I write here in order to work things out and understand myself better: to put down the things that I have been carrying around in my head so I don’t have to carry them anymore, and to capture moments I can look back on later, remembering what I thought and felt at the time.
I’ve been blogging since 2004. These days, most of what I post falls into three buckets: short snippets, weeknotes about what I’ve been doing, and occasional longer posts when I want to think something through in more detail. My highlights page links to many of my posts grouped by themes.
Despite writing for myself, I love it when something I post here makes a connection with someone else. When I post a blog entry, it gets sent to micro.blog, Bluesky and Mastodon. I spend time in the WB-40 podcast Signal group too, with friends I’ve made online.
My interests are broad, and as I grow older I have a profound sense of there not being enough time to know all the things I want to learn. You’ll get the gist of my interests through browsing the blog archives, and learn what I’ve been up to by looking at my weeknotes.
Home
I’m a dad to two boys: one at college in Texas, and another who is studying for his A-Levels here in the UK. I’m also husband to a wonderful wife; we’ve been married for over 20 years. We live in Berkhamsted, a lovely market town in Hertfordshire, about 25 miles north-west of central London.
Work
I’ve worked in the technology departments of financial services firms since 1999, for a Swiss bank until 2010 and with Chinese and South African firms since then.
I took the Computer Science degree route to getting my first job and spent a few months programming before becoming a technical analyst, project manager and then running large programmes and portfolios of work, including setting up and running project management offices. I’ve been fortunate to travel extensively for work, and even more fortunate to have called New York City my home for a year in one of my early roles. The business areas I’ve worked in have included Human Resources, Risk, Compliance, the CIO office and most recently IT Infrastructure and Real Estate/Facilities.
I currently work for a small advisory arm of a large South African bank, managing the IT change portfolio and ‘ways of working’ for our staff and offices in four financial centres outside of Africa. Working in a small part of a large firm seems to be a real sweet spot. I love the team and the work that we get to do. In 2019–2020 I led a challenging programme to design and implement a new greenfield IT infrastructure stack in each of our offices to replace the legacy stack that we inherited; a crazy amount of work that we had to get done to a hard deadline, but incredibly rewarding when our colleagues started to reap the benefits of the new platform. We halved our cost base with zero project budget.
Between 2013 and 2023 I was a governor of a local primary school, a wonderful role that I hope to return to someday. Most of that time was spent in the Chair or Vice Chair roles, as well as Chair of the Finance Committee. When times were tough at work and I felt undervalued, being a governor reminded me that I had something positive to contribute.
Play
I love to read, and I’ve kept track of what I’ve been reading for over a decade. My interests are frustratingly broad, so I try to mix fiction with books for work, history, biographies etc., and tend to add one or two books to my wish list every week. I spend a lot of time wishing I was curled up with a book. I’m a prolific highlighter and use Readwise to help me remember what I have read.
Music has been a passion of mine from an early age. I love to sing around the house (or perhaps I just love the sound of my own voice) but am a listener rather than a creator. For over a decade I’ve been part of a local album club, which is like a book club but without the homework; it’s the best night of the month. Since investing in a turntable a few years ago I’ve tried to support the artists I enjoy by buying their records and have a slowly growing collection.
After 20 years of doing less exercise than 99% of living things on the planet, fear of my own mortality saw me take up road cycling in 2013. I love long endurance rides, and once rode from London to Milan through nine countries in nine days. In 2021 I rode my first Audax, covering over 300km (200mi) in a day, and then topped it earlier this year by taking part in London-Wales-London, with 452km ridden in just over 24 hours.
I’m addicted to podcasts and listen to hours of them every week, usually on my bike trainer or on my commute. The backlog of podcasts is similar to my backlog of books, and I try to curate a varied set of things to listen to.
Getting in touch
If you want to get in contact with me, you can find me on Mastodon at @[email protected], Bluesky at @andrewdoran.uk or email me at [email protected].
I don’t use Facebook, Instagram or Threads as I am an aspiring Zuckervegan, with only WhatsApp keeping me from being free of Meta’s products altogether. Twitter/X remains only as happy memories from nearly twenty years ago; you won’t find me there either.
This is my personal website. Everything I write here reflects my personal views alone, not those of any past, present, or future employers, or any organisations that I am associated with.
Last updated on 27 November 2025.
Unless otherwise stated or indicated, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
