Andy Wilson- Chairman
Andy's background is in Politics and Philosophy. He has
worked with computers since 1987, acting as a Senior Technical
Manager and Technical Director for a string companies from 1993 onwards. He was a founder and chairman of the UK Director Users Group (DUG) and has written regularly on Director development.
Mike Rowlands- Managing Director
Prior to joining LShift Mike consulted on digital
communications and Internet strategy for six years, working with
some of the best respected companies in the world. Over this time
he has built a number of web businesses and is now responsible at
LShift for helping clients build theirs.
Lee Coomber- Technical Director
Lee has been programming computers since age five when he
was literally happy to work for peanuts. He has a B.Sc. in
Artificial Intelligence and has been developing Internet
applications since 1996. He joined LShift from design agency Lateral where he
was Technical Director and has since taken a sabbatical to provide the same
service for online accountancy firm Crunch.
Keith Fisher- Client Services Director
Keith's commercial experience includes a 15 year stint in north America
where he took tech companies from initial investment searches through to
running international sales and support channels. Most of his technical
background has involved firing high energy lasers at inanimate objects,
though this changed when he became involved in medical imaging. His
favorite (sic) buzzword is alignment.
Stuart Mottram- Systems Director
Stuart has degrees in Mathematics and Applied Computing and
has worked as a developer since 1991 building custom web based
solutions. He has also built an ISP and Web hosting company. He
has experience in a wide variety of hardware, operating systems
and programming languages.
Julian Burns- Programme Manager
Julian has been involved with technology companies for more than 25 years.
Starting as a developer in the financial sector, he moved into project management
during a 9 year spell with CMG. Since that time he has operated in a variety of
senior and director level positions in medium and smaller software companies
always maintaining a focus on effective project delivery.
Elaine Lynch- Office Manager
Elaine turned down a university place to become a nanny in the
US. Back in Dublin she worked in retail and learned about customer
service and staff management. She then became a receptionist for a
corporate travel agency, and within three months had moved into
the accounts department. She then took on the roles of Office
Manager, PA and Accounts Administrator - 'Jill of all
trades'.
Murielle Dumschat- Admin Assistant
Murielle has worked as a freelance Office Manager and PA in large
advertising companies like Ogilvy & Mather, McCann-Erickson etc. Outside
of that she has travelled the world, trekking on Everest alone and touring
Europe on a motorbike. From Frankfurt she moved to London to study Art &
Design History & Communication. She is also a keen cyclist and snowboarder.
Sophie Clare
Sophie was one of the founders of LShift and has worked in
commercial Internet and new media agencies since 1994. She has an MSc
in Multimedia Systems which, like her work at LShift, focussed on
interface design and development, and project planning and delivery
management. She manages to spend so long sitting at a desk by doing a
lot of yoga outside work.
Tim Clark
Tim trained as an electrical engineer and then pursued a career
in research investigating applications of genetic algorithms in communication
networks. Since then he has worked with a large number of moribund
technologies such as X25, EDI and CORBA. He started working with
Java in 1996, when it was much simpler than today, and has written
far too much Java for companies large and small.
Paul Crowley
Paul's varied computing background ranges from papers on
cryptography and cryptanalysis at highly regarded conferences,
through innovative algorithms for fast voxel computer graphics, to
rendering for print media and precise satellite navigation. He
loves scripting languages, Unix, Internet technologies, and open
source software.
Michal Cudrnak
Michal's passion for all things computers started one sunny summer
in his pre-school years when he gained access to a shiny 286 that he
took apart in no time. When he's not learning yet another programming
language he's to be found jumping around with his camera in
the countryside. He brings to LShift a fresh Computing (MEng) degree
from Imperial and a passion for discussions about what the next big
language will be.
Martin Eden
Martin is passionate and perhaps a little too obsessive about user
interfaces than is healthy (just one more pixel to the right!). So long
as he can write code of some sort he's happy, but C# is where he's most
at home. He's a little over-enamoured of the more magniloquent facets of
the English lexicon, but he tries not to let this seep into his variable
names.
Ben Hood
Ben joined LShift after contributing to the
RabbitMQ project. His most ambitious IT project was to install a sensor
on the cat flap on his back door that could use pattern recognition
to allow his own cherished Siamese through and block the big black cat
from next door. Not unlike most of the SAP-style projects he has been
involved in, by the time that the sensor was integrated and had passed UAT,
winter was afoot and it was too cold for his Siamese to
venture out at all.
David Ireland
On graduating in Mathematical and Computer Science, David
began programming Signal Processing software back in 93. His
enthusiasm for interactivity and cross-media publishing has taken
him through projects as diverse as Interactive Learning systems
and Electronic Program Guides for Cable TV.
Ben James
Ben has a degree in Physics from UCL, where he found himself enjoying
the computing modules more than anything else. Prior to working at LShift, he spent
a few years developing web applications, and managed a development team in an
advertising agency. He has built high-traffic commercial websites and a social
network. He is interested in solutions to scalability and concurrency problems.
Paul Jones
Paul has been playing with computer hardware and software since the
age of five, successfully deploying his first commercial project at
the age of 16. Since then Paul has juggled work as a full time
developer with studies in Software Engineering, and an MPhil in Ambient
Information Display. He has worked with and contributed to
many Open Source projects and likes finding the right tool for a job.
Jacek Lach
Completing his last year at Imperial, Jacek feels at home with all
programming languages, from mixes of C and Assembly to Haskell and Prolog.
He tends to keep his headphones on 16 hours a day, and the free time
between work, college and socializing he spends reading, playing computer
games and taking long walks in Hyde park, all assisted by different kinds
of music.
Alan Moran
Alan started out engineering things in the physical world. He changed
to software engineering in the mid-nineties, by working on energy forecasting
with neural networks. Since then he has worked on a great variety of software
projects and technologies, including software for transplantation medicine.
He is interested in bioinformatics, Python, Open Data and the open
sharing of information. He holds a MSc in Software Engineering.
Tom Parker
Tom has a PhD from the Delft University of Technology, and in general has spent far too much time in academia doing complicated things to small computers.
His main interests are in embedded systems, Python and Linux, and has contributed to a long list of open source projects.
Hok Shun Poon
The idea of making computer games drove led Hok to the study of C++ and
Java, 3D modelling, an internship at his favourite games company, and a
degree in computing. A significant remnant of his time in academia lives on
in his appetite for Haskell programming. Outside of the time spent reading
papers about monads, type systems, and general abstract nonsense, he enjoys
investigating into making magnetic levitating papercraft.
Michael Porter
Mike has been programming computers since his parents bought
him a ZX81 too many years ago to remember. He obtained a BSc in
Computation and has since worked with a wide variety of different
technologies on projects including video conferencing, image
processing and a range of CD/DVD-ROM titles based on a 3D model of
the human anatomy.
Alexander Schmolck
Alexander is a fully qualified emacs operator who likes several obscure
programming languages and films. He also used to know some cognitive science
and read books, but still remembers a little about pattern recognition (he
even got a PhD after he learned to stop worrying and love The Mathworks).
Frank Shearar
Frank has a BSc in Mathematics and Computer Science. He started out
studying programming to support his maths interests, and ended up
learning maths to support his programming interests. He's particularly
keen on network protocols and has spent far too much time implementing
SIP and RTP stacks. He likes learning new programming languages.
John Wright
John received an Amstrad computer for his seventh birthday and learned
to program by reading its manual cover to cover. After a stint as a
record producer, John returned to his first love and gained a diverse
range of software experience, from mobile applications to groupware,
marketing, travel, social media and telecommunications. His passion is
programming language design.
