I would say that my goals on the course are pretty simple really……to develop a set of skills with which I can turn ideas into actual, tangible objects.

I work as a product/project manager in the mobile telecoms industry, and have done for the past decade.  During that time I’ve delivered multiple multi-million pound projects for a variety of the best known telcos in the UK.  Not once in all that time have I actually seen anything that I’ve been responsible for ‘building’.  It’s all servers and switches and boxes with flashing lights, that live in data centres hidden away from prying eyes on grey industrial estates.  There is nothing you can touch, feel, smell or look at in anything I’ve done.  It’s all a bit too abstract for me.

I got the idea of working with wood and such things a few months ago whilst doing some DIY.  I needed to repair some detailed plaster coving in the dining room (which had been trashed by some lazy woodworking by a previous owner of the house).  By the time I’d finished and had it looking pristine again, I’d had to take a silicon mould from a good piece of coving, built a jig (a bit of simple woodwork) to hold it in place  the mould in place/steady/square whilst pouring the restoration plaster, trimmed and refitted it.  I got more pleasure from that little piece of work than in anything I do for a living.  At that point I decided I needed to do some more creative stuff using my hands -even if only as a hobby.  Since then I’ve built my own, very rough and ready, workbench and also made a rare-earth magnetic knife block which I made by laminating some old shelving and forming into a quarter circle.  It might be very crude and not very well finished, but it’s my first attempt and I’m proud of it.

Moving forward I want to be able to saw straight and flatten square and not be scared to look at a project and think ‘I can do that’.  I think if I follow Paul’s course I’ve a pretty good chance of achieving that.  Anyway, back to the mobile networks……….

Jon