Professional biography

Like I said earlier, I can't guarentee my professional bio will make interesting reading. There are a few common themes running through my working life, like working with multivalue databases.

Early days

Born in April 1963 to Stan and Doreen on Handsworth Avenue, Sheffield 9. I'm the eldest child. I've a sister - Allison (note the spelling) who's a couple of years younger than me. I suppose early life was fairly uneventful. Things tend not to stick in the memory when you're young. I do however remember one day after my Dad had supposedly dressed me to go out. I can't have been walking that long and both parents were getting annoyed because, although I could walk, I kept falling over. Needless to say, young Morris eventually got a belt around the earhole. It later transpired that Stanley had succeeded in getting both his sons legs down one knicker leg. I've never been the same since !

Athelstan Junior School

School days meant Athelstan Junior and Infants School at Handsworth in the early days. I remember getting thrown out of the school choir in the infants for not being able to sing in tune then getting thrown back in because I was the only one that knew the words. It must have been about then that my interests in music started to develop. As with everyone at that level, the recorder was my first foray into making music. This was fostered when I moved up into the junior school by the music teacher there - Peter Roscoe. He encouraged me to play more instruments and largely because of him, I ended up playing the violin and trumpet as well as the recorder (Peter was a bit of a recorder freak).

The violin remained my main instrument as I got offered a place in Sheffield's Music School which took up my Saturday mornings for something like ten years. I kept up playing brass as well although I received little formal tuition. Anyone who's recently heard me play would give testament to that.

Beaver Hill Comprehensive School

In 1968, the family decamped to Ballifield - in between Handsworth and Woodhouse. It was natural therefore that when the time came to attend Comprehensive School that I'd go to the one around the corner. That's how I came to attend Beaver Hill Comprehensive School. The fact that Beaver Hill also had a good brass band under the direction of John Sharman may have had something to do with it as well !

So, there I was. Now playing cornet in the school band and violin on Saturdays at Music School. I was also interested in science and got interested in electronics. This led to an interest in computers as "personal computers" were all the rage in the electronics magazines then. What you have to bear in mind is that computers meant Apple II's, Sinclair ZX80's, Sharp MZ80K's, Commodore Pets and the like. If these are foreign to you, then you must be a child of the 70's or 80's !

It was the interest in computers that was to be a big influence in my professional life. (Is this starting to sound like something out of "This Is Your Life" ?). I got good O-level results and stayed on in the sixth form to study Maths, Physics and Music. Yes I know. Odd combination. It was a small sixth form. Only about 20 of us. Let me list a few names. David Spencer. David Wilson. Glyn Burrows. Stephen (or Steven) Robertson. Chris Simcox. Sally Shepherd. Sarah Banks. There were more, but my memory fails me !!

Undergraduate life

Lousy A-level results meant I didn't get a place a Bradford Uni to study Computing, so I made do with a place at Sheffield Polytechnic (now Sheffield Hallam University) on their Systems Modelling degree course. That again was a small course. Let me list a few names there. After all, you never know. Some really sad person might do a web search for their name ! Jane Heaviside. Lynne Caughey. Maggi Veasey. John Long. Ann Gilmartin. Peter Townson. I'll think of more later, but my mind's gone blank. Whilst there, I did two periods of industrial placement - one at ASWE Portsmouth and one at Brinsworth Strip Mills (part of B.S.C. - now Corus). The last one was particularly influential. They sponsored me for my final year and I went to work for them after getting a 2/2 honours degree

Brinsworth Strip Mills.

The time spent at Brinsworth kindled my interest in production planning systems and brought me first into contact with multivalue databases on McDonnell Douglas M8000 systems and 4GLs. Altogether, post graduation, I worked at Brinsworth for a further 2.5 years. During that time, I contributed significantly to the development of the Production, Planning and Control systems for the organisation. Specific problems in that type of environment include identification strategies for material forms going in to critical applications.

All Business Systems

I left Brinsworth with one aim... to develop my knowledge of core business systems. I realised that if I was going to get anywhere in business, I probably needed to understand boring things like Sales, Purchase, Nominal, Asset ledgers and the like.

All Business Systems (ABS), part of the now twice bought-out Steetley group, were the old Group IT department responsible for maintaining the group's core ledger package. With the intention of selling what was a good ledger package on the open market, ABS was formed as a seperate reporting company.

I spent four years there, in my time, developing an in-depth understanding of core ledger packages, capital reporting, multi-currency considerations, accounting systems etc. I did become the company's asset register expert, troubleshooting problems on several sites and developing some technically complicated procedures. I also finished (to tight timescales - I'd handed my notice in!) the multicurrency Sales Ledger modifications.

Whilst at ABS, I got my first experience of Reality databases on McDonnell Douglas. It's a PICK-variant, in otherwords a multivalue database. Development was carried out in PICK Basic and ALL, a 4GL (an early fork from Pro-IV). I also developed the company's software release systems and assisted in the development of standard procedures.

To current days

Since 1992, I've been IT Manager at what's now ALLVAC Ltd. Whan I joined, it was Special Melted Products Ltd and had half a dozen PCs and little in the way of systems.

Since the purchase by Allegheny Technologies, I've been busy.

With my staff of five, we now handle IT issues and development for the most of ALLVAC's European operation including offices in Birmingham, Paris and Dusseldorf.

Our latest development which I've designed and done a fair bit of the development for myself is a new manufacturing system. This system has the company quality control procedures at its heart, and the user interface is predominantly web-based. Shop Floor Data Collection is implemented using a dedicated in-house designed and written (my work) Visual Basic application, all back-ended with a multivalue database. Don't let anyone ever tell you that mv databases can't embrace modern delivery methods. With the right tools and skills, they can. Our users predominantly use IE4 and IE5 to get and supply information to our manufacturing systems and can't tell what the underlying database is... and let's face it, that's the way it should be.