address: University of Leicester, Dept of Physics & Astronomy, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH email: Tony DOT Linde AT leicester DOT ac DOT uk webpage: this is it! Where am I today?: see my Google calendar

Bio

I was born and grew up in Australia where I did a science degree (Physics and Applied Maths at Adelaide University) and then moved into computing. In 1978 I came to the UK to look around for a few years and have lived here ever since.

I have worked roughly as much in permanent positions as in freelance ones since then. My early years were spent coding in Cobol on mini and midi machines. Then I moved onto PDP and VAX equipment, mostly programming in Basic. Since 1990, I mostly developed systems for the Windows environment, starting in Excel and Access and latterly in VB. A few years ago, I got involved in Internet development, again using the Windows environment.

I did work on a series of contracts for the ESSO Research Centre (near Abingdon), which was fun. Most of my time, though, was spent in commercial enterprises, including Digital Equipment Company, Merrill Lynch, Eagle Star, ...

Although I have had long spells in project, line and senior management, I have usually managed to keep up my technical skills in whatever environment I am working in. I joined the AstroGrid project in November 2001 as ProjectManager. One of the early goals was to get a new web site up and running and this has meant learning more technical skills.

Nov'04 Update

I am now also Project Manager for the EU FP6 funded EuroVO VOTech project. See that project's wiki at http://wiki.eurovotech.org. We've just held a successful Kickoff meeting: all the presentations are now available online at the meeting wiki page.

Interests

Since my degree days I've kept up an interest in science, mainly through subscriptions to New Scientist and THES so I am very pleased to now be working for University of Leicester in the Physics & Astronomy department.

On the professional side, my interests lie in the areas of project management, development processes, and tools which enable collaborative working. I'll be looking to exchange views with other professionals about the applicability of my ideas to IT projects in the scientific field.

On the personal side, I have a wide variety of interests: pretty much anything I don't already know about. I like reading (crime and contemporary fiction, poetry, plus Discworld novels). I'm also interested in art, the history of art particularly, in fact, the history of ideas and the way thinking about the world develops.

At the moment, I've just finished three years on an OU degree of MA in Philosophy which I have just (Dec'06) achieved. Yay!!

JISC involvement

I have served on various JISC committees since about 2003. The main one is:

• JIIE: JISC integrated information environment committee

which I represent on:

• IEWG: information environment working group
• CMAB: core middleware programmes advisory board

as well as two which I chair:

• U & I: users & innovation: personalising technologies
• OSS Watch Advisory Committee

Since undertaking this work, I have become greatly interested in e-learning, e-teaching, e-research and e-admin, particularly in how new technologies can be put to best use in HE. Of the above groups, it is certainly the U&I one which seems to encapsulate all my interests.

Key pages created by me

• AgocUpdate
• TonyPostAstroGrid
• ArchitectureThesis
• TonyOnVOQL
• TonyItn02
• TonyOnFutureOfADCs
• TonyOnUCDs
• TonyOnRegistryStructure
• TonyAgArch (deprecated)
• TechnicalScope
• TonySupportProposal
• NewAGSiteSructure
• TonyOnArchitecture
• TonyOnAGPresence
• TonyIdeasOnIRD
• TonyOnSustainability
• TonyOnXQuery
• SharedServicesTestbed
• TonyOnAstroWorkplan
• AstroVRE
• ServerRuntime
• TonyOnDeepReview
• VirtualAccessToLargeFacilities
• SkuaProposal
• GoogleSearch (and associated)

Tony Linde Calendar
(or: go here)