About Muyiwa Taiwo

I'm currently a Senior Analyst and Developer at Melbourne, Australia-based Nine Lanterns Pty, with a focus on customising Moodle, the leading open source Learning Management System, for large government and private sector corporate clients to help them manage their staff training and professional development.

I moved to Melbourne from Tauranga in New Zealand's sunny Bay of Plenty, where I was a consultant with Logic Expertise, specialising in using open source software to help small companies achieve their potential. Prior to that, I held full-time and part-time roles as an Academic Staff Member — Information Technology at the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic, teaching introductory programming, IT infrastructure, website development and multimedia on the Bachelor of Computing Systems (BCS) and Diploma in ICT (DipICT) programmes. I was also at various times, a Lecturer and Network Administrator at the Auckland campus of Information Technology Institute, and also at the Auckland Institute of Studies.

As a visiting scholar at the Center for Advanced Sensors and Environmental Chemistry at the State University of New York, Binghamton University (SUNY-Binghamton) between November 2006 and February 2007, I developed a database application for metal ions, organics and pathogens (MOPs database), under a project funded by the Research Foundation of the State University of New York.

I have also been a consultant to multinational corporations and multilateral agencies. Much of my consulting work has been in developing countries, working on projects in skills transfer, infrastructure design and deployment, and special-purpose hardware and software design and development, amongst others. A key strength that I've brought to my projects is an ability to take an outside-the-box look at problems, and come up with innovative solutions which in addition to saving time and money, can be delivered using locally available human resources and skills. Many of these systems have operated reliably for prolonged periods in harsh environmental conditions — ambient temperatures of up to 45°C, and humidity of 90% or more.

I have a long history of exposure to and experience with computers, having worked with computers ranging in size and complexity from the Intel 8008 microprocessor, through all generations of 8-, 16-, 32-, and 64-bit microprocessors, DEC's VAX architecture processors, to Sun Microsystems' Sparc RISC processors. I graduated with an honours degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Lagos, where I learned how to program in FORTRAN-77, worked with the IBM System 360 mainframe computer, and built an Intel 8080 based radio and TV controller. I am currently working towards a professional doctorate in computing (DComp), with a research focus in the area of cellphone technology applications for the truly unbanked.

For the mandatory one-year stint on the Nigerian National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme, I worked with the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) and Siemens during the construction of Shiroro Dam in Northern Nigeria and used computers to design high-voltage electricity transmission lines. I then went to work as a Field Engineer with Schlumberger Technical Services — the French oilfield services giant — and ended up running a remote operations base in In-Amenas, a small settlement in the heart of the Sahara, in the southern part of Algeria close to the Libyan border.

I bought my first personal computer in 1985 – a UK-made, Motorola 68030-based machine called Torch Triple X, running the BSD-derived UniPlus+ flavour of Unix – and taught myself Unix and C programming. A short while later in 1986, I left Schlumberger, and went to work as a programmer with the London Borough of Haringey, leaving a year later to set up my own computer company in Lagos, Nigeria.

I started operating as an independent consultant and contractor in 1992, and worked for clients such as the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), Texaco Overseas, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Guinness, British Council, and the UNDP, on projects ranging in size from a PC interface for a High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) station for GSK, to a nationwide Wide Area Network for Guinness Nigeria.

Since moving to New Zealand in April 2002, I've been involved in tertiary-level IT education, and I've contributed to the injection of scores of IT professionals into the New Zealand economy.

I'm a Senior Member of IEEE (The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the world's largest technical professional association), a member of IEEE Computer Society (IEEE-CS), and a member of the IEEE-CS Technical Committees on Internet, Security & Privacy, Software Engineering, and Learning Technologies. I served as Vice Chairman of the IEEE Nigeria Section between 2000 and 2006.

My other professional memberships include the New Zealand Computer Society (NZCS), the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET — UK), and the Nigerian Institution of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (NIEEE). I was a member of NIEEE Executive Committee for two years, and held the post of Vice Chairman for a short period just before moving to New Zealand. I am Registered as a Computer Engineer with the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN).