If you weren’t in IT, what would you be doing?

I fell into IT by accident 27 years ago when I was toying with continuing my education and going into teaching. Since education has increasingly become a passion over the years, I guess I might have stuck with that.

Which technology has had the biggest impact on your working life?

Well I started out as a Cobol programmer, so I wouldn’t be doing the job I am doing now had it not been for the PC revolution. More recently, the increasing availability of ADSL to the home and the advent of the BlackBerry have significantly impacted on both my organisation’s support challenges and my own personal working habits.

Which technology would you most like to have invented?

Definitely Windows. Either because it has helped the PC to pervade every aspect of western civilisation, or because of Bill Gates’ super-healthy bank balance.

What has been the most over-hyped technology in the past five years and/or will be the most over-hyped of the next year?

Anything to do with virtualisation. Not because the technology won’t make a difference, because it definitely will. Rather because, like the millennium bug, this is another example of the IT industry making a virtue of solving a problem it shouldn’t have let occur in the first place.

Is now a good time for people to enter the UK IT profession?

In Northern Ireland we have a real opportunity to become a centre of excellence for IT as we have the infrastructure, educational system and talent to make a significant contribution at small businesses and corporate level. However, establishing IT as a profession of choice for young people is a major challenge and I fully support the excellent work organisations such as the BCS are doing in this.