My first career was as a submarine officer in the Royal Navy, in conventional diesel boats before moving on to nuclear submarines. Although neither pretended to be a submarine, HMS NAIAD and HMS TIGER also very kindly took me around much of the world twice - it was a fantastic time!

 

In 1976, I emigrated to the US, to start career two as a serial entrepreneur:  I founded an alarm company, a package delivery business, and a computer database builder, before being invited back to the UK in 1986 to work on the Channel Tunnel project.  From this grew career three, when I helped found Nexus Management Ltd in 1989, which gradually morphed into a global computer Managed Services company.  I remained in IT thereafter.

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In 2020, I was introduced, as a Parish Councillor,  to Parish Online, which I felt was the sweetest package I had seen in a lifetime in IT.  Digital mapping is immensely powerful, as it enables users to see data in perspectives that are not normally obvious - adding layers of information (including aerial photography) to the underlying map creates visual images (worth thousands of words!) that convey facts and features that really help those making decisions about their communities.  Allied to its built-in Asset Register, Parish Online does a superb job of moving village and town data out of dusty, largely inaccessible filing cabinets to an online facility available 24/7 to any number of users.  When linked to digital data from District, County, and Unitary authorities, it saves huge amounts of time for all involved.  I was hugely impressed, and wanted to help spread the word, and help those who use the product to get the very best from its very potent facilities.  Hence I set up the Parish Online User Group (https://www.parishonlineusergroup.com/), and re-purposed Chagos to provide light-hearted but excellent support to the Parish Online user community.

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Working with Parish and Town Councils all over the UK, it became clear that there is a need for similarly helpful, reliable service to enable their websites to be easily updated on a regular basis by (usually) untrained volunteers as well as very busy Parish Clerks - and so Chagos now does that as well.

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