Hi, I’m Stef
I’m a designer, software developer and startup person. My work focusses on playful approaches to technology and its cultural, social and political applications.
I playfully hack on things that matter and live by the maxim “create something every day”.
“Things that matter” is a catch-all for projects and concepts that I find challenging, creatively interesting and will result in some kind of positive outcome for someone. It’s pretty diverse, but I am working on (or have recently worked on) projects around democracy, culture, open data, live-hacking, visualisations, social entrepreneurship, charitable giving, music, accessibility, education, sport, health, transparency and citizen journalism.
I’m one of the founders of Makeshift, along with designer Nick Marsh and experienced entrepreneur Paul Birch. We’ve set up a small digital product company where we’re building a series of useful web/mobile/tech products aimed at ‘giving a leg up to the little guy’. We’re based in a lovely studio just off Redchurch Street in Shoreditch.
Prior to Makeshift, I co-founded Aframe, a cloud-based video production platform, as the technical founder, helped grow the company from two to over thirty staff, saw it through $10m of private investment and on to expansion in North America.
Prior to that I undertook a Clore Leadership Fellowship, sponsored by the Cultural Leadership Programme, having previously been more-or-less simultaneously involved in a boutique web agency, a record label Type, a creative industries membership organisation, and a number of experimental startup projects and festivals. Along the way I’ve been lucky enough to be part of some great teams and won a handful of awards.
Day-to-day I mainly use Ruby/JQuery/HTML5/etc. for code, Illustrator for design, and agile processes for the startup approach. Think “Hack, Play, Learn” leading on to “Build, Measure, Learn”.
My wife Emily Quinton is a successful London wedding photographer and in my spare time I help her with the digital side of her business, as well as doing a fair amount of photography too.
I’m a father of three young kids and enjoy spending my spare time at hack days, drawing monsters, doing photography, making mixes, spending far too much time on Twitter and generally keeping up to date with the latest trends and thinking about “what’s next?”
If you’d like to work with me in some way, or just fancy a chat, get in touch.
This biog is also available in the third person.