I’m Mike Allcock, a Systems Administrator for Giftcards.com. I’m originally from the north-east of England, and educated at schools and colleges in the UK, Europe and in the United States. I’ve worked in different parts of the financial sector throughout my 15 year career from Wall Street trading floors, through consumer finance companies and internet start ups, to private banking always with a focus on Systems.

I’m a strong believer that being comfortable with the pace of technological change helps keeps companies competitive. This does not only involve the ability to anticipate and be an early adopter of positive technological changes but also being able to decide when to stand pat and not participate in technologies which will fall by the wayside, or not be right for the particular time. Attuning to the pace of change is a theme which underlies all my articles, even if they seem to be about very different subjects.

I live in Northern Appalachia with me wife, a dog and a changing number of cats, only one of which I’ve been able to find recently. My hobbies include tricking old people into listening to Slayer, telling young people that Fun. sound just like ABBA, going to guitar stores to play Stairway to Heaven badly on their 3 most expensive instruments and writing awful author bios. Oh, and walking.