed with myself for mistakenly purchasing items containing Palm Oil; and then the frustration at trying to explain (with proof) why it is 'bad'.
The idea was that the information on the site can be used and built upon to help make ethical (and informed) purchases, based on whatever the user's ethics allow for.
Another idea after becoming frustrated, this time with the disconnect of the health information systems and our own poor recall abilities, Bohdi was intended as a personal health app to log injuries and bodily-concerns.
Here's a slide deck of the idea.
Shtaggle was to help me organise my music with tags. It allowed the user to tag their music by retrieving tags from the last.fm community, or through custom tags. Shtaggle could also communicate tags back to last.fm and to a linked shtaggle.co.uk account. Once tagged, the user can quickly organise their music using iTunes smart playlists, for example. Shtaggle could also retrieve track lyrics.
The important bits from my academic career.
