The Board
Edward Chance
Director - Chance Associates
Edward is Founder Director of Chance Associates Limited, a management consultancy specialising in developing highly effective sales teams. An experienced business leader, Edward is an evangelist on the importance of information technology in schools and with young people.
Prior to founding Chance Associates, he was CEO of the Adventi Group,and Area Vice President, Oracle Corporation UK Ltd., with responsibility for Oracle’s business operations in Scotland and the North of England. Edward joined Oracle in 1989 and held various roles within the company including product development, consulting and sales.
Edward holds a BSc in Computer Information Systems, from Glasgow Caledonian University; Post graduate Diploma in International Business, Edinburgh University; and an Executive MBA from Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees, Paris.
Edward also sits on the Council of the CBI in Scotland.
Andrew Campbell
Director, Public Sector - Sopra Group
As part of the Sopra Group senior management team, Andrew is the Director responsible for Sopra Group’s Public Sector activities. Now based in Edinburgh Andrew has over 20 Years of experience in IT, working in Edinburgh, London, Singapore and Hong Kong. The majority of his career has been in Investment Banking IT, with early successes as part of the design team for a Cross-Border International Equities Settlement system which in the 1990’s became the back-bone of the settlement infrastructure for many of the major investment banks in London. Latterly as Managing Director, Asia for OMX, the owners of the Swedish Stock Exchange and suppliers of major technology platforms to Exchanges and Investment Banks, he established the OMX organisation to facilitate expansion in the region.
After returning from Hong Kong, Andrew established himself as an independent management consultant, engaged in a wide range of projects from advising technology start-up firms to working with a major banking organisation as a Global Business Relationship Manager on an international technology implementation.
He then joined Newell & Budge, prior to their acquisition by Sopra Group, to spearhead the development of their Consultancy Service across the UK.
He also sits on the IT Governance Board of the National Museums of Scotland and is a trustee of a two of registered charities.
Gillian Davidson
SIMUL8 Corporation Ltd
Gillian is Head of Strategy at Simul8 Corporation, who develop, market, and support business simulation software that enhances the way people make and communicate decisions.
Prior to joining Simul8, Gillian was Managing Director of Real Time Engineering. One of the founding directors, she was part of the winnning team that built the company into one of Scotland’s largest and most successful indigenous IT organisations.
Chris Rourke
Managing Directory - User Vision
Chris has over 19 years commercial experience in usability, accessibility, human factors consultancy and training. Chris has worked with a range of clients including Hewlett Packard, Dell Computers, NCR, Houses of Parliament, Emirates Airline, IKEA and many other commercial and public sector clients in the UK and abroad. He started User Vision in 2000 and the company has grown steadily, with expanding services in the web, mobile and interactive TV services. His particular user experience interests include web accessibility, the application of Rich Internet Applications such as AJAX and Flex, remote usability testing, eye tracking and persuasion architecture.
Chris was Founder and President of the Scottish Chapter of the Usability Professionals' Association (SUPA) and is a member of various professional organisations, including the British Human-Computer Interaction Group (BHCIG), and the Computers and Human Interaction Group of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM-SIGCHI).
Chris holds a BSc. in Engineering Psychology from Tufts University and a MSc. in Ergonomics from the University of Michigan.
Donald Cameron
EQSN
25 years in IT starting in sales ( Burroughs), and early entrant to the internet during 1990’s. A brief summary of the lat 15 years;
Internet product manager responsible for strategy, JV’s and partnerships reporting to the marketing director at Scottish Telecom (Thus).
Board director at PSInet responsible for developing and bringing to commercial realization of their European datacenters ifocused on managed system hosting and delivery of crital applications – clients included Boo.com, Reuters, City and Guilds, as well as global accounts largely driven by the USA.
Board member of the Net Media Group a VC fund and CEO of Scotsman.com where we developed the "Best Daily Newspaper Website in the UK" - Newspaper Society, 2002, 2003 and become one of Google News's top 30 worldwide news sources
Non Exec at Cedalion from 10 employees to 60 at exit.
A founding director of EQSN where my board responsibility is business development working with a number of large and small software developers in delivering Solutions as a Service to their business and Government customers.
Tommy Laughlin
A Mathematics and Statistics graduate from the University of Glasgow Tommy has been involved in the IT industry since 1978. During that time he has worked for ICL, IBM, Logica and Microgen in a wide range of senior sales, marketing and management roles. His background covers working with blue chip organisations in both Financial Services and Utilities and includes a spell based in the Middle East. In May 2006 Tommy joined SAIC's utility business unit in Scotland.
SAIC is a long-term strategic provider to the utilities, oil and gas, telecommunications public sector, and finance industries. In Europe, SAIC provides IT services, such as applications support, applications infrastructure care and maintenance, software development, systems integration and project management, to a broad range of companies and organisations including ScottishPower and BP.
A dedicated football fan Tommy also enjoys walking, reading, malt whisky and has an abiding passion for Indian food.
Rab Campbell
Logica
In the 1980’s: as IT Manager, I implemented a sophisticated Administration System at the University of Zimbabwe that allowed the University to grow student numbers from 1,500 to 7,500 over three years. On time and to budget and specification.
In the early 90’s: as a Sales Executive, I led the ICL “charge” into the Scottish Financial Services Sector achieving the first contracts with both BoS and RBoS through a sophisticated marketing campaign.
At RBoS I introduced and award winning “Core Technology” programme that better aligned the use of technology to the business. This education programme resulted in £3m million pa of training revenue and facilitated the ICL Group achieving revenue of some £75 million from RBoS.
In the late 90’s: I was part of a 4-person team who successfully introduced e-mail to the 120-strong branch of a major UK charity which had previously operated exclusively by telephone. Implementing major change in the voluntary sector where, by definition, volunteers can simply walk away requires a “best practice” approach to change management – and that’s exactly what we did.
Around 00: I closed down a 25 person training operation in Glasgow. Biggest regret? Not being able to convince the UK Board that we should select, train and commission Big Issue sellers to re-sell our end user computing training services as an add-on to their normal operations on the streets of Central Glasgow.
In the late 00’s: as Account Director, I have established Logica firmly in Scottish Central Government winning contracts, to date, worth some £50 million and growing our “feet on the ground” involvement 10-fold.
Donald McLaughlin
General Manager - Scotland Cisco UK & Ireland
Donald McLaughlin heads up the Scottish operation for Cisco. Donald has been in the ICT industry for 20 years and has worked with an extensive list of private and public sector organisations throughout the UK & Ireland.
Donald has been with Cisco since February 2000, initially joining the software sales division before taking on leadership of the Northern Commercial sales team and following that, the Local Government team. The common theme in all these roles has been a passion for helping customers gain competitive edge through Cisco’s innovative technology solutions.
Donald spent around 10 years based in Manchester before returning home to lead the Cisco Scotland team in July 2008. Prior to joining Cisco, he spent time at Siemens Communications and Unisys in a variety of sales and management roles across a broad range of industry sectors.
Donald has degree in Mathematics & Statistics from Glasgow University and was President of the Students’ Union in 1988. He is married with two sons and is a keen golfer.
Ian Allison
Robert Gordon University
I have been Head of School of Computing at RGU since 2007. After graduating I spent 10 years managing and developing software for global technology and financial organisations. Since becoming an academic 16 years ago I have maintained this commercial perspective in my work through undertaking consultancy, knowledge transfer and case study research in the area of business information systems.
David Farquhar
CEO - 2in10
Managing General Partner Pivot Capital Partners) is a serial entrepreneur, having built a number of international companies in enterprise software, mobile applications and eLearning over the past two decades. During the 1990s David grew and sold two companies in Scandinavia integrating mobile & wireless technologies with enterprise software applications, based on the principle of selling through global channels in partnership with major vendors.
David then founded the Idesta Group in 2001 which raised €15m in European private and venture capital, growing to employ 120 people in 8 countries. During 2003/05 David ran Interactive University, the award-winning global e-learning platform developer and content distributor.
He is currently chairman of two software companies (SeeByte, Edinburgh & Calico Jack, Dundee) and of the industrial advisory board to the University of Dundee’s School of Computing. He has invested in the digital media sector in London and LA, in drinks brand management and founded Scotland’s first US-style brewpub. He founded 2in10 in 2005 and Pivot Capital Partners in 2007. More recently David has identified and recruited international tier-1 distribution partners for HoundDog Technology, a Dundee-based vendor of SaaS solutions. He is an active GlobalScot, a beer enthusiast, a mountaineer and an extremely average village cricketer.
Polly Purvis
Executive Director - ScotlandIS
Polly started her career with the Royal Bank of Scotland Group working in the City of London. Returning to Scotland she joined Scottish Development Agency's Small Business Division providing early stage venture capital funding. As acting Director of SEEL's Company Growth Division she had special responsibility for development of the Enterprise Company's small business policy.
Following a period in management consultancy with specialist business growth consultants Matrix Management, Polly moved to the Scottish Software Federation initially as Project Manager for Y2K projects, and was actively engaged in the merger which formed ScotlandIS.
Polly represents ScotlandIS on the ICT Industry Advisory Group, the eskills UK Scotland board, the Prospekt board at Edinburgh School of Informatics and chairs the East of Scotland KTP Advisory Board.
Wendy McDougall
9-20 Recruitment
After graduating in 1996 with a BA (hons) in Organisational Management, Wendy has been involved in the Technology service industry since 1996.
Her expertise ranges from providing tailored resourcing solutions for the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) market to overseeing multimillion corporate IT accounts. Her sector experience is broad; however, her specialty is within the technology sectors.
Founding and now directing 9-20 recruitment her vision is to create a centre of excellence for clients looking to recruit IT skills and candidates looking to progress their IT careers in Scotland. Most recently the company was proud to be recognized for their work so far as winners in the 2008 Scottish Recruitment Awards and shortlisted in the 2009 UK recruiter awards for the best UK IT recruiters.
Having been recognized in the National Business Awards for Scotland as a finalist herself in the ‘Entrepreneur of the Year 2007’ and appointed on to the Board of Scotland’s technology governing body, ScotlandIS in 2009, Wendy is embedded in the Scottish entrepreneurial technology sector and well positioned to assist companies with any growth, restructuring, talent management and resource issues.
John Salmon
Partner - Pinsent Masons
John Salmon is a Partner and Head of the Outsourcing, Technology and Commercial Services Group in Scotland at international law firm Pinsent Masons. He specialises in providing technology, intellectual property and e-commerce legal advice to businesses throughout the UK and Europe. John was a founding partner of Pinsent Masons' IT and e-commerce service OUT-LAW.
John has a wide range of experience in advising software developers and suppliers of all types
Euan Mackenzie
3MRT
For the last 6 years I’ve been CEO of 3MRT, bringing serious and games based learning into the education and corporate sector. Basically what I do day to day is addict kids to studying using gaming software
Over the last 18 years I have been a director, founder of and investor in many UK and US innovative software tech start-ups, including Communicata, Voxar, DesAcc and 3MRT and had the opportunity to help establish companies in the UK, Asia and US. Over this time I have gathered some experience of the challenges facing the technology SME in growing both locally and globally.
Aydin Kurt-Elli
CEO - Lumison
English by birth, but brought up throughout Europe, Aydin graduated MBChB in Edinburgh in 1998.
Having set up Edinburgh Network Technologies (formerly known as edNET) whilst still a 2nd yr student, Aydin ran the business part time until getting his GMC registration. After working as a junior house officer for a year, he left the medical profession to run edNET fulltime. The business has grown from small regional Internet provider to become a full service business-class ISP (Lumison), with managed hosting, network and voice services, as well as wholly-owned Tier-III datacentres in Edinburgh and London, as well as infrastructure in a number of 3rd party facilities in the UK and USA.
Edinburgh Network Technologies Ltd remains a privately owned business, with continued re-investment, organic growth, and looks forward with ambition.
The group have won business growth awards such as listings in the Deloitte & Touch Fast 50 and European Fast 500, the Sunday Times TechTrak, and Aydin has been shortlisted as an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Having previous non-executive experience on other boards, Aydin has also chaired the Centre for Human Ecology and been Vice-Chair of the Scottish Continuity Group. He is currently on the Scottish Enterprise Regional Advisory Board (RAB) for the Edinburgh and Lothians region, as well as a member of the Edinburgh Business Assembly.
Aydin is a father of three, and keen musician, having sung with the National Youth Choir of Wales, Scottish Chamber Orchestra Chorus, a number of smaller choirs and numerous solo performances.
Graeme Gordon
Internet for Business
Graeme Gordon is chief executive of IFB – an Internet Service Provider with an excellent reputation, recognised as an innovative Solutions Provider for core business ICT infrastructure services across the UK.
Graeme lives in Aberdeen with his wife Sue and their 3 children. Outside work he enjoys the social aspects of family life in between his other profession as a taxi service for rugby, dancing, rowing, tennis, football and piano classes! He tries to visit the gym and the golf course as frequently as he can and sneak off with Sue for visits to the cinema, favourite restaurants or for a quiet weekend away as much as possible.
Nicole Allan
Praxa
Nicole has over fifteen years experience in Business and Information systems both in the UK and Australia, and is a co-founder and Director of Praxa (Business Intelligence) based in Edinburgh. Nicole has an excellent track record of project delivery on a number of large scale, high profile systems within the public and private sector.
Sara Dodd
Director - Net Resources Ltd
Sara Dodd is Director of Net Resources Ltd, a web design, development and internet training company based in Edinburgh. The company has been delivering web, internet & Cisco training to Scottish graduates and businesses since 1998, winning a National Training award in 2007. A graduate of UC Berkeley, she brings a Californian perspective to her role notwithstanding the fact that she's been resident in Scotland some 20 years.
Roy Maxwell
Managing Director - Scolocate
Currently MD of ScoLocate, Scotland’s largest commercial Data Center with a host of Government, Commercial & Telecoms customer’s. Even though ScoLocate is a relatively small organisation it deals with some of Scotland’s and the world’s largest organisations and therefore we understand the challenges that this creates for SME’s in Scotland.
Personally I bring a wealth of business experience gained in marketing, operations and general management within the ICT industry over the past 20 years . Having worked, down south and now back in Scotland for a variety of ICT organisations which gives me a firm understanding of the differing challenges which we all face on a daily basis.
Susan Chadwick
Edge Testing
Susan Chadwick has been involved in the IT industry for over 20 years, moving from business management to IT in the capital markets services industry and then establishing a major new division in a large Scottish based IT services company, prior to setting up Edge Testing Solutions.
Caroline Stuart
Oracle
After graduating in Technology and Business Studies from Strathclyde University in1986 Caroline left Scotland to work in the City of London. She trained as an Investment Analyst and worked for Crown Agents and Charterhouse Tilney. She returned to Scotland and ran three companies before moving into business consultancy. She has been a volunteer business advisor to the Princes Scottish Youth Business Trust for 10 years. Currently she is employed by Oracle, the largest software company in the world, as Director for Oracle Scotland. She sits on various Boards and Committees in Scotland including the ICT Forum for Scotland – which is a joint Government/Industry Board set up to advise Government and she chairs the Skills Group.
Nick Price
Bright Purple
Nick is MD and one of the founders in 1995 of Bright Purple (formerly known as Careercare), one of Scotland's premier technology recruitment organisations. Nick has been working in the field of recruitment for 20 years, the last 18 years in the technology space and over that period has worked with some of Scotland's prominent technology people.
Bright Purple has serviced a client base stretching across the UK, Europe and has also carried out interesting recruiting projects in places as far away as Bahrain, Russia and the Bahamas'. The company provide a range of tailored recruitment solutions to clients that range from early start-up's , through some of the world's largest organisations. The firm provide ' s services that include permanent, contract, strategic team moves, board placements and it now also provides a range of offerings in human performance and talent management with their partners, TSA Europe.
Nick is married to Margita and has 3 'very' actively sporting children, so when he is not running about after them, he enjoys supporting his football team and the occasional game of golf. Born in South Wales, everything was about music and his teens were spent playing trumpet for the Cardiff Heath Orchestra, but those days are long gone. Passionate about Scotland and its future and wants to work with Scotland's talent pool to see the country become one the world's recognised hub 's for all things great in technology. He gets a buzz from constant networking and being a match-maker in the business world, bringing people and companies together for the first time, for the benefit of all.
Alastair O'Brien
Amor Group
With a University of Glasgow BSc (2nd Class Honours) in Computing Science 1979 Alastair is an experienced business manager, programme manager and IT Consultant with 30 years of project experience in a variety of market sectors, and an outstanding track record of successful delivery of complex, high-risk projects.
As a Real Time business manager, his responsibilities include full profit and loss accountability for designated aspects of Real Time’s operation. His external facing responsibilities include customer and contract relationship management.
Alastair is a confident professional leader with well developed interpersonal skills and a strong customer focus. He has been instrumental in establishing Real Time as a major force in delivering Business and IT Consultancy services to the Public Sector and as a leading player in Scotland providing consultancy and services to the Scottish Executive, NHS Scotland, Scottish Police Information Services, Glasgow City Council and many Non-Departmental Public Bodies.
Papers
* A MASCOT Design Support Environment’ – ALVEY conference proceedings.
* Experiences in the development of a Real Time Heterogeneous distributed application designed using MASCOT and implemented in Ada.
Conferences
* XML Masterclass – ScotlandIS
* A Process Model for Real Time Systems – IEE
* An Approach to Modelling a MASCOT3 Design – MASCOT Users Forum.
Wallace Gray
Alliance Trust Plc
Wallace Gray has been the Head of I.T. at Alliance Trust Plc, a FTSE 100 company since April 2010. He is responsible for the Systems Development & Infrastructure. Before joining Alliance Trust, he was the IT Director at the Student Loans Company for 9 years, and IT Director at the Scottish Legal Aid Board where he worked for five years. During his 25 years as a computer professional, he has held positions in Standard Life, Britannia Life, OKI and Robert Flemings Merchant Bank.
He has four Master degrees in Business Administration (MBA), Human Resource Management, Practitioner Research and the Management of E-Business as well as a BSc in Computing. He is currently studying towards a PhD at the University of the West of Scotland. He is a Fellow of the Association of Project Managers and is one of a select number of UK Project Managers to be awarded a Certified Project Manager title by the IAPM.
Tom McEwan
Napier Univesity
2004-2009 School of Computing, Senior Lecturer, Edinburgh Napier University: at various times Postgraduate Courses Director, Faculty PR Ambassador, Commercialisation and Knowledge Transfer contact. Chaired international conference HCI2005. Treasurer of British Computing Society’s Interaction specialist group. PR officer, BCS Edinburgh branch. Reviewer for SFIAPlus (based on Skills Framework for the Information Age)
1998-2004 Lecturer, School of Computing, Napier University. MSc IT for eCommerce Course Leader, Communications Chair BCS Interaction SG, Editor BCS Interfaces magazines (awards 2000, 2001), UK awards for knowledge transfer: TCS2002, KTP2004.
1994-98 Technical Director, Delphic, New Lanark
1990-93 Software Engineer, Unisys
1988-90 Software Engineer Unibit, Bradford
Tom served on the ScotlandIS board 1999-2001 and since then has organized events bridging ScotlandIS and academia, eg usability symposia jointly with BCS & ScotlandIS in 2002 and 2004.
Peter Gregor
Dundee Univesity
Peter Gregor has been Head of the School of Computing at Dundee University since 2005. He started work in Computing at Dundee over 15 years ago, originally devising and delivering vocational software training programmes for local government, the NHS and industry through the University’s Continuing Education section. His research covers a broad spectrum of the Human Computer Interaction field but is focused on making computers work for people through good design and the removal of barriers to access; while at Dundee he has published widely in the fields of human computer interaction and accessibility and is Director of the Digital Media Access Group which offers accessibility consultancy commercially (www.dmag.org.uk). Peter is a passionate believer in the importance of working across disciplines in both teaching and research; in 2003 he and colleagues at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design pioneered the BSc Interactive Media Design programme, bringing together learning about design and computing, to produce graduates who genuinely understand interdisciplinary working.
Peter originally qualified in Psychology (B.Sc (Hons) University of Edinburgh & M.A. York University, Canada) then worked for many years in Community Education in Tayside. He completed his PhD in Computer Science (University of Dundee) in 1991 and is a Fellow of the British Computer Society.
David Cairns
PrismTech Ltd
David Cairns is a major shareholder and executive Chairman of PrismTech's Board of Directors. David has held top management positions with telecommunications, computer hardware & software and venture capital companies in the USA, Canada, the UK, Netherlands & Germany and led Marcam's and Baan's IPO's on the NASDAQ and Amsterdam stock exchanges. David also supported the IPO of PSA AG in Germany. David's experience ranges from founding start ups to holding senior management, officer & board positions with public multi-national technology companies.
A Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants with a Master's degree in Business Administration (Cranfield), David is also a Founder of the National Museum of Scotland and a Fellow of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries.