Meet Pete Apostolou
Pete is a former teacher and self-taught computer enthusiast, who’s been in the software training and development industry for over 40 years.
He has worked with many organisations and individuals, including: health, educational, financial and the business sectors.
His work has taken him all over the world, working with people of all ages, levels of competence and skill.
Pete lives between between Cyprus and Wales and travels globally to deliver technology training.
In his free time has a passion for social and competitive tennis.
His mission for Learning Technology is to provide jargon free and interactive remote training for those looking to start and/or progress in the IT sectors
More about Pete….
“What was your first job?”
Like a lot of people, I didn’t know what I wanted to pursue as a career. All I knew at the time was that I loved sport! In those days there was no such qualification as Sports Science, so to continue in sports without becoming an athlete, teaching was the obvious (and only) route. I discovered at University that I had a flair for it.
Whilst Physical Education was my main subject, Mathematics was my second. That came in useful as my first post took me to inner London as a Math’s teacher when I returned from my travels to the United States where I had worked as a camp counsellor.
“What was your first memory of using a computer?”
When I started at my first teaching post, Personal Computers had just been developed and in a school of 1500 pupils, there were only 2 PC’s. One was in the custody of the Science department and the other one in the Math’s department. My colleague invited me to help with the running of the computer club, I had found my vocation in life!
“How did you go from a Math’s Teacher to a Technology Trainer?”
In those days we had no internet the only things you could learn from were books BIG THICK Monster size books. There weren’t really many people who knew what these newfangled computer things were about so I had no choice but to teach myself! I began devouring anything I could find that could help me learn how to use these ‘things’…and progressed from a school PC with 16kilobytes of memory to a Sinclair ZX80, Sinclair spectrum, BBC Micro and Atari ST and upwards!
I spent hours mastering new languages starting with Assembly language, BASIC and Logo and moved on from there. I also started teaching the basics of computing, eventually becoming a master in charge of computing at school I worked in and teaching computing in youth clubs in London.
“What did you learn during your first role in computer training?
Apart from learning a lot about the computer industry and how it functioned learned all about the new technology and trend called Object-Oriented programming. I remember the meeting with my manager who told me that he was going to give my career a big boost, I was going to be the Object-Oriented expert. I was asked to develop and create a training course in the up and coming OO language called ADA and then to teach and train all the scientific staff who were working in scientific and defence industry development. I also learned that you didn’t need a Computer Science graduate to become a programmer or work in the computer industry. In fact 90% of the graduates hired by CAP were not Computer graduates but had a degree in other areas. Their reasoning was that once people had done 4 years of computer study they were spoiled.
“Did you ever strike out on your own?”
Yes! I started as a freelance consultant in the late 80’s early 90’s consultant. To begin with I ran computer training courses including languages and applications. In the mid 90’s I took on more work as a developer writing and developing software for small to medium organisations mainly using Microsoft Visual Basic and VBA. I was also a joint director of a company that taught people how to program and successfully placed them into organisations that needed the skilled professionals. As well as at the time managing and running a successful software development company which is still trading now and headed by my colleague who I trained.
“What do you do now?”
In the late 90’s I began working with the java technologies, as my experience was with OO technologies it was an easy step to make. What was really exciting though was the growth in distributed technologies that provide the internet and communications. It was early days and these technologies were very new and in their early stages of development. I went on to work with java enterprise technologies as well as the language and at the same time began working with C#. Now people could write software that could be accessed by anyone anywhere in the world that really excited me.
I also worked a lot with the graduate training for some of the big banks and organisations.
I still spend some time travelling and running courses all over the world but not as many and not so often far away. I am very much growing to enjoy my home comforts and routines and besides I need plenty time to practice and improve my tennis playing.
“Has your career allowed you to travel?”
It sure has. I’ve travelled around the world training people of all levels in software development and distributed technologies, my work has taken me to many places including the US, India, Singapore, China, Europe, Canada. I have indeed been privilege to do the work I do.
“What’s next for you?”
Now, I want to use technology to allow me to utilise my time more effectively and help others achieve the same success, satisfaction, and pleasure that I have enjoyed. My interest now is to develop remote training offering the opportunities to anyone anywhere to learn and solve their computing problems thorough training. With many new developments around the corner in terms of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality technologies I think it opens many new and wonderful opportunities. And of course, allows me to spend more time in my own bed!
“What other interests do you have?”