Ben has often worked on a number of projects outside of his 'normal day job'.
Three of the more formative projects have been his work at Whitley College,
The Big Issue and Queen's College.
Whitley College
When Ben joined Whitley College
at the start of 1997, it's IT facilities were aging and haphazard. Through lack
of funding, expertise and commitment, the IT facilties at Whitley played a very
insignificant role in College life. Ben's role (although it wasn't initially
defined as such) was to lead the transformation of Whitley's IT facilities to
become state of the art with respect to the other Colleges in the area.
By the time Ben left, Whitley College was a community of students linked via their intranet -
be it getting the latest College news, ordering late meals, or submitting
maintenance requests online. Online security webcams monitored the College foyer, phone bills
could be viewed and lunch ordered via the intranet.
Most significantly, all of this was run and maintained by the College residents.
An ongoing in-house training program ensures that the expertise is maintained from year to year
ensuring the continuation and further development of the IT facilites.
The Big Issue
The Big Issue is a non-profit organisation
that produces a fortnightly non-political current affairs magazine. It is sold on the
street for $3 by homeless people with $1.50 of every sale going directly to the vendor.
In this way, The Big Issue 'helps the homeless help themselves'.
Ben volunteers his time as an IT consultant and mainly assists with maintaining their website.
In particular, he helped create the
Homeless Writers Online site
which features the writings of homeless people.
Queen's College
When the previous Dean of Whitley College, Dr Philip Mosely, moved to
Queen's College to take up the role
of Vice-Master, he discovered that the IT facilities were in a state resembling
that of Whitley College ... back in 1997. He called Ben and invited him to return
to a College lifestyle and again tranform the Queen's IT facilities in a similar way
to the work done at Whitley.
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