How do you spend most of your time at work?
Interviewing people, attending events, scribbling frantically in short-hand, and typing furiously. That and trying to juggle many things at once.
What’s been your most unusual experience?
Either a five-hour trip through the jungles of Colombia in search of a cement factory or the opening of a new one in Egypt. Being surrounded by AK-47 armed security guards sticks in the mind!
What advice would you give to anyone writing about two-way radio?
Include lots of practical tips or lessons learned that your readers can apply to their own work. When writing case studies, don’t strip away the little problems or set-backs that occurred. How you resolved them tells the reader far more than a “the job was done perfectly” narrative.
What excites you most about wireless comms?
The way in which it pervades everything, while at the same time, there’s so much more it can do. It will be interesting how working practices evolve in the next 10 years or so, as people continue to embrace new technologies.
What is the one thing you wish you could change about your job?
I sometimes wish I had a magic wand that I could wave and make everything that someone says fit for print. People sometimes forget that there’s no point saying anything to a journalist that’s not factual or is self-promoting and subjective.
What’s the one gadget that you can’t live without?
My airbrush – I spend far too much time and money painting toy soldiers and it makes getting smooth gradients and painting large armies much easier.
What else do you do to relax?
I’ve been visiting lots of historical sites with my wife, who is fascinated by the Tudor period. I’m very lucky in that she puts up with my habit of checking to see which type of two-way radios are being used – even in films and TV shows. I was pleasantly surprised when Airwave got a mention in an episode of Luther and in Hot Fuzz, when the makers failed to blur a rather familiar logo.