David worked for BT under their scholarship scheme at Dollis Hill, in-between studying for a degree in Mathematics and a PhD in self-organising systems (a forerunner of Artificial Intelligence or AI). When he finished his PhD David went to work for BT full-time, where he developed their first strategic computer model in Fortran 70 writing all the code himself and creating a colour graphics interface and control system.
Whilst working on BT’s privatisation in the early 1980s, David was asked to manage a partnership with DEC in Reading. They worked on optical fibres and video conferencing as they wanted a site to test run new range of laptop computers and PCs. In 1985 he was given the job of running the marketing and strategy side of DEC’s BT account, their aim was to engineer a commercial solution that linked DEC’s VAX computers and BT’s private automatic branch system. No-one had linked computer and telephone systems together before.
In 1987 David joined DEC as an employee as special projects manager, based in Queen’s House, Reading which later became DEC Park. In November 1991 David was in charge of providing the first international routers in Eastern Europe – essentially at this point DEC was managing the entire European internet. David was responsible for the first website for the Georgian Parliament in December 1994. Since leaving DEC, David has done lots of work in Georgia under the auspices of the United Nations.