About Me
GRAEME MATTHEW
Born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa in 1971, currently residing on the Mornington Peninsula, Melbourne, Australia.
I matriculated from Alexander Road High School in Port Elizabeth, South Africa (1989).
Represented Eastern Province U15, U18 and U21 field hockey and played Mens Premier League from the age of 16.
Entered the South African Defence Force (SADF) in 1991 to carry out my compulsory military service. I attended 10 Anti- Aircraft School in Diskobolos, Kimberely. I became an instructor (bombardier) in the Oerlikon Skyguard 35MM fire control unit. In May 1992 I passed the special forces entry test but decided to opt out.
From 1993 to 1995 I worked in the health insurance industry in clinical audit where I managed a national drug formulary. During this time I also studied Pharmaceutical Marketing through Technikon SA.
In the later part of 1995 I decided to leave South Africa and went to London. I took a short contract to gather some funds to travel and during this time I taught myself programming and wrote an invoicing sub-system to solve a number of problems in their bespoke invoicing system. After the first release I was moved into an IT role developing solutions for the Sales and Marketing department.
In 1998 I left the UK and arrived in Australia and took up a position with Arthur Andersen as an analyst programmer. In 1999 I worked for a software consulting company and then in 2000 moved into the dot.com world where I was a LAMP (Linux Apache Mysql Perl) developer.
When the dot.com crash took place I moved into a programming role in 2001 with a large investment consulting company where I wrote a holdings based analysis program for the Australian and UK equities market. During this time I completed a Diploma in Financial Markets through the Securities Institute of Australia.
In 2003 I became very interested in agile software development methods.
In 2004 I decided to form my own company Contrado Solutions PTY LTD (www.contrado.com.au.) which I am now in the process of winding up and further my career as an independent consultant in the agile space.
Since 2004 I have been providing services to a number of companies from Finance to government.
In 2006 I finally hung up the hockey boots to dedicate myself to Traditional Wing Chun Kung Fu.