brainsteam.co.uk/brainsteam/content/pages/about.md

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page /pages/about About Me

I'm James, I am a Chief Technology Officer and Software Engineer specialising in Machine Learning and in particular, Natural Language Processing. I am an amateur musician, cook and photographer and I love to read fiction and watch box sets and movies. I live with my wife and cats in the south of England.

What I'm up to right now

I keep my now page up to date with exactly where I'm at.

What I do for work

  • I've been freelancing and building websites since the mid 00s
  • I started my full time career at IBM in 2011 in their CICS transaction processing product before moving over to Watson where I was a customer-facing solutions architect which entailed helping other techies to use Watson APIs and services.
  • In 2016 I left IBM to co-found Filament AI, an AI & ML consultancy where I am currently CTO and Chief Data Scientist. I oversee and manage our technical roadmap and strategy, but I also keep my hands dirty and regularly deliver code for customers and for our products.
  • I am also wrapping up my part-time PhD which I've been working on under the dual supervision of Prof. Maria Liakata at the Alan Turing Institute Dr Amanda Clare at Aberystwth University (where I finished my BSc in 2013).
  • My main academic affiliation is with University of Warwick but, I often crash Turing events and, I've been known to visit Aberystwyth to give talks at careers events and departmental seminars.

What I do for fun

  • I'm a big fan of food - both cooking and eating it.
  • I like to tinker with software and hardware (like this talking moose head) in my spare time. I'm a big fan of open source culture including efforts to decentralise the web like indieweb and the fediverse.
  • I like to read, frequently science fiction and fantasy but the occasional pop-sci title or general fiction. I have historically tracked some of my reading over at Goodreads but I now keep track with Bookwyrm and eventually I plan to start tracking this stuff here via bookwyrm and micropub.
  • I like to watch box sets and movies - my wife and I are Cineworld Unlimited card holders.
  • I've been playing saxophone (Alto and Tenor mainly) off-and-on since the early 2000s. I can also play a few chords on a guitar and I'll happily tinker with a piano/keyboard, harmonica and clarinet although don't ask me to play you a full track!
  • Although I've not had time recently I did really enjoy Lindyhop - a 1920s style swing dance.