Neil Williams
Digital Technologist ★Cloud ★Mobile ★Big Data ★Social ★eCommerce ★Lean/Agile ► Let's connect!
- Location
- Bristol, United Kingdom
- Industry
- Information Technology and Services
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Neil Williams's Overview
- Past
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- Interim Head of Information Systems at Ovo Energy
- Senior Technical Architect at Capgemini
- CTO at Openside Sports
- Owner at NeilWilliams.biz
- Head of R&D at Digital Arts
- Hardcore C/C++ Programming in the media & entertainment industry at 5D Solutions
- Became an expert in the field of digital imaging and pattern recognition at Heriot-Watt University
- Learnt the ropes in electronics and software engineering at Philips
- Education
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- Heriot-Watt University
- Recommendations
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3 people have recommended Neil
- Connections
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500+ connections
Neil Williams' Summary
I am leader in my head and a technologist in my heart. I love directing teams that build stuff from bits, bytes and silicon. I especially like it when it is the right stuff. That is, it delivers business value and benefits society.
Currently I am using Hadoop, OpenCV and Python in tackling an internet-scale image processing opportunity for a (lean) startup. I am also taking on a couple of Raspberry Pi projects - one for me & one for my kids.
I thrive in environments dominated by rapid change and digital technology. I am extremely versatile and my experience spans web, cloud, mobile, embedded and desktop platforms. I use innovation to deliver economic value and have a proven track record of leadership in various sectors.
I have just completed a 6 month gig with Ovo Energy as Interim Head of Information Systems. Prior to that I spent 2½ years in a leadership position with Capgemini working on the digital transformation of Royal Mail, Post Office and Parcel Force.
In addition to having a wide range of technical skills, I have strengths in stakeholder engagement, team building, directing and controlling projects, and managing business improvement portfolios.
I am often asked can this or that be done? My usual answer is YES! How quick and cheap do you want it? If you have a question or an opportunity you’d like to discuss, please connect!
Neil Williams' Experience
Interim Head of Information Systems
Ovo Energy
Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Utilities industry
October 2012 – March 2013 (6 months) Bristol, Kemble, London
During a challenging period of transition, maintained the success of an outstanding ICT delivery function, within a hyper-growth start-up.
◆ Led, orchestrated and inspired a small “multi-sourced” development team (circa 15 people) maintaining and enhancing an enterprise scale Microsoft technology stack.
◆ Managed joint efforts with Service Management to maintain SLAs for mission critical CRM, billing and web applications.
◆ Managed a multi-£M business improvement portfolio and championed the introduction of lean/agile PMO.
◆ Worked closely with the R&D function in developing Ovo’s first mobile phone application and formulating a solution to a big-data problem that will affect almost every consumer in the UK (and beyond).
Senior Technical Architect
Capgemini
Public Company; 10,001+ employees; CAP; Information Technology and Services industry
June 2010 – October 2012 (2 years 5 months) London & Woking
Senior member of a 150-person team split between the UK & India. Contributed to multiple, concurrent streams of work in both development & service management for www.postoffice.co.uk, m.postoffice.co.uk, www.royalmail.com, shop.royalmail.com, www.parcelforce.com and www.royalmailgroup.com
CTO
Openside Sports
March 2008 – June 2010 (2 years 4 months) Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Led and managed the development and operation of websites, online stores and enterprise applications for major sports bodies including The R&A, Scottish FA, West Indies Cricket Board, Manchester City FC, Scottish Rugby, Powerleague and Cricket Scotland.
Owner
NeilWilliams.biz
1998 – 2008 (10 years) London, Germany, Scotland
Provided consulting and solution delivery to clients ranging from micro-businesses to large blue chips. Utilised expertise in assessing and implementing software and hardware systems, applications, databases, and networks. Met with clients to gain an understanding of their needs. Mapped out and delivered effective and workable solutions.
Clients include: TISPOL, University of Edinburgh, Origo, Scottish Enterprise, The Improvement Service, Royal Bank of Scotland, West Lothian Council, Scottish Executive, Resolution Asset Management, Dell, Atos Origin, Centrex IT, Hanover Park Services, Diagnostic Potentials, Scottish FA, Ingenico, Edinburgh Conference Centre, City of Edinburgh Council, Fashionfile.com, BBC Monitoring, Addison Wesley, Delphi Automotive, Guardian Disaster Recovery.
Head of R&D
Digital Arts
1998 – 1998 (less than a year) London, United Kingdom
Responsible for developing professional special effects applications for the Apple Mac (C++) & supporting the day to day business of animators & multi-media artists through IT Service Management (in particular networks, backup & disaster recovery).
Hardcore C/C++ Programming in the media & entertainment industry
5D Solutions
1997 – 1997 (less than a year) London, United Kingdom
Employed as a Software Engineer, I developed special effects software for the film & TV post-production industry. Specifically I wrote plugins for Unix & Windows NT applications written in C & C++.
The office was crammed full of PhDs and the latest technology. It was intellectually very challenging and it was really cool to be able to talk down the pub about how the latest blockbusters was made using software 5D developed.
Became an expert in the field of digital imaging and pattern recognition
Heriot-Watt University
Educational Institution; 1001-5000 employees; Higher Education industry
1993 – 1997 (4 years) Scotland
Employed as a Research Associate, my focus was on subsea robotics, machine vision, digital imaging & pattern recognition. The technologies I used most were MATLAB, C, C++, Unix and Windows. I also got early exposure to the Web, Linux and open source software development - fundamentals that continue to be important to me.
One of the key lessons I gained from this period was the importance of staying power. As Noel Coward put it "Thousands of people have talent. I might as well congratulate you for having eyes in your head. The one and only thing that counts is: Do you have staying power?"
Learnt the ropes in electronics and software engineering
Philips
Public Company; 10,001+ employees; PHG; Medical Devices industry
1986 – 1990 (4 years) Scotland
I laid the foundations of my career as a technologist during a 4 year Technician Apprenticeship. In the trenches, I learnt about professional software engineering, electronic design and manufacturing.
Most importantly I developed a great appreciation of how innovation happens and how engineering teams work. Partly driven by changes happening in the global technology market, I pivoted out of employment into full-time education.
Neil Williams' Projects
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CM2 - VW Multimedia Concept Car
- January 1999 to December 1999
Team Members: Neil Williams, Steven Fletcher, Ted Edwards, Mike Laur, Travis Jones, John Hauxwell, david riglerDevelopment of a working prototype of in-vehicle internet and multimedia technology so that VW could carry out a series of road tests to evaluate the public's response and to inform long term technology strategy.
Mobile MultiMedia Volkswagen CM2 Vehicle aka the Volkswagen Mobile MultiMedia Clinic Passat was an advanced Mobile MultiMedia concept vehicle and demonstrated a host of Delphi technologies offering features and functions that include: navigation, TV, rear-seat entertainment, Internet access, e-mail, speech recognition, text-to-speech voice synthesis, hands-free cellular telephone and personal digital assistant connection.
CM2 was shown at the 2000 Paris Motor Show. The project was a winner in VW's Research Awards in 2001. For a detailed case study see Advanced Microsystems for Automotive Applications 2001 published by Springer (ISBN 3540418091) -
UnsignedFM.com
- 2000 to 2001
Team Members: Neil Williams, Steven FletcherA ground breaking "clicks and mortar" community for unsigned bands. In hindsight, it is clear we had a hybrid between MySpace.com and Spotify. However, at the time it was just a drain on hard earned cash.
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Fashionfile.com
- December 1999 to January 2001
Team Members: Neil Williams, Ted Edwards, Steven Fletcher, Zane O'Donnell, Louis Abel, , david riglerFashionfile.com was a pioneering business to business website for the fashion production industry. It brought together portfolios of the leading international talents including models, photographers, hair & make-up artists, stylists and illustrators. Fashionfile.com took some of the first steps to bring together the entire industry online.
The mission was to become the ultimate operating system for the fashion industry by offering selected top talent agencies around the world a new means of promotion, communication, distribution and production management. -
CLASS
- 1993 to 1997
EPSRC funded project investigating robust classification of sector scan sonar images.
Neil Williams' Education
Heriot-Watt University
PhD & BEng Hons (1st), Computing & Electrical Engineering
1990 – 1998
As well as amassing a body of knowledge about software and electronics, I established a group of life long friends. A key realisation was that my ability to learn quickly was first class. As an undergraduate, some of my peers could do better than me in exams, but I found that I could grasp new concepts faster and read between the lines better.
♦ PhD Thesis was concerned with digital imaging and pattern recognition within the field of subsea robotics.
♦ Developed a six-degrees of freedom flight simulator for my Honours project.
♦ Awarded "Colours" for contribution to Sports Union
♦ President of Heriot-Watt University basketball club
♦ Leading scorer for Heriot-Watt University's Scottish University Basketball champions 1995
♦ Represented Scottish Universities at basketball
♦ Represented Great Britain Universities at basketball
Activities and Societies: Basketball, Sports Union
Neil Williams' Certifications
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PRINCE2 Practioner
- 2007
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ITIL Foundation
- 2007
Neil Williams' Languages
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English
(Native or bilingual proficiency) -
Swedish
(Elementary proficiency) -
German
(Elementary proficiency)
Neil Williams' Additional Information
- Groups and Associations:
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Neil Williams' Skills & Expertise
- Cloud Computing
- Big Data
- E-commerce
- Mobile Technology
- Social Media
- Social Networking
- Lean Startup
- Lean Thinking
- Agile Methodologies
- Lean Transformation
- GTD
- Hadoop
- Jenkins
- Project Portfolio Management
- Project Management
- Agile Testing
- Business Analysis
- Software Engineering
- C++
- Objective-C
- Python
- PHP
- Java
- Open Source
- Drupal
- LAMP
- HTML 5
- CSS3
- jQuery
- Scrum
- Kanban
- SaaS
- ServiceMix
- iOS development
- MySQL
- NoSQL
- MongoDB
- Node.js
- Memcached
- Digital Imaging
- Pattern Recognition
- Statistics
- Machine Learning
- Image Analysis
- .NET
- MVC
- User-centered Design
- User Stories
- Use Case
Contact Neil for:
- consulting offers
- new ventures
- job inquiries
- expertise requests
- business deals
- reference requests
- getting back in touch
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