Talking with Tech Leaders Michael Phair

While this podcast has often touched on the topic of AI – it would be hard not to – rarely have we got so far into the nuts and bolts of how it works and what it can do. That’s because Neil Burnett and his team at Arria NLG are doing some incredible work in natural language generation, or the process of transforming data into human-readable text and valuable insight. You may have heard of NLP, a catch-all term that covers speech recognition, machine translation, sentiment analysis and mo...

For this episode of Talking with Tech Leaders, we’re talking Architecture. And there are few more qualified to talk about the subject than Jem Anderton. As the Chief Architect at the Student Loans Company, he’s a member of the Technology Group leadership team, heads up a team of 25 architects and plays a key role in modernising an organisation with more than 8m customers. Together with host Michael Phair, Jem chats through the journey to his current role – charting a 20-plus-year career ...

In our latest episode of Talking with Tech Leaders, our host Michael Phair chats with long-time colleague, client and friend, Jonathan McNamee – a seasoned pro and leading voice in digital strategy, continuous improvement and automation. They discuss the ins and outs of Jonathan’s career, tracing his path from Dublin City Universe to the likes of Salesforce, the Student Loans Company and the Test Factory.They cover Jonathan’s work setting up a Student Loans Company outpost in Darlington – a c...

If you asked an expert on Scottish tech for a list of the biggest success stories of the past few years, you can bet that Skyscanner (a true Scottish unicorn) and Current Health (sold to US retail giant Best Buy for $400m) would top it. Richard Lennox played a big part in both – working his way up to Senior Director at the former, before joining the latter as Chief Operating Officer. We were lucky enough to talk to him about the lessons learned, the insights gleaned and his view on the Scotti...

Our latest episode is all about the power of tech to do good for our communities, as we meet Kirsty McIntosh of the Scottish Tech Army. The charity was founded during the pandemic to bring tech-savvy volunteers together with third-sector organisations in need of support – on everything from managing websites to bolstering cyber security. With over 2,500 volunteers supporting 300 organisations (so far!), it’s vital work.Together with host Michael Phair, Kirsty discusses the Tech Army’s activit...

In this episode of Talking with Tech Leaders, Alan Mayberry chats host Michael Phair through his journey from the early days of his career in his hometown of Dunoon to the top tier of software engineering with Planet DDS today. It’s quite the journey, not only stopping off at the places you might expect, with roles at the likes of Brightree, Amec and Global, but also taking a few detours that might surprise, with a stint on a fishing boat and a role working on a cruise ship.It's all a far cry...