Resumé

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Short Bio

Rob Blackwell is R&D Director at Two10degrees, part of Active Web Solutions Ltd.

A hacker in the old-fashioned sense of the word, he likes building software, solving challenging problems and trying to make a small difference in the world.

With more than twenty years industry experience, he now finds himself focusing on Cloud Computing and helping Independent Software Vendors move their products and services to Windows Azure.

He is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Essex.

Rob received a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award for his work with Windows Azure and is an occasional writer and conference speaker.

Longer Bio

Rob Blackwell is R&D Director at Two10degrees, part of Active Web Solutions Ltd.

Rob joined BT’s Research and Development Laboratories at Martlesham Heath in 1991 after graduating from The University of Kent at Canterbury with a BSc in Computer Science.

He researched the use of case based reasoning and decision support systems before going on to apply the technology in a number of PC and UNIX based systems supporting BT’s customer service activities.

He went on to work on advanced network design and modelling tools where he helped develop expert systems techniques to automate the configuration of BT’s ServiceView network management systems. He was co-inventor and lead developer of the SPEED project, a suite of intelligent network design and service modelling tools written in Lisp and deployed widely across BT. He joined BT Web Services in 1997 where he designed and developed a number of state-of-the-art web solutions for both BT and external customers.

He left BT in 1999 to provide freelance eBusiness software development and consultancy services, primarily through Attachmate.

In 2000 he joined Active Web Solutions as R&D Director, where he has worked on various projects including:

A portal for headteachers, launched by Tony Blair;
eProcurement architecture at BP;
The Ipswich Town Football Club website;
A network monitoring system for RNLI and Arqiva (formerly NTL);
A vessel tracking system for the RNLI using satellite communications technology;
A MapPoint compliant webservice for rendering ARCS hydrographic charts;
Windows Live Quick Applications for Microsoft;
An automated trading platform for a major UK energy company;
Windows Azure workshops and proofs-of-concept for Microsoft.

He was part of a team that won an unprecedented three British Computer Society awards in 2006.

He is Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Windows Azure and an occasional writer and conference speaker.

He is a Visiting Fellow in the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering at The University of Essex.

He lives in Suffolk, England with his wife Suzanne and their labrador Misty.

*The opinions expressed on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent those of Two10degrees or Active Web Solutions Ltd.