Matthew Slater's
unofficial work history follows, in reverse order.

sheltercentre.org is a non-operational NGO providing consultancy to the shelter sector. Having volunteered for 18 months, I now preside over their computer systems, websites, information and develop software for in-house and perhaps field usage. This may lead to an adventuresome career.

I decided that my local LETS group was in dire need of online adminstration software and built matsLETS only to find their perceived need was not so great. Then I teamed up with LETSlinkUK to set the LETS software standard and present multiLETS as prototype to the community.

Providing training to students with learning disabilities, (usually dyslexia). Students are kitted out by the government with state-of-the-art computer systems, software and training to use it. My speciality was training on voice recognition software, and mind-mapping software (see pic)

Worldwide Glass Resource is a small business selling NMR tubes to the biotech industry, run by June whom I met at a new Years party. Working one day a week over several months, I've worked on the data and website to make the business more efficient and attractive.

The experience of working alongside people blighted by poverty was very valuable but ultimately the work wasn't sufficiently rewarding. What I enjoyed most was drafting a response to the antisocial behaviour white paper. After the three months I did continue with the policy side of work, and lead two policy forums to promote understanding and participation of poverty by the poor.

When I found myself with enough money, I went to India and stayed there for 15 months. I spent a lot of time on the beach, and in McLeod Ganj, the home of the Dalai Lama, and biked 5000 miles. Also spent time in mediation, massage, reading, programming and partying! As I went, I produced an indialogue .

Working with a graphic designer and a project manager, I programmed these games and several others, working remotely in Cambridge, Serbia and India.

Betweening freelancing jobs I was able to indulge in free experimentation. Here is a juggling program I created using Macromedia Shockwave and two dancimations built in 3D Studio Max. Click on them to download

In Serbia I worked for the last national radio station over which Milosevic didn't have control. Just after I started, the police raided the offices and confiscated all the equipment so broadcasts continued online from a secret location and the news team worked from their computers at home. Here is an archive of the some of the news I subedited and read out on-air for Radio Free Europe

This ill fated company was one of a string of ill managed and failed businesses doing the same thing in the same premises. Shortly after I had finished their demo CD-ROM, the business collapsed.owing lots of money and soon emerged as a partnership. I put it all down to experience and considered myself lucky that my freelance career then took wing.

I was employed mostly to do batch production work for large multimedia projects. The company was run by a retired BBC producer who seemed to have such impressive contacts that to this day the company cannot be found on the web. Back in the days of videodisks they produced The Joy of Sex for Philips and I contributed to work for Mars, Swiss Re and BBC. I left because the work wasn't stimulating or challenging and spent the next six months practising in poverty.

Having hung around CB1 Europe's fastest cyber cafe (as it was at the time) for the best part of a year, I inherited the role of internet tutor. (the previous two tutors both eventually married attendants!) Every week I ran two, hour-long classes introducing one or more people to the internet, email, searching. Some people who came had never used a computer before.

1998-9, Cambridge Trishaws

I became friendly with the very vocal Simon Lane, who was being very vocal at the time about his business, Cambridge Trishaws, which was being undermined by city council and the opposition from taxi drivers. In a supportive role I worked though legal arguments with him stood by at the Royal Courts of Justice. Later, he found a loophole in London law and successfully transplanted the operation there. I was amongst the first to ride a rickshaw in London, toyed with a web design but then Simon managed to sell the whole thing. Since then, the London pedicab market has successfully defended a case brought by London taxi drivers, and become very lucrative.

My father was looking for someone to help with his business and, ideally take it over so he could retire. I committed to a year of running the factory for him, starting the machines, maintianing them, and managing production. The work lacked intellectual challenges and I didn't like getting my hands dirty. During that year though I did a multimedia course and resolved to build a computing career in Cambridge.

Needing to progress, I followed my instructive urges again, and landed myself on a PGCE course, to become an RS Teacher. However, I wasn't suited to the secondary school as an institution, or to children that didn't want to learn, and I withdrew from the course when I failed the teaching practise term.

1994, TEFL, Edinburgh

Edinburgh Language Foundation

With a strong feeling that I wanted to do lots of travelling in subsequent years, I did a CTEFLA (Certificate in Teaching English as a Foreign Language to Adults) in a dingy Edinburgh February. I passed with a C and hoped that teaching would be easier abroad and unsupervised. I found language teaching, on the whole, uninspiring, except in an informal setting.

1993, Kibbutz Revivim

Conceived as a soft initial travelling option, an opportunity to practice my ancient Hebrew and visit the Holy Land about which I had read so much, I headed for Israel and hitchhiked my way to random kibbutz. My work there ranged from egg collecting and irrigation to factory work. After a couple of months I moved to Tel Aviv with another traveller and lived in a Youth hostel, getting kitchen work from day to day.

I did Bunac and got a 3 month working visa for USA. Somehow wanted more than fast food work in an Ohio rollercoaster park, so I wandered into an Amish visitor centre and asked if I could join in for a while. Got passed around and ended up living with a Beachy Mennonite family in Paradise, PA and helping out with electrical work with "David Nissley Electrical" (Beachy are technologically reluctant and this business has no web page to date) This life was a welcome escape from the falseness.

Not having gained a drama place at university, I got a theology place through clearing, to pursue my new found evangelical faith at a serious and academic level. By the start of the second year, I decided to try moving my faith to the left. By the start of the third year I had decided that post-Nietschian theology was nothing more than a comforting discussion for intellectuals who persisted in unjustifiable beliefs.