About Mark Simpkins

Mark Simpkins works as a Technical Project Manager for the BBC, working on a number of sites and projects.

He has also worked on civic software projects such as ConsultationProcess.org which started the craze to make government documents open and annotatable. He also worked with some other MySociety.org volunteers to build both IVotedForYouBecause.com and TheyWantToBeElected.com for the 2005 UK General Elections. (Yes come the next election they will be back and ready).

Once upon a time he built a version of the LazyWeb and called it LazyGov something that could have become a mysociety if it was not so sarcastic in its naming. (http://www.opolitics.org/blog/archives/4, http://sgp.me.uk/weblog/2003/08/07/, http://web.archive.org/web/20031220212809/www.benhammersley.com/dparchives/004238.html#comments, http://web.archive.org/web/20031224220135/http://www.lazygov.org/archives/000003.html where one of the posts http://web.archive.org/web/20040706111341/www.sparklefluff.com/blatantoptimism/archive/000440.html in the comments had a quick message from one Stef Magdalinski about them toying with converting Hansard into a blog. James Cronin then posted the link. If only I knew what I was doing).

He runs a small consultancy, NodalResearch, on the use of online tools for social and civic software solutions. He is a technical consultant for the Design Against Crime Research Centre based at Central St. Martins in London.

He has given presentations at the Oreilly Emerging Technology conference, in 2005. ‘Public Documents as Weblogs‘ was given with Gavin Bell. He was also presenting at the Oreilly Emerging Telephony conference 2007 on the topic of Socially Responsive design.

He is interested in sustainability, art, activism, play and games. He sometimes wishes he was a journalist covering events in the world. He now does that vicariously by following the work of fellow geekyoto conspiritor Ben Hammersley.

As well as blogging here at geekyoto, he also blogs occasionally on other topics at NodalPoints.

He can be contacted at mark AT geekyoto DOT com.