Media skills training
He trains people to handle the press and other media. Apart from the occasional solo gig, he teams up with Martin Banks, with whom he created 'Press Here media skills training' in 1988. Clients are usually blue-chip IT and communications companies. Many say that the training prepares them for business communications in general. [more]

Editing articles, white papers and minibooks
He likes to help people publish effective copy. He has helped many people to 'get their words right', either as a co-author or anonymously, as in ghost-writing. He has helped with a large number of feature articles and several smallish books. [more]

Writing articles and columns
David is best known publicly for his columns and features, but he also blogs and has written or co-written some mini-books. Recent outlets include CIO, The Register, silicon.com, Information World Review, eWeek and Computing. A long time ago, he won a hat trick of Times/Hewlett Packard awards for his columns. (Following three years as a finalist.)

IT industry analyst
While at Freeform Dynamics, David specialised in collaboration- and sustainability-related IT. The work and the intellectual rigour proved a valuable and interesting counterpoint to his earlier life as a journalist. (FD Archive)

Software publisher
David co-created Caxton Software in 1981. While there, he published four products, two of which - Cardbox and BrainStorm - are still published today. As the original author of BrainStorm, David continued to publish it until 2008, when he sold the rights to an American company.

Magazine editor
As technical editor, David helped publisher Felix Dennis to rescue Personal Computer World magazine from imminent oblivion in 1979. He became editor and started his own writing career at that time. He was an editorial consultant to several magazines and helped create and launch half a dozen others. All were IT-related.

Management skills trainer
He was a management skills trainer at ICL, writing and presenting his own courses as well as delivering material developed by others. After a few years, he wondered if the management theories really worked, so he stayed with ICL for a couple more years but as a project manager, responsible for putting in several computer systems, both standalone and networked. It was while chatting with the programmers on his last project that he discovered the microcomputer and saw a need for a readable magazine.

IT professional
Thanks to a torrential downpour in 1965, David found himself sheltering in NCR's lobby. This led to a programming aptitude test and a 100 percent score. His fate was sealed. He became an analyst/programmer writing business applications then a data processing manager.