Carl Barton
I am a software professional based in Edinburgh with a technical background, good business awareness and strong leadership skills.
Experience
Chief Technical Officer
Fanbase means any sports team can have their own app. We provide a SaaS solution allowing clubs to have their own mobile app within minutes without any upfront costs.
We are developing a complete fan engagement platform including contactless digital ticketing, configurable memberships, club newsfeed and much more.
You can find our more about us here or you can find us on your preferred app store. Get in touch if you're interested in working with us or joining the team.
Consultant
Dufrain is a market-leading data management and analytics consultancy that provide services covering data management, data engineering, business intelligence and analytics
Often there is a crossover between those services but my specialism was Data Engineering in Azure, helping clients build robust processes around their data to allow them to get the maximum benefit from it using serverless technologies.
I provided technical leadership and ownership of our solutions working directly with key stakeholders.
Technical Consultant
Optima provide scalable, data-driven, enterprise marketing solutions to a number of blue chip clients. I worked as part of the technical team, primarily as a data engineer, advising on and implementing solutions.
Day-to-day, the technologies I worked with included Azure, SQL Server (including SSIS and SSRS) and C# and the applications that I worked on were typically data warehouses, ETL processes, API integrations and reporting dashboards. Everything at Optima is fundamentally about moving data between systems in a reliable way, so the mindset is to build robust solutions that last.
As part of my role, I often worked in a technical account management capacity, collaborating directly with our clients as well as across our own teams. I also mentored junior members of the team, supporting our focus on graduate development.
Residential English Teacher
I was part of the team at a residential summer school for international students aged 10-16. I worked as an English teacher and house parent in an always-on role that required excellent communication, flexibility and collaboration.
English Teacher
I worked on-site at businesses around Barcelona as an in-company English Teacher. As my company was based in Madrid, this required a high degree of independence as I was the only face who came into contact with our customers. Good planning and presentation skills were essential for this role as well as a decent grasp of English!
Project Assistant
Summer placement in an auditing role for a pension administrator. Putting my maths skills to use in my first taste of office life.
Education
University of Sheffield
Birkenhead Sixth Form College
Wirral Grammar School for Boys
Skills
Software Development and Technologies
- Microsoft Azure
- SQL Server
- SSIS
- Teradata
- Hadoop
- C#
- .NET Framework
- Java
- HTML
- JavaScript
- Windows
- Visual Studio
- Microsoft Office
- Android Studio
- Trello
Certification and Events
Microsoft: Data Engineering on Microsoft Azure
Microsoft: Querying Data with Transact-SQL
Microsoft Azure Fundamentals
DATA:Scotland
Designate Travel Workshop
SQLBits XII
Trinity CertTESOL
Interests
I love exploring at home and abroad. I moved to Barcelona for a year after graduating, where I earned a TEFL qualification, to set myself a new challenge and have explored a lot of Spain - I recommend visiting Granada if you ever have the chance. Now I’m settled in Edinburgh, I look forward to weekends away all over Scotland, enjoying its stunning serenity. I'm happiest when I'm near a loch, a log fire and a dram.
I enjoy attending live music, comedy and theatre events. It was a Fringe ticket that first brought me to Edinburgh. In festival season, I run a micro-reviewing website (which you can read about below) and try to attend as many shows as possible.
I am keen on all sports but most of my time and attention is saved for cricket. I was a member of Port Sunlight Cricket Club for eleven years before moving to Edinburgh and have been a member of Murrayfield DAFS Cricket Club since 2013, being elected as a club captain in 2017.
Team
One of the best things about working for a small company is that the little things you do can make a big difference. But, in any business, the company culture is what you choose to make it. Here's some of the things I've done that make my colleagues lives a little brighter.
In the run-up to Christmas 2018, I put together a month-long event, in which everyone in the office was assigned a target, a weapon and a location. Players simply had to convince their target to hold the murder weapon (typically mundane office supplies) in the specified location, at which point their victim is eliminated from the game and the assassin inherits their mission. The game continues until there is one survivor. Some people are still suspicious when asked to pass the sticky tape!
Starting with the World Cup 2014, I ran a twist on the office sweepstake by awarding prize hampers rather than cash and ensuring everyone was in the running even if you didn't draw a top team. For the 2018 World Cup, we doubled the prize fund, everyone was given their corresponding team flag to display and the prize categories included the first red card, the first team knocked out on penalties and the best snack brought in from sweepstake country.
Along with my infuriatingly amazingly ambitious colleague, I devised a digital treasure hunt around the Haymarket area of Edinburgh, as a team building activity. We planted QR codes in various locations in and around our office which could be scanned to reveal a letter and a clue to another QR code. The teams aimed to find the most QR codes or be the first to solve the anagram from the letters.
We usually run an office bake-off to coincide with the GBBO which becomes increasingly ambitious with each passing week. I love cooking but that passion does not extend to baking. My entries include mini baked Alaskas, a profiterole stack and a raspberry jewel box cake.
For a lunchtime team building exercise, I got everyone together and gave each person a partner, an egg and a set of seemingly useless set of materials. After 40 minutes of planning and development, the eggs were dropped from the top floor of the office with the team whose egg survived the fall being crowned the winners. Some parachutes were more successful than others.
What do you do if you're lucky enough to have a pool table in your office but too many people to play with? We invented our own game which is somewhere between Killer Pool and Uno, now established as an office institution. In a competitive office, statistics are meticulously recorded and analysed and there is even an app in development as well as an annual highlights movie.
Projects
Visit ninemorethannone
I co-run a micro-review website which publishes 9 word reviews during the Edinburgh Fringe. The idea is to distil a full review into a twitter-friendly, poetic headline. In such a competitive environment, this and the star rating are often the only parts of a review which people pay attention to.
Visit Murrayfield Dafs CC
I am a club captain and committee member at Murrayfield DAFS, an Edinburgh cricket club based in the shadow of Murrayfield Rugby Stadium. Wearing daft white clothes and coming up with creative abuse accounts for a lot of my free time during the summer. I helped build the club website which you can visit above.