CW@60: A front-row seat

On 22 September 2026, Computer Weekly turns 60. To mark the milestone, we asked some of our friends - experts, parliamentarians, IT leaders and suppliers - for their perspectives on how tech has changed their lives over six decades. What's changed the most for you since then?

I didn’t study computer science, nor am I a tech bro or even technically minded for that matter, and yet somehow “tech” became my entire working life.

For a period, it even brought me into the Computer Weekly family as marketing director for a little over a year. Computer Weekly reaching its 60th anniversary is testament to its adaptability: from a printed, weekly magazine to now a key cog in a larger, digital machine - throughout which its influence has barely waned.

That evolution is something I relate to, closely mirroring my own in the media industry we share, one which has been disrupted possibly more than any other.

I grew up in Australia, and despite the university HTML classes I never attended and our introduction to the network protocol tool called Gopher, tech was far from my mind. Unsure what to do after my studies, I worked as a civil servant for a few years, and we had our own, proprietary (and rudimentary) version of email. But no internet, yet.

The event that would change this course landed serendipitously. I found a junior position selling advertising for the broadsheet newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald, a venerated, 195-year-old institution. It was 2004 and salespeople were selling print classifieds to car yards and real estate agents, while a separate team would offer those same businesses a wonderful new “digital ad” as an add-on for free. In hindsight, it seems nuts. Although I recall we were puzzled in 2005 when the publisher of our magazine division left to join Google, curious why you’d ever leave such a prestigious institution.

Before long I was in tech media with Haymarket, a magazine publisher owned and operated by Michael Heseltine. In Australia, we published the gadget mag PC Authority, gamer and overclocking fanboy ‘zine Atomic MPC (Maximum Power Computing!), the industry rag Computer Reseller News and business coverage via IT News.

For the next six years, tech was everything I needed to know.

It was an intense period of speculation and discovery. Our British overlords sent a younger crew from headquarters to watch over the rowdy Australians. Many were just out of college and shared their lives with friends “back home” via Facebook following its launch there in late 2006.

We heard about the viral Twitter breakout at SXSW in March 2007 and I became an early user for both work and play, convincing many journalist colleagues to do the same.

The first iPod touch - the precursor of the iPhone - came into the office for editorial review in September 2007 and we all crowded around in utter amazement, taking turns to swipe here and there.

Nintendo sent some Wii games for review in late 2007, but no console. I called their PR and suggested that if they didn’t ship us one by the end of the week, Atomic MPC would review the box the game came in and its requisite cartridge.

I wrongly predicted that Microsoft’s Zune would take over from the iPod as it was a superior product - I maintain this latter point of view.

I didn’t buy a phone for many years. I’d just drop in on the gadget review team and walk away with something to replace the last one.

Media is a tough old business, and while Australia is a vast country it is also isolated. Tech media gave me the chance to see the rest of the world.

I moved to the UK in 2012 and while living with a startup founder in East London became immersed in the local startup community. It was the period of Silicon Roundabout, London’s Tech City, and Silicon Drinkabout. I looked out for cool startups to help on my weekends and spoke with many “blockchain for laundry” wantrepreneurs.

But I was also one of the early beta testers of Revolut. Having found them through Seedcamp, I even pitched them to help with marketing and met the only three members of the team in Level 39 in Canary Wharf.

I arrived at TechTarget as marketing director for Computer Weekly, among others, in February, 2015.

We took the new Women in Tech event from a few dozen people to a couple of hundred by aligning with London Tech Week and had it trending on Twitter - when that was still a big thing. A year later, we were planning Computer Weekly’s 50th anniversary celebrations. How time flies, eh? The poor editor Bryan Glick even had to traipse around London with me, looking for venues.

I soon moved to France and jumped on its startup train, founding a marketing company called Iytro that provided part-time CMOs for early stage startups. We worked with some of the biggest and brightest in their field, many of whom have gone on to build unicorns and I sold it in 2023.

Now I find myself in the US, at a pivotal point in the story of what role tech plays in our lives. I am building my own tech media business called StartMidwest.

The heartland of the country has vast plains and huge, global historical companies, but tech growth on the coasts has seemingly passed it by. As re-industrialisation becomes a buzzword, robotics and AI are becoming deeply embedded in manufacturing and other essential industries. A nascent startup scene full of entrepreneurship and innovation aims to ensure the region fulfils its potential and keeps its best talent. We’re here to document it.

I’ve made my life working around tech - from machines and gadgets to the entrepreneurs changing our world, and I’ve done most of it from within the media industry. Tech has disrupted the world, and media has been one of the most disrupted of all industries.

I’m just glad to have had a front-row seat.

Technology is changing the way we live and work like never before – touching people’s lives every day, opening up new opportunities and creating new challenges.

So for our 60th anniversary, we wanted to reflect on the human stories of how the digital revolution has changed the lives of some of the key leaders and influencers in tech today. Read our full collection of essays, which offers a unique set of insights and perspectives into the changes we have seen during Computer Weekly's first 60 years.

CW@60 - How technology has changed our lives over 60 years