Meet the Directors (Number 1): Annie

Hi everyone. Although the most important thing about the blip community is the community itself, we thought you'd like to know just a little more about each of the four Blipfuture directors. First, it's my turn - Annie (journal name AnnieAndChris).

I'm the Technical Director of Blipfuture (and so Blipfoto). That role means that I manage the technical changes to (and day to day running of) the site and apps. I don't do this alone of course; as well as the other directors I am wonderfully supported by Blipfoto's original lead developer, and the original Android app developer.

As you know, the four of us are running blip in our own time, fitting it around our day jobs: so what's my day job? I'm an IT Manager within a large UK-based organisation. I run a team of techies who each have very specialist IT knowledge, from load balancers to performance tuning of applications and databases.  I'm also responsible for driving improvements to the way we develop and release code across our division of the company. So, my day job helps with this Blipfoto role a lot I think!

As Blipfoto is such a special community, it was important to me to get involved in the crowdfunding and to keep working for you all now.

You may have noticed from my journal name, AnnieAndChris, that I blip as a pair with my husband. We've blipped for around 4 and a half years, no gaps. We love having a shared journal, and it's so helpful to me on many days where my commute is long. As I work all around the country, I often have 2 - 6 hours travel in my day as well as work, so there's not a lot of time left! The support query I could be answering for you on the "Ask a Question" help function would be just as likely to be answered while waiting in an airport queue as it would be with me on the computer at home!
 
Outside of work I volunteer as a governor of a local special school, for children aged 11-19 on the autistic spectrum. It gives me the satisfaction of really helping people where IT doesn't always manage it! A couple of years ago as Chair of Governors I was very proud to be able to help lead the school out of Special Measures and a large debt to a Good rating and in the black.
 
In what remains of my spare time, I love chatting with my two stepdaughters and we like to travel and explore. A great thing about having our blip journal is that it records key moments for us, including some of the more crazy trips we do (such as London-John O'Groats-Lands End-London in a weekend, or all of London's 270 tube stations in a day, for example). Another favourite entry marks 20 years since my mum died - it's a tribute to a lady very ahead of her time, a home-working computer programmer in the early 1970s. It's great to be able to look back at those. 

I'm a pretty private person by nature, so it is pretty odd for me to be posting about myself in such a public way. This has been a glimpse of me, Annie. But let me leave you with this thought: it's not about me, or the other directors, as individuals. It's really about all of you blippers continuing to make this such a special place to be - that's our best reward.