Dennis Howlett

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Dennis Howlett has 30+ years experience in the wonderful world of IT related finance. 10 of those years were spent as a partner in a Britsh firm of Chartered Accountants.

As partner, he had 20'ish regular clients out of a total portfolio of 2,500, shared among five others. He had no staff yet usually generated the highest fee levels.

When he suggested selling around 2,000 clients, selling surplus space and getting everyone in one room with a computer network, the senior partner nearly had a heart attack. Den resigned. That was in 1993.

In the same year, Den went to university and started writing occasional reviews and opinions about accounting software. By 1998, he had de-camped to northern France. In September, 2004 Den, his partner Jude, cat and dog moved to Spain. His French house is for sale. (hint, hint)

Today, Den advises software developers about how they need to develop for customer needs and the requirement to understand the narrative in customer satisfaction. He helps developers shape their business intelligence strategies, writes the occasional piece for Real Finance, quite a bit on AccountingWEB and blogs. He's even been known to advise practitioners on their marketing strategies.

In 2005 he authored a book about predictive business on behalf of the CEO of the world's leading independent integration vendor. It is due for publication in October, 2005. (More later)

He is a walking, talking example of a remote worker living in (not on) the Internet, working occasional crazy hours, having a wonderful time and being paid for having fun.

Den's degree is in psychology and sociology. He has studied philosophy and still believes in the Scientific Method, Popper, and Kuhn. He turned down the chance to do a PhD in 1996 but that was largely because it was too costly to pursue.

Den believes the degree showed him how to organise thoughts, write to word length, conduct thorough analysis (I already kinda had this bit) and appreciate there are many shades of grey. It also honed his skills as a bullshit detector, first gained when working with lifers at Wakefield prison who had addictions.

He still needs to make greater use of 'spellcheck.'