WWWalker Staff

History

Beginnings and Pressures

We formed our own business to capture opportunities in Australia being let go to USA and UK too much! We are a rare, Australian, agile, niche, hi-tech, international, competitive microbusiness started in 1997 with a rich diversity of experience to draw on. We are basic contractors on small, specific jobs - no open-ended work. We have tertiary qualifications (BSc, Grad Dip IM-Lib) to draw on. We are an incorporated service-based company in the knowledge economy. Dwight Walker is our creator, director and manager. We have our own online resources and use the Internet heavily. We travel to other cities outside of where we are based to setup jobs for customers or work onsite.

We started in 1997 because we could see opportunities for working on the Internet and most Australian companies were sitting back waiting for USA to do it first then copy them. We decided to get in first and not lose the opportunity. This took risk on our part but we were not willing to see Australia left in the dust yet again but be the leading force in the World Wide Web industry, so we went for it and have survived the dot com crash in 2001 due to being agile and willing to change and grow with the world economical conditions, going mobile from 2003 after moving to Orange from Sydney which saved on rental and storage costs. Most of our customers contact us via phone, fax or email so our local presence was not an issue, just our internet and mobile phone connectivity. Most of our early customers were in USA, Canada and UK, not Australia (as usually is the case with our remote country), so we got very good at dealing with remote customers and still have most of our customers away from where we are based, using the Internet as our main vehicle for business. In November 2006, Orange was not technically savvy so they passed up using wireless internet over dialup.

From 2000, we moved into open source software such as Linux and away from Microsoft to cut costs and remain competitive - it was a risk but we have built up a niche now.

In March 2007, we moved to ADSL2+ broadband in Orange which will open doors for remote assistance and better inhouse software development and inhouse online services. We moved location to Brisbane in January 2008 with the broadband but have not used it as we are on the road most of the time from April 2008.

In October 2007, we had a person try to shut our business down by throwing a rock through our window to scare us off. Thugs are pretty anti geeks in Orange so we deal with most of our customers outside Orange and in January 2008 moved to Brisbane a better, more law-abiding city but were not able to survive due to lack of sales and affordable housing.

After much pressure on us to leave in November 2007, we decided to compromise and stay on in Orange a little while longer till January 2008 then suddenly started again in Brisbane but were not ready for the change. The rough move was tough and we destroyed our confidence by moving with no way to go back easily to Orange and are now working from Orange to let us recover over the past 6 months and are trekking all around NSW and ACT to build up our resources.

In January 2008, we moved up to Brisbane Queensland to do a short Web project after we waited 2 months in Orange from November 2007. This replenished us a little financially after all the dry years in NSW but left us in the lurch when it came to an abrupt end. We tried to operate independently again via a QLD address but were unable to live there personally due to lack of resources so used Orange as a base to seek work and run our little business remotely back in Brisbane till a better time to relocate.

"Do not lie in wait like an outlaw against a righteous man's house, do not raid his dwellingplace; for though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again, but the wicked are brought down by calamity." (Proverbs 24:15-16)

Philosophy and Direction

We go against the trend and use our information technology and information science to go ACROSS many sectors, instead of going vertical in just one chain of products.

We build the glue that holds many disparate parts together - backend, browser, applications, networks, security. So we don't spread ourselves too thin - we use the diversity of the Internet community to go beyond our comfort zone and try to do things that may seem irrational or difficult but will see the way through - a can-do attitude to life! We have a vision that is years ahead so we always read up and are prepared for the next wave before the big guys get there, since we are librarians and can do research worldwide via the Internet. :)

To become as bureaucratic as other firms just to be the same as those around us would ruin the reason for going independent so we push on with making our business better and not falling into the trap of poor customer service and pathetic quality that other bigger companies follow ad nauseum. This is costly and risky but better in the long run. It helps fight the tempation to give in and just join the rest of the IT industry.

Rubbing off from Dwight having travelled a large part of his childhood, we easily integrate with other cultures. We are cross-cultural. To survive insular communities, we use the Internet to keep in touch with forward thinking groups.

We explore new technology as it comes along. We started the business so we had a vehicle to use to develop new technology. The business is to support us. We will turn away jobs that will destroy us or put too much strain on us. This is the beauty of being the boss: we cannot be sacked by ourselves but we can lose jobs, allocate funds or kill off bad jobs as we see fit and not be locked into useless contracts.

Workplace Authority (ex Workchoices) does not affect us as we are boss and worker - a working director - no conflict between the parties - we are usually happy with our pay and conditions and we can pay ourselves more as we are able or move to a better location for our sanity so there is less stress on us - a very flexible system for managing funds to better our personal interests, not just the corporate bottomline like other bigger companies. Sometimes company interests to drive down costs cost us emotionally due to isolation and no local people of a similar educational standard e.g. Western Sydney, Orange. We bear the burden of any losses if we are shafted but we also do not stay locked into dead-end deals. That is the freedom of running our own business and not being employed by someone else's business and is a large reason why we continue to keep going all these years! Nothing else gives us this amount of freedom to explore new ideas and make a dollar out of it.

There is a discipline of running a business that stops us being locked into dead-end deals which is very helpful for our personality. It is like flying a little aeroplane: if it starts to dive, we pull on the rudder to give it lift. Remarkably even in the worst storms we have a very resilient business and we usually bounce back quite quickly if we ditch dead-weight and change course for the better of the business. Sometimes harsh billing decisions have to be made to kick off bad customers who want to milk us for all we are worth so our billing grinds those kinds of jobs to a halt and stops more red ink and debt killing us off.

Managing Director

Dwight Walker

Qualifications:

• BSc (computer science), UQ 1987
• Grad Dip Info Management-Librarianship, UNSW, 1991
• Cert IV Small Business Enterprise, TAFE NSW, Baulkham Hills, 1998
• Registered Indexer, Australian and NZ Society of Indexers, 1996
• Basic Methods of Instruction, TAFE NSW, Gymea, 1993

Professional Associations:

• Affiliate of IEEE Computer Society (till 2003)
• AALIA (till 2002)

Skills

• Software Engineer/Programmer: C, C++, Pascal, Ada, Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, BASIC, SQL database programming
• Technical writer, editor, researcher
• Webmaster, information architect, librarian, information manager
• Network Manager, Sysop: PC and LAN systems support

Interests:

• bush fiddler

Contact details:

• Email: info at wwwalker.com.au
• ICQ chat id: wwwalker, UIN 4631678
• Yahoo! Messenger id: roorythmics - Webcam and USB Phone available
• Windows Live Messenger id: wwwalker - Webcam and USB Phone available
• Skype id: dwightwalker - Webcam and USB Phone available
• Jabber id: dwalker7 at jabber.com
• Mobile: +61-(0)412-405727
• Fax: +61-2-97772058
• postal: PO Box 1476, Orange NSW 2800 Australia

Skills

System	Poweruser	Programmer	Sysop	Web programmer
Debian Sarge, Knoppix and Ubuntu Linuxes		1 mth	1 yr	3 yrs
Fedora Core 3 Linux			1 mth	1 mth
Slackware and SuSE Linuxes		2 mths	8 mths	1 yr
CentOS 3.6				1 yr
FreeBSD 4.0			2 yrs
Apple Mac OS X 10.3.9, 10.4	1 mth		1 mth
Apple Darwin				1 mth
Red Hat Linux 5.1, 7.0			2 yrs	3 yrs
SunOS/HPUX UNIX		2 yrs	1 yr
Windows Vista			1 mth
Windows XP Pro	2 yrs		1 yr
Windows 2000	1 mth		1 mth
Windows NT 4.0	4 yrs		1 yr	6 mths
Windows ME	4 yrs		1 yr	1 mth
Windows 95/98	2 yrs		2 yrs
Microsoft, TCP/IP, Novell LANs	10+ yrs	1 mth	10+ yrs	10+ yrs
Intel, AMD and Emerson Network Power (ex Motorola 6800 and 68000), Z80 microprocessors	10+ yrs	4 yrs	8 yrs	10+ yrs
virus scanners and backup/restore	10+ yrs		5 yrs
setup of cable/ADSL modems, wireless broadband and WLANs, routers and firewalls for Telstra Bigpond and Wireless Broadband, Optus, Unwired, AAPT, MySoul, People Telecom, Netspace: D-Link - D-Link Australia Belkin Apple Airport Extreme Maxon MiniMax DrayTek Siemens Speed Stream 4200 Linksys (GPL code) Netcomm Netgear			1 yr
CDMA/GPRS/WAP mobile Internet				6 mths
Skype VoIP				1 mth
Aldi HDTV USB DVB-T receiver	1 mth

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