My name’s Jon, a software consultant living in Reading, working in London. Professionally, I work in the area of technology governance, such as managing large scale budgets, portfolio management strategies, and policies and procedures. Currently I’m working for Apptio, a fast growing company redefining what is expected of the business and financial management 0f large technology departments. But this blog is about my personal interests.
I’m just going to let it develop over time and see how things turn out. The initial idea was as a place to display the results of my new hobby of concert photography, however it turned out I wasn’t going to enough gigs with the “proper” camera in hand to make that work. So now it serves the purpose of letting me exercise my writing neurons as the mood takes me.
There is a lot of political content as I decided to get involved in 2010. My career in the tech sector has largely turned out to more about governance than technology, so active participation in politics lets me test my professional expertise against a very different set of challenges. I’m not really a political animal, though, more a liberal one. Themes of individual freedom and social justice in our global community of rambunctious, rancourous and marvellous human beings will probably dominate.
Regarding the name of the site. I once joined a band in Scotland fronted by Ray, a fantastic songwriter, guitar player and singer. He described the sound he was looking for as a big, colourful Kandinsky painting. He liked albums and gigs that didn’t revolve around a single kind of sound, but were an incredible mix of different influences – every track different. I really liked Ray’s music, so inspired by his description I adopted the title of one of Kandinsky’s paintings as my online identity.
Kandinsky was an synaesthete, someone who actually perceived noises as colours and shapes. Things will never be simple; we are all of us born to see the world differently. That’s where the beauty comes from if you look for it.
Love and peace,
Jon.