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Latest - Organisation: Logica Ltd

Dr Andrew Rogoyski

Dr Andrew Rogoyski is Innovation and Partnership Director of the AI Institute at the University of Surrey. He has experienced several winters where interest in AI has nearly evaporated but is excited to now be in a summer of interest as big tech pours fortunes into development, some fruitful and some futile. 

In March 2023 he tried to co-sign the letter from 1,000 people calling for the suspension of development in the AI tool ChatGPT but couldn’t as the server crashed. Among those who did manage the sign the letter were Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak.

Tim Johnson

Tim Johnson is perhaps best known to those in IT as the co-founder of Ovum, one of the foremost analysts of the industry, that subsumed another familiar name, Holway, and still produces reports, now as part of Datamonitor. 

Tim describes himself as a researcher, a role he has been carrying out since becoming a science correspondent in 1963, producing material on key technologies, markets and issues in various media, through the nationals press and his own brands like Ovum, Point Topic, and Look Multimedia.? His pioneering work includes some of the first publications on packet switching, expert systems, video cassettes and the use and applications for data communications across 17 European countries.?

Tim comes from a line of ancestors involved in technology and media and his father wrote a report recommending the installation of a computer in the design department of Roll Royce in 1953. 

John Poulter

John Poulter is a well known figure of the IT industry who has had an important influence through his participation in the industry bodies and his knowledge of the issues, people, organisations and technology. John’s career CV demonstrates a diversity of experience, from teacher to taxi driver, of which IT is just a part, perhaps giving him the perspective for his roles as observer and historian of the industry. John is a chartered engineer, a professional member of the British Computer Society, and a Chartered IT Professional. During his professional career he worked as system analyst and Management and Systems Consultant.

John is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists and was the archivist of the WCIT from 2009 to 2021. He received the Mercury Special Recognition Award from the WCIT in May 2022. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and contributed to the foundation of the Archives of IT. John shares some fascinating lessons from life and insights into the industry.

Dr Martin Read CBE

Dr Martin Read CBE is credited with the transformation of Logica, from the archetypal British 20th century software house with a headcount of 3,000 largely centred in the UK, to a 21st century dynamic enterprise with a headcount in excess of 40,000 based in over 40 countries. Martin followed the familiar path from grammar-school boy in Basingstoke to Oxford DPhil in Physics via Cambridge. He then deviated from a classic scientific career path and commenced his employment in shipping container logistics, where he applied his intellect to operations and strategic planning and worked abroad.

After a spell in the marine business of International Paint, his commercial and management skills were honed working for Lord Weinstock at GEC, before he was headhunted to Logica. After 14 years in the software industry, Dr Read again switched track and has been in high demand for a diverse portfolio of chair, non-executive director and senior advisory roles in industry and Government. His advice to the next generation is to begin their careers in well-managed organisations and to gain early experience in sales and working abroad .

Dr Steve Garnett

Dr Steve Garnett is the son of a Liverpool docker and a cleaner. A maths teacher inspired a love of maths and started a career out of Liverpool. He earned his doctorate in theoretical physics and decided to become a programmer. He worked at Logica, then contributed though technical and then executive posts to the growth of Oracle, Siebel and Salesforce.com, helping each to become the success they were. He is now an advocate of software as a service: software in the cloud rented by users which puts the customer back in charge.

Dr Louise Bennett

Dr Louise Bennett is an IT Security Expert with more than 30 years’ experience in the industry. Her first experience of computing was modelling weather using London University’s Atlas computer.

She worked at the Ministry of Defence as an operations analyst and one of her first roles involved programming in BASIC and Fortran to develop a flying training programme for the RAF.

In the late 1980s she became R&D Director as well as IT Director and moved to Thorn Security where she led early work in biometrics with fingerprint, hand, iris and voice recognition and also worked at AEA Technology (the privatised Atomic Energy Establishment).

As the chair of the security forum at the British Computer Society, she has an excellent bird’s eye view of what’s going right, and wrong, with the nation’s security