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Editor:  szlampy

Name:	Keith Szlamp
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Home Page:	http://szlamp.com
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Profile

His Story

I've been playing with computers since I was in nursery school. I got my own Commodore VIC 20 at the age of 9 and very shortly afterwards started programming in BASIC. I've been programming in some language or another ever since.

I originally worked in a family business as a leather-worker making shoes, belts, bags and the like. I later left for an apprenticeship with British Telecom Plc. When I completed my course I worked in the bomb-proof Network Operations Unit (BTs answer to NASAs Mission Control) for a while as an IT Monkey. After that I trained for a while at Bletchley Park and became a specialist project manager working with emerging technologies. I have a huge amounts of experience with computer networks and communications technology.

I was lead when setting up the first Internet and Intranet servers that BT established back around 1992. Occasionally communicating with Tim Berners-Lee whilst having to compile his code from source to get it working on our servers was memorable as good times.

I also drew up the original project plan for the roll-out of ADSL (Broadband) through-out the UK as part of a bigger plan to replace the copper wire network in the UK with fibre optic. I had made the cost of upgrading the network negligible from using recycling and salvaging techniques on the current network to fund the investment required. Essentially we sold the copper we took from the ground to metal plants for reprocessing and then sold the technology we took out of the exchanges to less advanced countries to help them develop their own telecommunications networks.

I also wrote a HR management module for their Work Manager platform. This module built a profile of an employee, their working role, working hours, preferred working locations, their equipment and tools, their qualifications and training, etc. The system then plotted average workload trends throughout the year to highlight periods when teams would be under or over manned. When a team was over manned then training was scheduled for the excess team members. When the team was undermanned the system then sourced suitable cover from other areas where available based upon the work profiles required. This also facilitated the ability for employee's to apply for leave and for suitable cover to be found from elsewhere in the company. If it wasn't available then the leave period would not be allowed to taken unless manually overridden by a manager. Ultimately, this allowed more people to take leave when they wanted and reduced costs at the end of the year by minimizing the amount of annual leave BT had to 'buy back' from its employees. Combine that with the costs saved from workloads being evened out and more jobs being completed on time thus reducing funds payed out due to failed Guarantees and less overtime being used to complete work in busy periods the savings where easily noticeable. My program was originally tested on a group of around 300 people and we conservatively estimated that it saved BT approximately £500 per staff member per year. It was later rolled out through-out the company as an integral part of the Work Manager program with an estimated saving of just under £100 Million.

My efforts in drawing up the plans for the ADSL roll-out and the HR management module earned me the award of "Young employee of the Year" for 1996 and a book token for £25 and obviously earned the company millions of pounds.

I left British Telecom Plc. in 1997 to set-up on my own.

Like the Present?

I left originally in 1997 to set-up a web development and web based application programming company, but at the time the public was only just starting to hear of the web and the internet, let alone considering getting their company online. So, in the meantime I set-up a computer building and repair company called Nukes. Nukes lasted for around 5 years until the big boys like Dell, PC World, Compaq, etc. started a price-war in an industry where the consumer was more concerned with price than service, and thus forced most of the little guys out of the marketplace.

After that I undertook web development work on a consultancy bases and helped a handful of start-ups get establish and worked on some fun projects myself. Since 2004 I have been director and shareholder of a small company called Pocket Lolly Ltd. We specialise in Domain Name Monetisation. Fundamentally our core business is buying and selling domain names and then analysing the optimum purpose for them and then executing it.

The company also works in partnership with Yahoo! Search Marketing creating a mash-up technology for displaying targeted PPC results on affiliated websites.

My areas of expertise lie in Lean Hand-coded HTML, Perl, Javascript, MySQL, DNS, Linux System Administration. I also dabble with Photography, Photo Editing, Flash and Action Script.

Some Day Soon

In my hobbies I'm actively into new media, psychology and all sorts of programming. I am working on techniques that combine social networks, artificial intelligence and some neat tricks that will hopefully enable me to write a chatterbot that will be able to mimic a designated personality and ultimately beat the Turing Test.

I always have a nice bottle of vodka at home, which always go down well just after a home-cooked meal whilst watching a good movie.