Saturday, October 22, 2005

A little about me

Oh, I suppose I should introduce myself. G'day, my name's Paul. Some know me as m0nty.

I am a journalist by trade, having gone through the RMIT Journalism course finishing in 1995, and then spending a year co-editing the RMIT student newspaper Catalyst (the Web site used to be a lot more grotty in my day when I was its first Webmaster, but also filled with content which I coded and put up singlehandedly: Catalyst circa 1996). Before that I had an ill-advised year at the University of Melbourne doing Economics & Commerce, but after a year of arguing with lecturers about how stupid economics was, there was a parting of ways which benefited both sides.

After finishing with university, I was lucky enough to get the second job I applied for: journalist at a weekly technology newsmagazine which was then called Computer Week, later PC Week Australia (since folded). There I worked under the inestimable Bill Dawes (now of DMW), and alongside Byron Connolly (now of CRN) and Anna Raciti (now of PC User), among others. I then moved on to Knapp Communications to work under the inspirational Gerard Knapp on Internet World Australia (since folded) and IDM, bimonthly magazines on business Internet issues and information management respectively. I wasn't really cut out for the news grind, with my style more suited to the expansive feature where I got a chance to explore issues in depth and run really long quotes.

At the height of the dot com boom, I decided that I needed to try my hand at the business before everything went pear-shaped. I joined a business set up by medium-sized Australian Internet service providers to promote a peering network called AusBONE, acting as CEO. Unfortunately, partly due to my own inexperience and partly due to industry movements, it didn't work out. It was a valuable experience nonetheless. After that, I moved back to Melbourne to take up a job editing corporate newsletters with Delphi Consulting, which promptly went belly up less than a year later for reasons completely unrelated to anything I had done (anyone see a pattern here?).

I am now in Geelong, having spent a good amount of time in the interim working in sales for Neighbourhood Cable which, apart from keeping me fit hoofing it around the backblocks of Geelong, gave me a direct insight into what broadband users are thinking. Or so I tell myself.

After Tai (who is my housemate) asked me to tell him if I had any ideas about businesses we could start together, I went away and thought about it, and came back with the idea of fantasy football, which is why we started FanFooty. Tinfinger is, believe it or not, an extension of fantasy football... but the explanation of that is for another post.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm Korean

2:08 am, January 26, 2006  
Blogger BwcaBrownie said...

Hi.
after discovering your page i thought I would visit your links and got a 404 on 'Marsh Davies' at www.verbalchili ...
just sayin'.

6:04 pm, April 16, 2007  

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