Gareth Saul

20East is a (one-man) tourism-focused consultancy, delivering full software development to clients.
Since launching in November 2019, I've delivered a comprehensive platform for capturing animal sightings for a leading tourism brand, intelligent narrative generation for Wetu clients and a network / marketplace for sustainable agriculture.

I joined Wetu as their first engineer, continuing the development I'd begun previously at NML and Oven Baked.

I provided the majority of the software and architecture that grew Wetu from a bootstrapped startup into the successful industry leader it is today. My involvement spanned the totality of the technology of Wetu (hosting / servers / databases / code / front-ends), and I grew a development team that today continues to evolve the platform. In addition, I also served as a key part of the leadership team and provided input on every aspect of the business.

I developed bespoke web applications for local clients. The focus was on providing GIS and mapping-related solutions. Concluded projects projects included a consultant-location system for a leading insurance company and a reporting / monitoring system for solid waste disposal vehicles. The latter system includes both the online reports and geographic activity displays, content management systems as well as embedded firmware that interacts with GPS receivers and GSM modems (with live data transmission over a GPRS network).

I provided a full solution service for my clients, from initial application requirements specification through to software development and provisioning / configuration of the required server environments.

At NML, I was in charge of a team building a variety of cutting edge web applications using everything Microsoft offered. I scoped and delivered a number of projects as team lead, including a flagship interactive map visualization for the tourism industry that later pivoted into Wetu.

I independently implemented a full project management framework for the company to use, as well as introducing Agile into my team. I also participated in the proposal and planning phases for projects (my teams and others) as well as acting as client relationship manager on all my projects.

At New Media Labs, I took it upon myself to provide and administrate our IT infrastructure. In my capacity as administrator, I was responsible for managing our existing infrastructure and expanding it to support our development requirements (this required providing full virtualization solutions as well as necessary development infrastructure, such as development and build servers and source control systems). I also was responsible for planning and procuring our live server and hosting environments, as well as their configuration. I independently planned and implemented our backup and disaster recovery strategies across both our local offices and our international live servers.

Working as an analyst developer on a Line of Business system for a major retail chain. Software was a just-in-time stock management program used to control orders and foreign currency transaction across the enterprise. The project was to upgrade the software to stay in step with current MS frameworks, and to customise the system for an internal division. The project was part of a wider technology upgrade, and was on the critical path. Our teams work was consistently ahead of the project – our effort lead to acceptance of further work for a second development phase.

Interacting with the client to determine, specify and implement features and functionality in an enterprise Life Assurance system. Core technologies maintained included SQL databases, BizTalk Server messaging middleware and server side functionality exposed over webservices. As the Lead Developer and Analyst, my responsibilities covered the entire range from initial feature planning through to implementation, maintenance and bug fixing. In my capacity as Team Leader I was responsible for guiding several developers and managing schedules and delivery.