Who is Matthew Knott am I?
Originally, I wrote this little piece of self indulgent clap-trap in the third person. Why? Because I saw someone else who was industry respected do it that way and decided to do the same. It's only now after a friend's death I realised that these paragraphs don't describe me, they describe an avatar of me, a persona, but not me.
So, epiphany over, let's start again shall we? I don't know how to put so many short statements about myself into anything resembling a coherent body of work, so I'll just give you them as they've occurred to me.
School
Thinking about it, I've achieved a lot, inspite of a few setbacks in life, and perhaps it's something I can use to encourage others. I didn't do particularly well in school, but always had a knack for computing above and beyond me peers, but academically I was poor. After sixth form I was accepted by Swansea Institute (now Swansea MET) on HND Computing, but dropped out after the first year to get a job. I was doing okay on the course but a lot of what I was learning I had no interest in, or it turned me off IT. I.T. is fun and creative and epressive. Systems analysis, for example, didn't form a part of what I consider to be the joy of computers.
I got a job with ntl: in 2000 in their technical support callcentre for their dial up internet product. After a year or so, I made myself useful enough to get recognised with a secondment to the intranet development team there, and the rest, as they say, is history. I worked hard and got better at what I did, teaching myself, until in 2008 I finally had enough of being forced in directions I didn't want to take and left IBM to take up a position with The City & County of Swansea developing their Learning Platform.
Having a degree is a great help in this industry, but so is enthusiasm and the drive to learn and better yourself. Any employer worth working for will see that quality in you and give you a chance.
Abuse
I'm just starting to shed a lot of emotional baggage which has held me back for years, mainly because I didn't talk about it, and I've still been trying to work things out be myself. It's so hard like that, talk to someone you love and tell them what you're feeling.
I've written before about being abused as a kid. For a long time I was angry, and a bit messed up because of it. I eventually talked to my wife about it and did feel a lot better in myself, I then wrote about it on here a few months later, again, a very cathartic process. A couple of years on, I realise that with the abuse, I blamed a lot of the things I dont like about my personality on that incident, and continued to do so after talking about it, I used it to explain away things that were nothing to do with that.
What I would suggest is that if you've been sexually abused, and feel, like I did, angry and confused, scared even, then talk to someone you love, but speak to a professional. If I had, they probably would've helped me move on much quicker by showing me that I was using what happened as an excuse instead of continuing to face up to what was really the matter.
Family
I have a wonderful young family, they're everything to me and it didn't feel right writing about work before them.
Work
I'm a SharePoint developer working for the City and County of Swansea, and I don't care if it's uncool to say so, but I love my job, I really do. I'll happily work after hours or on weekends if I get an idea for a change or improvement. I guess for everything that says about me, it has to reflect on the great work culture we've cultivated in our small team of two. I code in CSharp, which is a wonderful language to code in (no really, it's a dream, very logical) and have built over 100 webarts, deployed over 100 bi-lingual schools sites, and try to facilitate collaboration across schools in the county with different tools I cook up.
Everything else
Musically, I'm generally a contradiction. I've never been one for pop, leaning more towards alternative artists such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Sound Garden, Rage Against the Machine, Sonic Youth, and anything with Mike Pattons wonderful touch over it. I say contradiction because despite the rebellious, free thinking and outspoken nature of those artists, I've never rebelled, I've always been blanketted by this overwhelming need to fit in and conform with what people want to see. Things are changing though, and bit by bit I'm finding pride in some of my likes (and dislikes).
Contact Me
Feel free to get in touch, either follow me on twitter, or email me .