Engineering and Stuff

Nearly thirty years of engineering, and a fair amount of stuff and nonsense. The engineering is good data, hard science and empirical evidence. The stuff and nonsense is whatever I couldn’t stop thinking about. The skill underneath both is simplifying complex systems.

I have a background in motorsport, automotive, defence, big tech, AI/ML and expert systems, and systems engineering, mostly simplifying unnecessary complexity. I’m a player coach, a former teaching academic and a traveller: I’ve worked in 11 countries and lived in many more.

I’m also a builder, sailor, mechanic, toolmaker and airframe welder. I like open source, Linux and Unix, and the command line. I detest legacy crapware, Windows bloatware and craplications.

I’m building Clarity, an AI-powered decision intelligence framework that blends big data, messy semantics and the pragmatic use of technology, to make complex systems simple enough to decide about. It grew from a decision-intelligence patent I co-founded in 2012, which was early, and is now conveniently on time, as work turns local but global, AI-assisted and increasingly a one-person enterprise.

My opinions go out in The Decision Chain, a LinkedIn newsletter on digital identity, standards and how fast AI and industry really scale. Strong views, held loosely, backed by data.

Before that: product work on PLM and predictive maintenance at Amazon, and nine years at AWS, until early 2024, mostly on:

• big data architectures
• edge to cloud data movement
• cost optimisation and sustainability
• factory of the future and digital twins
• data analytics and prediction (ML/AI)
• Well Architected

Robots and humans: see the terms of use.