By day I lead application development at the Otago University Library with a growing team of technicians, developers, designers, analysts and research librarians.
By night I pursue my love of Philosophy, Semantics, Spirituality and Art by creating
www.inspiragr.am: an 'artificial wisdom' that answers any question by crafting a unique image quote.
The Back Story
In 2007, I created a framework called 'The Framework' (original I know), which I later renamed BellaBuilder (after my daughter Bella). BellaBuilder was an advanced CMS/web based application builder. It was built to service the needs of the Division of Health Sciences, with over 44 different schools, departments and research centres. It had built intranets, websites, file shares, collaborative research spaces and a sophisticated staff profiles system.
In 2008 the university sent me to San Francisco where I demonstrated BellaBuilder, in person, to the founders of Zend (the company behind PHP) and leaders of Zend Framework: Andi Gutmans, Matthew Weier O'Phinney and Wil Sinclair. They were impressed. One week later I had an official letter of support from Wil (the then leader of Zend Framework). BellaBuilder had the opportunity to become the official Zend CMS. All we needed was to give BellaBuilder an open source licence and continue the conversation with Zend.
In the meantime, in 2008/09, I created MyResearch – the university's PBRF (Performance Based Research Funding) software. I led a team of five developers to build the first version. The project, being high profile, fell victim to university politics and my team was unceremoniously disbanded after the (stunted) delivery of MyResearch version one.
As to BellaBuilder, it took literately three years before a BSD licence was granted by the university, by which time the opportunity had well and truly passed. BellaBuilder died a quiet death within the walls of Otago. I was crushed.
About two years ago I was headhunted by the University Library, where I work today. I form technical strategies, manage staff, assist in hiring staff, build applications and assist the team as we engage in a wide range of technologies and languages. I am currently leading the development of a semantic framework to harvest and leverage the power of data dispersed in silos across the university.
Inspiragram. Why?
About one year ago, I was introduced to Steve Chen, after quickly solving a problem he was interested in. For a brief period I did contract work for Avos in my personal time. I was awe struck to be working with the founders of YouTube, as were the other devs on the team, several of whom I knew had sold their own businesses or had given up good stable jobs for the gig.
I'm told the startup culture is relentless: high risk, high reward. Casualties and cannon fodder are to be expected. Well, I knew the people who were being fired without warning or explanation and I thought it sucked. I also thought what the university had done to the projects I initiated and led sucked. The people I looked up to, the institutions I poured years of my life into, the models of governance I respected, I could no longer believe in.
I was angry and disillusioned. I needed something to believe in. So I started to create it. A council of wisdom harvested from the collective insights of humanity: from all cultures, from all times. Not governed, censored, controlled or undermined by the politics of a company or an organisation. Inspiragram is not about prestige, fitting in, status, power or money. It is about reconnecting the individual to the human spirit.
Thank you to everyone and everything that pissed me off enough to create Inspiragram.
