Brian literally grew up in the computer industry. His dad was a radio technician with SABC in the ‘50s, when he was poached by IBM. And later, Control Data Corporation (CDC) poached him from Big Blue. And his mom was a Comptometer Girl way back when. As a pre-teen school pupil, he’d often go to work with his dad on weekends in the 1970s and be left at a card-punch machine outside the computer room. At that prime location he had a “bored out of his mind” operator only too happy to help him run his itsy bitsy Fortran programs on the mainframe. But, as an operator, he couldn’t help Brian debug them.
He later joined CDC himself, as a customer engineer (technician in today’s lingo). He worked there for two years (compared to his dad’s 30+ years) and left when an entreprenuerial opportunity beckonned. He always struggled to inculcate the rigid corporate mindset and he still does. After different jobs in IT (programming, support, management and sales), he had a chance to move to tech journalism. That was in 1993 and it was when he discovered his true calling: writing.
These days he’s mostly a consultant with a wide variety of skills in marketing, media, project management and technology. He’s also a part-time author.