About

Profile

biznik encompasses the consulting and professional activities of George Perfect. After a career spent around the globe I am now based near Bordeaux in SW France.

Kindly note that I have been fully retired following a series of strokes in 2009/2010 that left me dependent on an electric wheelchair for mobility. I decided to leave this website in place as a (very partial) record of past achievements and a place to discuss my experiences, ideas and interests – many of which have changed drastically post-stroke.

So (for those who have known me personally over decades), I no longer race historic cars at vast velocities or fly my single engined WWII aircraft or seaplane and I no longer hop on and off intercontinental jets as if they were buses or taxis.

I continue to pursue my interest in all things both IT and business related – my home contains enough computer servers and client devices to shame a medium size business with current generation networking and edge protection (routers, firewalls etc.) as good as can be found in any large corporation. I also operate a significant personal cloud infrastructure in Strasbourg – of which this website is a tiny part.

I continue to speak as bluntly as I did inside multi-national corporate boardrooms. But I am no longer restrained by corporate politics. When I discuss my experiences from the perspective of disability you will find me calling out businesses and business practices that actively harm or fail to simply enable disabled people to go about a normal life (eg; staying in a hotel or eating in a restaurant is an every day occurrence for many – many hotels and restaurants fail entirely to accommodate disabled guests or, worse, claim facilities that simply do not exist when I arrive, maybe after a five hour drive, to find that my wheelchair cannot even pass through a hotel room door or the “accessible” bathroom is entirely inaccessible to a wheelchair). I hope this negative publicity causes the businesses to (a) stop abusing disabled people and (b) more business positively, realise just how much business they lose by excluding some 16% (average) of the global population – may of whom could be spending money if they could only get through the door.

Business in general from shops to global corporations could gain from the same lessons. So if you think a long whinge about a 5 star Michelin rated restaurant in the Dordogne is of no relevance to your business, stop and think again. There are nuggets in that article that could increase your business at a stroke (excuse the pun!) First nugget is that by turning away a disabled person – whether a potential customer or employee – you are the one who is losing out. As a disabled person I will find somewhere more accommodating to spend my money.

This site also contains ideas many consider mad or unworkable for eg; better wheelchair design. In my long career I developed many of my “mad” ideas into technologies that are now seen as commonplace. Next time you use your mobile phone, use speech recognition to obtain the weather or turn on the lights, interact with a computer in a non-western language (eg; Japanese, Korean, Chinese), use email … or many other “mad” ideas maybe think of me – because I was there first – solving the problems to turn the mad idea into practical reality. My mad ideas became the technologies taken for granted today. I am not claiming sole credit for all of these things (though maybe for many or most) but still, perhaps something for the wheelchair industry to think about?

Though I no longer travel by air or other than slowly by car you would either be impressed or horrified at the range of technologies I have that allow me to communicate and keep in touch with people worldwide. I was working from home long before it became a pandemic necessity for so many.

Locally I still informally mentor or offer problem solving or business improvement advice to young entrepreneurs – all voluntary and unpaid (in case the French taxman is reading). Otherwise, a project must match my specific interests and allow for my capabilities before I consider getting involved.

TO RECRUITERS, HEAD-HUNTERS AND SALESMEN OFFERING FIRST PAGE PLACEMENT ON SEARCH ENGINES:

Please take note that I no longer recruit anyone, I am not seeking so much as a part-time non-executive position and need no assistance (nor have any interest) in my search engine ranking. So please stop bothering me and wasting your time and effort. Thank you.

To my former career …

Operating on the global stage from the outset, I have “done business” throughout much of Europe, the USA, Japan, China, Singapore, Australia and Africa building a network of contacts and friends in all those places.

I am a serial entrepreneur who over 40 years has founded, run and grown to success several high-technology businesses. I have performed consulting and advisory roles within the boardrooms of major banks and other financial institutions as well as a wide range of commercial, manufacturing and distribution businesses. I bring the same breadth of knowledge, experience, creativity and enthusiasm to organisations regardless of their size, whether multi-nationals, startup businesses or charitable organisations.

My accomplishments in use and deployment of technology and aptitude at the highest levels of business have been recognised by my peers. Before retirement I was a Fellow of the British Computer Society (FBCS) and a Fellow of the Institute of Directors (FIoD) – both for almost half a century at time of writing, serving as a Committee Member of IoD France.

I am a creative thinker – whether originating an endless stream of product ideas, helping global 100 companies achieve their primary business goals, solving “impossible” business problems, maximising new business opportunities or delivering TV and radio stations inside an Internet-safe “walled garden” to primary/elementary schools.

Time and again I have demonstrated my ability to take on an intractable challenge and see not only its resolution but a clear path and plan to achieve a successful outcome.

I regard all technology as “enabling”. The things I enable are always for the good – of the companies and organisations I work with which inevitably involves all the people that comprise those organisations from the most junior to the most senior – regardless of their very different wants and needs.

Enabling something always involves change. Whether effecting change on a population-wide scale (such as enabling simple access to email or enabling 5-11 year old children to become TV reporters and engineers taking a greater interest in the world that surrounds them), a corporate scale (such as implementing core IT systems for a global company and managing all the people and process changes that follow – including the very thinking of the organisation the better to meet its goals while avoiding and resolving conflict that so often accompanies change) or helping a startup company to find its feet, focus on the important then plan and execute for success my record is using my deep understanding of technology and decades of business experience to enable change for good. Good defined by the people I work with.

I am proud to have given many years of voluntary service including being a Business Mentor with the Prince’s Trust, supporting young people taking their first steps into business and acting as Branch Secretary within the Alzheimer’s Society.

Very brief career summary

Until 2003, I was Managing Director of the Byline Group – an IT services business I founded in 1987 that grew to become the principal provider of specialist investment and accounting systems to owners of very large property portfolios. The company also provided ERP systems of its own design to manufacturing and distribution companies.

Byline was based in the UK with a wholly owned subsidiary in Sydney, Australia.

An earlier company, Derwent Data Systems (DDS) was founded in 1980 – at the very dawn of the “microcomputer revolution” – and went on to develop the AlphaControl accounting software and the Retrieve database package. A desire to test the ‘natural language’ capabilities of Retrieve took me to Japan where the software was quickly shown to work – in Japanese. The software package ChitChat that I designed and developed proved to be the pivotal product that popularised and made public email and pre-Internet information services in the UK and Europe practical for millions of users.

After selling DDS to the Sage Group in 1983, I started another business in partnership with Japan’s largest software company, SMC for which I successfully developed the world’s first Kanji (Japanese script / alphabet) windowed operating system for PCs.

Research into voice recognition software for IBM and Texas Instruments followed.

I keep up to date with new technological developments, run several web sites and remain actively involved in designing and developing new software.

Having survived a series of strokes I find myself dependent on a powered wheelchair for mobility. This, quite sudden, change of life has deepened my concern for and interest in people living with disabilities, the problems they face and the failure of technology in general to meet their needs or assist their lives as it so easily could. I regard the physical changes that have occurred to me as no more than a new set of challenges and opportunities opening before me.

If you have an interesting challenge or a truly difficult problem I may be able to help resolve I would be happy to hear from you.

Social networking presence

Other business interests

  • The Primary Channel – Digital media broadcasting with VLE platform for primary / elementary schools – FOR SALE

Personal interests

Electronic Frontier Foundation Member