Hi there, and welcome to my little corner of the Internet which I call Caelisco.
My name is James Lawson, and I'll be your host while you're here. I would describe myself as a techie, I have a passion for technology, but similarly am really interested in business (yes, I have a subscription to Harvard Business Review and regularly read articles from there).
Other interests include travel, cooking, and photography. I am also an avid gamer, with my current favorite games being Oxygen Not Included (1000+ hours sunk in), Starbound, and Avorion. Another favourite is Valheim, as it provides me with a space to chat with my friends around the world, while working collaboratively within the build / fight / explore style of gameplay. I'm also a fan of Elite Dangerous, and The Forest. Somehow I've acquired 246 games on Steam.
My current objective(s) with the website are:
I am trying to reinvigorate the domain by reorienting the content and pages, while also *trying* to write up some content. I'm not going be setting myself a goal of weekly writing, but I would like to aim for a once-a-month dialog.
The second objective is to promote myself a bit more and build up some brand equity. I'm interested in helping other entrepreneurs, start-ups or SME businesses with tech-focused advisory work.
Throughout my career, which has been varied to say the least, I've picked up quite a few skills that are really at the intersect of Business and Information Technology.
I've worked in everything from being a teller and enquiries clerk at Absa bank to writing as a tech journalist, to technology facilitation/manager and lastly CTO/CIO/Interim CEO at a company I co-founded in 2016.
My particular focus areas are in ideation, innovation, process re-engineering, and taking conceptual ideas and building on them. I find having a fairly strong logic system and a fairly good imagination helps me construct abstract ideas in to something more concrete.
My current role is Interim Chief Executive Officer for Intergreatme, a company I helped co-found in 2016. I started as the Chief Technology Officer, then prior to us working with some of the big brands in South Africa shifted gears to become the Chief Information Officer. I took over the role of Interim CEO at the end of 2021.
Intergreatme has been a great learning experience, and it has also been rewarding in the sense that it is an award-winning business. There are still many things to build up on.
When it comes to coding, I am a bit of a polygot, though I've come to prefer writing code in either Go or PHP. One of the main reasons is that my expertise domain has shifted, and so when I do write code, it is usually to prototype an idea or concept. I find it easier it is to explain or show a concept to either stakeholders or your dev team that has been quickly prototyped. My local dev folder is littered with code, and some of these proof of concept programs are still running in production today. Oops!
Why Caelisco?
Caelisco is a name I made up from the mashing of two Latin words together, one being Web and the other Universe. At the time, I thought it apt, because the Internet is a universe that is linked together much like the web from a spider. I can't quite recall which two words in particular I used, but it was when I was living in London (2005 - 2007)