About

Hi there, thanks for stopping by.

I’m James, a storytelling technologist who brings humility and curiosity to all aspects of technology, whether head down in an IDE or on stage, talking, teaching, and inspiring.

Technology is fundamentally a creative human endeavour. And as humans, we love stories. Homo sapiens (one of my favourite ever books) taught me that :) Stories are a fundamental part of what makes us successful as a species.

So, how does that translate to a career in tech? Let me share my journey. I took the self-taught route into software. I started working in front-line support at a software company in the North of England (Preston, if you’re interested). I quickly realized that learning SQL Server was the best way to support this. So off I went and taught myself MS SQL. From there on out, I slowly worked my way up the stack.

How can I better help people? Learn to code? Ok, I’ll learn .NET.

How can I better help people? Learn to design software? Ok, I’ll learn software architecture.

How can I better help people? Learn about the cloud? Ok, serverless all the things!

That question has been a mantra I’ve repeated over and over again.

And now, it’s time to teach. My role now is split perfectly between my two favourite things to do. On one side, I’m a content creator, speaker, and teacher, engaging with the community to help people be the best version of themselves in technology. On the other hand, I get to dive deep into new technologies, learn about new ways of building software, and write code. This site will chart that journey, giving you a single place to jump off from wherever you are.

Outside of being a nerd, I try to be as active as possible. I run ultra marathons, although a persistent Achilles problem is slowing my progress. I cycle, hike, walk, and lift weights. I try to keep myself moving as much as possible.

All opinions expressed on this site are mine and don’t represent organizations that I am affiliated with.