Jim Gillespie

Overview
After school I began a cadetship in Quantity Surveying. While I enjoyed learning about the building industry, working for a good company, and with an excellent boss, I found being in an office and tied to a desk not what I was looking for in a work career. In my spare time I had measured quantities for a local landscape business and the outdoor nature of this work appealed to me. It was suggested that I consider undertaking a course in Landscape Architecture and in preparation for this I found work with a firm of Civil Engineers doing presentation drawings and landscape drafting.

In 1974 I enrolled in a Landscape Design course at what was then called the Canberra College of Advanced Education in the School of Environmental Design. I supplemented my student allowance by designing many gardens around Canberra. I took an interest in the research required to obtain information to complete my landscape projects and I saw a need for better access to reference material for the profession. To achieve this I considered publishing an index to the periodical literature related to landscape architecture. With the first microcomputers coming to market together with database application software I believed I could construct the necessary files to create such a product. I taught myself programming and created the software required to manipulate the data into the various formats required for such a service. There was keen interest from the well-established landscape courses in universities in Britain and the United States but not sufficient from the rest of the profession to make the project viable.

I abandoned this idea which left me with a ‘solution’ but no ‘problem’. Fortunately, I was able to use my computing skills and equipment to create a desktop publishing business and I produced a number of books, newsletters and other printed material for clients. Through a casual meeting, I found out that the government wanted to create a database similar to my landscape project in the field of multiculturalism. Having formed a company I was able to tender for and win this contract. I adapted my programs and did similar projects in a number of other subject areas including health promotion, Ombudsman matters, industrial relations and criminology.

My software development continued with the creation of a number of file conversion utilities, text search software, a thesaurus construction program and bibliographic and indexing applications. This takes me to the present where changes in computer systems and the influence of the Internet are forcing me to re-evaluate where I want to go with my business.

Achievements

• Attaining a good grounding in professional standards from my work with the quantity surveyors
• Adapting the methodology of design to that of programming
• Learning various programming languages and writing working application software
• Forming a successful business and giving employment to many people
• Being a Foundation Member and President of the PC Users Group.

Disappointments

• Tertiary education — I wasn’t really cut-out for this as I learn better on my own, with a book and by nutting out results for myself
• Landscape Architecture — still an immature and weak profession in Australia and the design area most likely to suffer from budget cuts
• The attitude of a number of my public servant clients who would rather play politics than attend to their work
• Not having a longer soccer playing career having to retire at 19 with injury.

Mistakes

• Not leaving school after the Fourth Form School Certificate
• Saying an immediate no to three job offers that would have taken me in very different directions. I should have shown more respect for the offers by at least giving them longer consideration — unfortunately, we cannot operate ‘sliding doors’.
• Not completing a proper business plan before my venture into the landscape index idea
• Not buying Microsoft shares after being told by Bill Gates to do so the day after his company went public
• Not finding time to continue painting portraits after leaving school.