Hi, my name’s Chris. I’m the Ventnor Fringe geek-in-residence. There’s a huge amount of creative talent at the Fringe, but every now and then there’s an emergency that requires a spot of geekery. When Powerpoint’s on the blink or the mp3s won’t play, then it’s my time to shine!
I’ve also created some of the nifty features on the festival website; the day planner to let you see what’s on each day in one handy view, the buttons which let you save events to a personal itinerary and the festival map.
Most of the software errors I had to debug were due to the fact I kept misspelling “itinerary”.
I’ve had an interest in the data behind big events since having to design this monster web page a decade ago. My dream is that one day all big events will publish their programmes in a standard file format so lots of different apps can read them and provide different ways to interact. That way you wouldn’t be stuck using the single Glastonbury app or using the VFringe itinerary planner, but you would just use your favourite app and it would work for all festivals… and conferences… and Star Trek conventions.
When not volunteering for VFringe I work as part of the Web & Data Innovation Team at the University of Southampton. My free time is mostly spent doing this and that in Minecraft.