As the name of the site suggests, I'm Nick Gibbons. I hail from Staffordshire, Great Britain. I went to school, went to sixth form school, and then went to the University of Keele where I read a dual honours Bachelor of Science degree in computer science and human resource management, along with a subsidiary course in management and an additional module in statistics. In case you're wondering, my dissertation was in the field of context aware computing. This involved integrating GPS Global Positioning System satellite data into a software application where it acted as a series of event triggers within the app. If you want to read about Context aware computing then check out the Future Computing Environments research arm of the Georgia institute of Technology, USA.

   Later, I returned to Keele to read a Masters degree in IT and management, and the enthusiasm of a certain lecturer (He knows who he is) sparked my interest in systems analysis as a career from the initial stages of the requirements capture, through to prototyping, interface design, and the rest. My Masters' dissertation was titled "An analysis and re-implementation of the online marketing of Keele University Science Park. This was basically a 15,000 word report, with another 3,000 slipped into the appendix (Thanks for that idea Sue) and the development of a website for the University to effectively sell the science park to the outside world.

   Although this doesn't appear to be an overly technical assignment for an IT Masters student, it was never supposed to be. I was an IT and Management student, as the IT M.Sc. at Keele is not for people who already have a computer science or an equivalant background. They would perform the more technical assignments. My IT and Management dissertation involved marrying the marketing knowledge gained from Keele's MBA modules studied as part of my course with technical expertise to produce a fully functional system. The site had to be cross browser compatible with no visible faults, and also be backwards compatible not with 2 year old software as people such as Jackob Nielson advocate, but actually had to work in 4 year old web browsers, as well as 3 week old releases of web browsers. This was abotu reaching as many people as possible while considering the requirements of the Science Park's future clients who hadn't even approached the park's management.

   As for my non technical hobbies, apart from clubbing, socialising, weekly cinema trips, watching England win the Ashes and Rugby, and I'm a huge fan of Formula 1 motor racing. My predictions for the 2006 season are that Williams will win a race with Mark Webber, Kimi will win the championship and Schumi will finally retire from racing in his Ferrari, and will return in three year's time as principle of his own race time. Scuderia Torro Rosso will comprehensively beat Midland F1 except for one race where Tiago Montero will really shine. Button will also pick up two wins this season.