Simon Challinor

I talk a lot about the sovereign web — the idea that the tools running our digital presence should be ones we understand, control, and can move away from if we ever need to. So it’s worth being upfront about a small contradiction I’ve just built into my own stack. Signalforge is my new inbound communication system: a single channel that all of the sites now use for contact forms, spam filtering, and getting messages into my inbox reliably. Before Signalforge, contact forms across the OA websites were scattered, inconsistent, and dependent on whatever third-party form service happened to be bolted on at the time. Signalforge replaces all of that with one purpose-built pipeline that I designed and can own end to end. ...

I’ve many fond memories of my early career in the corporate world but it also provided a dose of realism regarding unchecked capatalism that led to the 2008 financial crisis and also my ethos in later life. But … I was indeed given fantasic opportunities to travel and to meet talented colleagues in diverse parts of the world and I’m greatful for those chapters. In this article, I walk through some of my career and what was happening on the global stage at the time. This story, I believe, shaped who I am and what I stand for now, as a software engineer and developer, with a hope that technology can be used to impact lives in positive ways. ...