Before all else, I am a writer. It’s the skill-set that underpins all the others, and the passion from which they grew.
I started writing poetry and science fiction—or trying to!—some time in the early 00s. Since then, I’ve had a handful of science fiction stories published in some surprisingly prestigious venues… but I’m far more widely published as a reviewer and critic.
While I was learning to write fiction, I was also learning to write, full stop—and, more importantly, learning to write in public. My blog, Velcro City Tourist Board, lost most of my more embarrassing early material in a database accident circa 2012, but you can still see me learning in public in the archives of the science fiction webzine Futurismic, of which I eventually became editor-in-chief.
Writing online in the so-called “golden age” of blogging gave me some opportunities to write essays and journalism elsewhere—something I still do from time to time.
(It also got me my break into academia, where I have been widely published not only on infrastructure theory—the topic of my PhD—and the techniques and theory of climate futuring—the theme of my postdoctoral work—but also on science fiction. A good percentage of my academic publications are open access; you can find my citation count, and other such metrics, on my G**gle Scholar profile.)
In parallel with my PhD, I began writing and editing reports for various clients and agencies, predominantly (but not exclusively) on futures-focussed projects. Many of these were, of course, done as work-for-hire under NDA conditions—but the ones I’m allowed to publicly claim as my work are listed in the projects portfolio. Some of the stranger academic outputs I’ve worked on, as well as other hard-to-categorise collaborations and experiments, can be found there also.
Projects related to this competency:
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Redefining the C-Suite: Business the Millennial Way
Redefining the C-Suite: Business the Millennial Way was a report produced for American Express by Kantar Futures.
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Developing Potential
Two reports for developed in collaboration with Helen Nichol of Blue Chula (UK) for the charitable organisation Local Trust (UK).
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The Future of Housing and Home
A set of short story “vignettes” written to illustrate four scenarios of housing precarity for Shelter (UK).
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“Los Piratas del Mar del Plastico”
A short story of techno-economic “disruption” set in Almeria, Spain—commissioned by none other than Chairman Bruce himself!