About Me
I’m a tech professional with a passion for all things technology. I’m always looking for ways to connect with others who share my interests, so contact me below.
Scott Owen
IT Strategist, Senior Leader and Blogger
Who Am I
Hi, I’m Scott, a technology strategy and leader with over 20 years of experience in the industry. I’m passionate about using technology to drive business growth and innovation and excel at developing and executing technology strategies that align with business goals. My expertise extends to infrastructure, engineering, IoT, cloud, and automation, and I have a proven track record of building and leading high-performing technical teams.
In addition to my work in technology strategy and engineering, I’m also well-versed in DevOps and have a strong interest in the intersection of technology and finance. I’m actively involved in the crypto and blockchain communities and enjoy staying up-to-date on the latest trends and developments in these exciting fields.
Overall, I’m a dedicated and highly skilled professional who is committed to driving success through the use of technology.
Experience
Early Career
My career in Technology started in the late 90s when I was fortunate to find a casual job Y2K compliance testing Personal Computers (PCs) at a local University. The job’s primary responsibility was to visit every PC on campus, insert a boot floppy disk and check the BIOS for compliance.
It went something like this:
- Computer ==> Reboot
- Insert Floppy ==> Drive
- Keyboard ShortCut ==> change boot order (not always required)
- If pass ==> apply a green sticker, or
- If fail ==> apply a red sticker
Hard work, right?
While the job was uneventful, I’d soon met almost all the people in IT Services, and back then, the tech division was small and in growth mode. Info-Tech was going fast, so I resigned from my sports science & physio degree and commenced IT/Engineering. I can guess what you’re thinking; these degrees are polar opposites, but working in the field ignited a passion for Technology. Even though I made the switch, sports is still a big part of my life; more later.
Throughout my degree, I worked in numerous roles while studying and working on campus. Over five years, I gained invaluable enterprise-sized experience. I worked with a team to roll out 1000s of computers to faculty staff & computer labs as part of the PC bulk purchasing program. I worked with the High-Performance Compute (HPC) team to build new data centres & networks designed for cutting-edge research. I spent 18 months in Networking doing major campus network upgrades. The goal was to migrate from a 10Mbps hub to 100Mbps switched Infrastructure. At the time, universities were at the forefront of the Internet, so I was introduced to routing, firewalling, servers, operating systems, and much other goodness.
Back then, University networks WERE the Internet. Uni’s were assigned public class A or B networks for their workstations, and Nasty Address Translation (NAT) technology wasn’t a thing! How the world has changed.
The experienced I lived while working and studying at the Uni set the foundations for what I do now. I stumbled on a passion that I hold to this day.
Travel (2006)
I left the university and travelled with my then-girlfriend (now wife). I guess you could say it went well. Travel is the origin of this blog, as is the domain name I first purchased in 2007. While you’re here, feel free to stop by the archives and check out the stories of my time in Germany and Europe.
Systems Integration (2007 – 2010)
Working for a Systems Integrator exposed me to many smaller individual businesses. In the role, I learnt what works and what doesn’t! I learnt about the sales process and relationships. I learnt that most problems are not technological; the people and process are far and away the most challenging.
I was a Solution Architect and generalist of “all the things” before “all the things” became popular. Each day was different. I’d be working on IP Telephony; the next, I’d build servers. Next, I’d write a proposal, formulate a bill of materials and adjust margins to suit. Whatever the mission, I was responsible and had to achieve an outcome for the customer. No two days were ever the same, and I learnt a lot about business, people, and myself. Along the way, I met some fantastic people who have inspired me and remain my friends, today.
Travel Industry – Wotif.com (2010)
I was fortunate to join Wotif.com, and what a vibrant, exciting place it was! I joined as a Senior Network Engineer. Throughout my stay, I upgraded to Network Manager. I then took a trip to Infrastructure space. As the business & platform grew, it became the target of global travel behemoths. Expedia Inc. eventually caught a bid and acquired it in 2015.
The Wotif adventure started with a full-scale migration of all platform services from a hosting provider to co-location data centres. The move was a transformation for Wotif, as prior, we faced a cumbersome managed service arrangement loaded with blame and dissatisfaction. At the time, Wotif workloads were physical and virtual-machine-based, so the native cloud was too much for travellers on a shoestring budget.
I was part of a small empowered team that built and deployed two new co-lo environments, providing stable, dedicated and reliable Infrastructure for our apps. The two data centres were built with what many may class as a business-grade kit rather than enterprise. Still, ultimately it worked due to our pursuit of simple but not simplistic. Here I learnt the concept of good enough; what we did was good enough to sell billions of dollars worth of travel bookings yearly.
The hosting migration was just one project I led during my stay. Others included the rollout of a global contact centre solution, a global wide area network (WAN) including Quaility of Service (QoS – arrrhh), various security enhancements, deployment of hyper-converged infrastructure and countless day-to-day and process improvements around monitoring, alerting, systems management and governance.
Following the acquisition, I decided to end my trip and take on a new challenge. I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Wotif; we worked hard and partied even harder. I made some great friends, some of whom I’m in regular contact with or who continue to work with me to this day.
Tatts, Tabcorp and now, The Lottery Corporation (TLC)- (2015 – present)
I’ll keep this section brief out of respect for my current employer, the now Lottery Corporation, a product of the Tatts merger with Tabcorp and the subsequent demerger of the Lotteries and Keno business units.
When I joined Tatts, I took a gamble joining as an Infrastructure Strategy Manager. Over the years, I’ve shifted roles numerous times, moving into strategy & cloud and engineering.
As luck would have it, the world has experienced a monumental and exponential technological shift over the last decade. The options & choices are exploding, further complicating the business landscape. Successful companies have practically pivoted to being driven by Technology.
The foundational knowledge and expertise I’ve gathered over the last two decades place me in a space where I comprehend technology and business. I pride myself on maintaining my technical credibility to work with engineers to deliver business outcomes. Taking on the Head of Engineering has enabled me to create a vision that attempts to tame the volume of choices and bring relative order to a highly complex environment.
At TLC, we don’t just deal with Tech! We work in a highly regulated industry, or should I say, one of, if not the most regulated industry in Australia. The requirements of the business mean we are different to most others. Things that work for 95% of companies may not work for us, so we continuously assess trade-offs and do our best to transform where it makes sense.
Anyway, that should have been brief!
Outside of Work
Away from work, I like to stay active. I enjoy going to the local gym, coaching my kid’s sporting teams (Soccer & perhaps Basketball in 2023), working around the house & yard and, when weather permits, taking our boat out on Moreton Bay.
As mentioned above, I’m a huge tech nerd (I’m sure you guessed). I enjoy experimenting with and evaluating new ground-breaking and world-changing technologies like cryptos, blockchains, IoT, home automation and more. Many articles on this site are dedicated to my work with the various blockchain communities. The site also contains re-published articles initially written for the CryptoWriter, predominately about $EOS (Please don’t hold that against me 
). It’s still one of the fastest and most user-friendly chains out there. In 2023 I hope to write up some more evaluations of other projects, time permitting.
If you’ve got this far, I appreciate you stopping by. If you’d like to contact me, don’t hesitate to reach out via social channels or email.
Disclosure
All opinions shared on my blog of those of my own and do not reflect that of my employer.