David Hawley

The youngest member?

A very recent likeness and if you look closely, even though it's a gel filter, you can see the grey hair...

David Hawley davidhawley@optushome.com.au Phone/FAX +61-2-9613-3834 Mobile +61-0410-417-602

David Norman Hawley was born in Hobart, Tasmania in December 1955, and and as he grew up the family moved to Sydney, Dubbo, Darwin, Leichhardt, and Wyong. He went to a prestigious boarding school at Hornsby to finish this varied schooling. And his parents had such big plans for him...

Dave started in the IT industry in 1974 by accident when he discovered in his first year at the University of NSW (Kenso Kindy) that he could make a laboratory PDP-11/40 draw really good 3D pictures on the line printer, and that there was free computer time to be had in copying his professor's card deck. So he gave up failing first year Aeronautical Engineering to complete a Bachelor of Science degree majoring in Information Systems and Computing Science instead, with good measures of biology and geology studies thrown in as well. On the way he played with the first UNIX on the PDP-11/40 (still has the source code!), drank, and chased girls. And his parents had such big plans for him...

In the commercial world he started as junior programmer on an HP3000 with Boots Pharmaceuticals, did some contract work on big Burroughs machines for Citibank Sydney, and then programming PDPs again, this time for Masterfoods. He graduated to technical support specialist on VAX/VMS at Alcan Aluminium in the early 1980's. A ten-year sentence as national EDP Manager for Tektronix Australia brought continued involvement in leading-edge products, and also in a whole raft of emerging 1980's technologies such as MS-DOS, Windows, Macintosh, networks and international email. He picked up on the new-fangled Windows NT product before 1993. And still his parents had such big plans for him...

Now working as an independent contractor, Dave has been an active member of the ACMS since 1997, and was elected president in 2000 and 2001 for his past sins. He has also had a longish association with DECUS Australia, starting with the 1983 Auckland Symposium, and including the 1996 DECUS Europe Symposium in Barcelona, Spain. He was a member of the DECUS Australia Board in 1997 and again from 2000 onwards. He is married and has a teenage daughter, and consequently is progressing inevitably towards a black-belt in karate. His parents still hope he will get a real job soon, as they have such big plans for him...