About me

Let me come out and just say it, I’m a geek.

I’ve been a geek long before it was cool and I’ll be a geek long after it’s cool.

There is something about technology that just makes me happy. I struggle to really put it into words, but I see how things have evolved over the last 30 years and it is just amazing… and I really want to be helping that technology develop and do new things in the next 30 years.

The early days with the Commodore 64

My love of technology and computers was spawned by early exposure and encouragement by my father; who wasn’t a geek as such, but had a strong interest in electronics. It was him that first introduced me to the Commodore 64, and from the moment that computer powered on at home for the first time my life would never be the same. It sounds a little dramatic in retrospect, but I’m sure my parents could have never predicted the influence that the little brown box would have on my life (or my brothers life, who followed a similar path into the computer industry and now works as a network technician).

Like all kids, the first thing the Commodore 64 was used for was games. At the time, we had an Atari 2600 console at home so it was natural that the first thing we wanted to do was play games on this incredible new device. But like most kids, there are so many times you can play the same games before the pattern gets boring and you go looking for other things to do. Thankfully my father encouraged my brother and I to push the boundaries by purchasing the monthly Commodore 64 user magazines that you could get from the local newsagents. For those reading this that don’t know, these magazines not only included the usual things like product reviews, industry news and advertisements but also included little programs that the users program into their computers at home and run them. These programs generally were not complex (at least to start with) and could be programmed and enjoyed in an afternoon, or a few days maximum. Although, anyone who used to program these magazine programs would have no doubt spent a bit of time debugging a typo in one of the ‘data’ lines.

It was programing from these books that really opened up my eyes to what the computer could do; what was that you ask? Pretty much anything I told it to do, and from that revelation I was hooked.

The years passed and my passion for computers and electronics continued to grow. In primary school my closest friends had similar interests, but back then being a geek wasn’t cool, in fact, most adults were somewhat intimitated at what a 10 year old kid could do on a computer, and most certainly the other kids thought we were all a little bit weird – it didn’t matter though, I was a geek and proud of it. I loved learning about the computer and everything it could do. My teachers at the time really didn’t offer a lot to help – they were still learning how to use the ‘thing’ themselves and classroom computer time was limited to very rudimentry maths and spelling programs – ‘Where is the world is Carmen Sandiego?’ stands out as one of the more popular educational games from that era. I still laugh and have fond memories of freaking teachers out by exiting programs midstream and listing the programs contents – changing bits of code and generally being a bit of an annoyance for them. At least that’s how they made me feel at the time – there was no challenge at school as the stuff they were trying to teach us was so boring that I found myself getting in trouble just to add a bit of exitement to the day.

The next big step for me was when my father introduced me to the modem. We still had our Commodore 64 and the modem was a very slow (by todays standards) 1200/75bps or 300/300bps switch-mode unit that was primarliy used for a text service called Viatel – it was very similar to the TeleText service broadcast over the Television signals except that Viatel was two way. A very long story short, Viatel worked on a monthly subscription and although I can’t remember how much it cost at the time it was expensive – so the Viatel service was cancelled. I don’t remember the exact timing but it would have been around the same time or shortly after that after reading the computer user magazines that I learned about Bulletin Board Services (or BBS as they are generally refered to). These were what many consider to be the pre-cursor to the public Internet, although limited in their connectivity and available information, the BBS allowed users to dial-in and exchange information with other computer users.

The BBS absolutely facinated me, the process of dialing into another computer and chatting with other people, downloading and uploading programs, reading and discussing news and general interest items. It was connectivity that was unparalled for a home computer user at the time. The computer at home was upgraded and we moved on to the Commodore Amiga 500. The new computer was a giant leap from the trusty Commodore 64 and my brother, father and I all continued to explore the new posibilties that the new computer offered us. I continued to be involved with our local BBS scene and even attempted to run a BBS myself for a short time. However, being 13 years old and trying to convince my parents that I wanted to have the phone line all to myself every night was a hard-sell, and in the end, my own BBS aspirations were limited to short bursts over long weekends and school holidays.

There’s no business like show business

The only problem with all this so far? As a young teenager I only ever wanted to work in Television. Again, the culprit here was my father. He worked pretty much all of his life in the TV industry, starting in the very early days of black and white television in Wollongong. His career took him around the world; to Canada (to learn colour!), to Perth (where I was born), and finally to Channel 7 in Melbourne where he saw out his professional career as the station’s Promotions Manager. The industry stole my heart. I spent every opportunity I had nagging my father to take me into work with him, the feeling of being inside a working television station was awe inspring and left me with only one major resolution when I was a kid; when I finished school, I wanted to work in television. I diligently learnt the craft, soaking up every bit of information and advice my father offered me. I’d make home movies with our family camcorder and edit them using two videotape machines at home. My father offered me many opportunities along the way which gave me invaluable insight and knowledge which I would come to use later.

It was in the early 90's that my father decided he had enough of the management rat race and retired. My family packed up and moved from Melbourne to a small town called Goolwa for a seachange. My brother and I enrolled at the local high school and settled in as best we could. I was still a geek, and continued to get into trouble for misbehaving in computer glasses – the teachers were still struggling to learn themselves and teach me anything because I was lightyears ahead of them. In hindsight, I look back and wonder if I should have just sat there and be bored, but when the teacher is asking me for help to debug or instruct other kids in the class I just felt that there should have been more on offer for students like myself. Getting constantly kicked out of class and eventually failing the computing course was something I really couldn’t avoid in the situation. It was just how it was.

After school I did complete my life long dream and worked in television, with a bit of luck and some nice words from my father, I got a 4 month temporary contract position as a video tape operator at Channel 7 in Adelaide whilst they worked on making the position redundant with automation equipment.

After leaving Channel 7 in Adelaide I moved north to a regional station called Central Television. I started in videotape and soon made my way into news and studio production duties. My passion for the industry was at it’s peak at this stage and I did everything I could do to do the best I could do. I spent countless hours after work learning the more high-end gear which lead to me getting called up to fill in and help out when more senior staff were unavailable. My time was Central Television still rates as one of the best work experiences I’ve ever had. I pushed myself to be challenged and I enjoyed every minute of it. Unfortunately, after 18 months or so the station was bought out by a larger network and a few weeks before Christmas a whole bunch of staff were laid off as the new owners had plans to make the regional station a relay for their other stations and basically cancelled most of the local production.

So I went looking for more work, at this time I moved back to Melbourne and took a position with a medium sized production and rental house called Lemac. I spent the next 18 months preparing professional gear for people to hire. Whilst I was there I continued to push myself and look for opportunities to do more, there wasn’t much opportunity at Lemac to be involved in production as they already had people doing it and the rungs up the ladder looked too distant for my patience. As a result of that I did volunteer work at the local community television station, Channel 31. It was at this time that a young comedian called Rove McManus did a show on Wednesday nights called ‘The Loft’, at the time I was in working in master control as the vision switcher. A few years later, Rove got a chance to move to commerical television (I went along to his pilot episode) and a few years after that he won a Gold Logie.

Coming home, to I.T.

Feeling a bit dejected and home sick I decided to move back to South Australia and close to my family. I lucked into a job at the South Australian Government as a website administrator. I had built a few websites in the past and had the skills they required. Little did I know at the time but in taking this job I would be setting myself a new career direction that would continue and eventually lead to me forming my own I.T. company. However, life is a rollercoaster ride and just as I was settling into my new job the local state Government at the time got booted out, the incoming Government slashed spending and the department I was working for was closed. I looked for similar work without luck and ended up doing graphic design/typesetting for a country newspaper. But as life would have it, everthing happens for a reason and my time at the newspaper taught me many things about graphic design and probably most importantly, made me quite handy in Photoshop.

The only real problem with working at the newspaper is that after a few months of doing the same work it started to bore me. The occasional feature spread was not enough to save me from the bordom of siloutting 80 cars for 3 hours, or typing out thousands of words in hard written documents.

Introducing SeanSlater.biz

Whilst I worked at the newspaper things really started to come alive on the Internet. More and more people were getting computers for the first time and businesses really started to take computers serious as viable tools in small business, and as a result I started doing small jobs for people in the I.T. space – ranging from building computers, fixing general system problems, helping people with the Internet and email and building a few websites on the side.

It was shortly after I started SeanSlater.biz that in 2002 I started Domain TakeAway to help service my small client base needs (and which I’m still running today).

After 10 years or so of working hard for other people I was feeling a little bummed out and burned out I took reffuse for a few years in a little rented house in a small quiet town. It was there that I started to plan what I wanted to do next. I got involved with an online gaming community and worked tirelessly on my own projects for that community – just for the fun of it, no pressure, no deadlines, just my own projects for fun. I launched a gaming league which ran for close to a year and before it closed had 1,300 registered users and managed 10 or so volunteer administrators, and after that project I started a pirate Internet radio station which ran for around 18 months. Both projects were somewhat successful but with a limited budget I simply couldn’t afford to keep the services running and eventually closed both projects due to financial constraints.

The years passed and I continued to run my own little business, I moved back to Adelaide and picked up some video camera operator work doing wedding videos, it didn’t give me the buzz of the television industry but it helped pay the bills. I continued to grow my small business doing websites for anyone that would pay me, and as these clients were generally small businesses like myself and I’d bend over backwords to provide them with as much as I could.