For 26 years I worked for IBM UK, this took me to many parts of the world and enabled me to meet many interesting and diverse people.
I started off straight after leaving University as a Programmer on a 1401 in Welwyn Garden City, and within a year of joining IBM the 360 was announced and I started learning how to work with that. I moved to the new manufacturing plant in Havant when it opened and was immediately sent to Greenock in Scotland to learn how a Manufacturing Plant works. I returned to Havant after a year and became a programmer/analyst in the Data Processing department. After a couple of years I became involved in Data Base design, in the very early days of IMS.
I was in Havant for nearly five years, before being lucky enough to get an assignment to Amsterdam and then to Paris, working in IBMs International Support Centres as coordinator for European requirements for Data Base and Data Communications Systems. I later moved into European Marketing Support, which widened my experience considerably.
When I returned to England I worked for two years in the IBM Demonstration Centre in Croydon before returning to the Portsmouth area to work in Baltic House, North Harbour and finally in Northern Road.
When I left IBM in 1991, I was running a Development Support Centre for the Information Networking Group.
Page last revised 14 February 2007