Julian Elve

Julian Elve

Proactive application of technology to business

I’m proactive and pragmatic in applying innovative technology to business problems. I’m experienced in working at senior management and board level to inform and co-create strategy, and just as comfortable working hands-on with marketing specialists, designers and developers in a CTO role.

During my career I have developed substantial technology management experience with both direct and outsourced teams, in complex commercial and not-for-profit businesses, including a long stint in the UK’s national broadcasting organisation.

Currently I work as the director responsible for technology, data and related things in a small company focused on supporting schools and the people who work in them in the interests of better outcomes for all students.

I also have 8 years experience of board-level engagement with a social enterprise delivering housing to persons in need. Right now I’m looking to take my non-executive work in a different direction, looking for a governor role in the education system.

I started my professional life working as a broadcast engineer in UK regional television, and that’s where I first found my ability to think about joined-up systems, and work with multi-skilled teams under time pressure to devise and deliver solutions to enable business goals, all while keeping a small TV station on the air.

The linking thread is a lifelong curiosity about how things work, and how people use technology to get “the job” done. Along the way I’ve developed a fascination about how we develop and share knowledge, either as individuals or collectively.

As far as I’m concerned, this blogging thing is entirely Euan Semple’s fault for introducing me to it back in 2001. As you can see from this site it has been an on-off-on-off-on sort of thing since then. This blog is likely to meander and stutter, there’s 20+ years of history right here to prove that, but it’s “not dead yet”…

It shouldn’t need saying but my opinions represent only me, and are not in any way endorsed by or associated with any organisation I work with. This site, and the linked notes, are primarily a learning conversation with my future self conducted in public. It’s very unlikely that anything you read here would be my last word on a subject, nor does it necessarily represent all that I know on the topic. Feel free to comment, but I reserve the right to delete anything that is offensive, off track or spam.

Unless otherwise stated everything is published on a CC-BY-NC-SA basis, feel free to copy and adapt for your own non-commercial uses provided you acknowledge me as the source. For commercial use please contact me. If you believe I have used your material inappropriately please also contact me so the situation can be resolved.

Interests
  • Technology Strategy
  • Agile / Kanban
  • Change management
  • Personal knowledge networks
  • Customer experience
  • Business process change
  • Information security
  • Coaching and mentoring
  • Urban history

Recent Experience

 
 
 
 
 
Director of Information Services
June 2012 – Present London

Responsibilities include:

  • Technology strategy
  • Business process change
  • Application development
  • Technology support
  • Data protection
 
 
 
 
 
Board Member
September 2011 – November 2019 London

As a non-executive Member of the association I served on the Board:

  • setting the strategic direction of the Association,
  • approving budgets and treasury provision
  • monitoring performance
  • ensuring adherence to standards

Accomplish­ments

Professional member
BCS is the Chartered Institute for IT in the UK
See certificate

Recent Posts

Goodbye Z80

Goodbye Z80

Which microprocessor gang were you in?

Expanding Digger to work with Hypothes.is

Expanding Digger to work with Hypothes.is

Expanded my Digger small-tech tool to now extract basic annotations from Hypothes.is into local Markdown notes.

Blogging review 2023

A few thoughts about why my online writing tailed off from mid-year, and what I might change.

Reply to Ton Zijlstra ‘The Enshittification of LinkedIn As DSA Takes Effect’

Same old, same old I never post my updates on there, that’s what this site and my Mastodon feed are for. If I really thought there was any value in it I would post links ‘over there’ to selected posts ‘over here’. When it first started, the idea of tracking your own professional network, and seeing “who knew whom” was something of a winner, but the inevitable swamping in “social” features, adverts, algorithmically-driven content and posts written by marketing people has made it pretty much useless, a source of irritating noise.

Summer’s Lease

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date

Working Notes

Technical aides memoir

Transcribing meeting recordings with OpenAI

Using a little bit of Python to transcribe a meeting recording with OpenAI

Weeknote 2024 W11-12

Complex processes, a chat with @elsua and some rewarding viewing, listening and reading

Weeknote 2024 W10

Keeping the weeknote as bucket of stuff approach

Weeknote 2024 W09

A rare face-to-face meeting with colleagues this week to talk product strategy. Although I’m a big fan of not shuffling back and forth to an office each day (we’ve been fully-distributed since the pandemic), it was noticeable that conversation flowed better, and it was clearly easier for the meeting chair to push people to make decisions. Other highlights: a chunk of fiddling with the nuances of Power Automate controlling SharePoint access for external guest users

WeekNote 2024 W08

Revisiting a familiar format to reboot writing — technical debt, systems thinking and tool of the week

Projects

Collections of posts around a theme

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Dataverse Resilience
A collection of notes exploring how to make applications that rely on Dataverse more resilient
Dataverse Resilience
Small Tools
Software tools in the spirit of Small Tech
Small Tools
Svelte
A basic exploration of the web framework Svelte
Svelte
Note-Making Practice
Documenting changes to my tools and practice
Note-Making Practice
Publish with Antora
Docs-as-code websites with Antora
Publish with Antora
EA Addons
Some extensions for Sparx Enterprise Architect
EA Addons
From WordPress to Hugo
The why and the how
From WordPress to Hugo