My name is Alex Watson. This website is about what I’m up to in terms of work and other creative projects.

I work at Dennis Publishing. I used to be a technology journalist, joining the company in summer 2003 as a Staff Writer to help launch Custom PC, a PC hardware magazine covering performance hardware, modding and games, and aiming to be the very best at what it did. I was a key part of the team and over seven years, I reviewed, edited, planned, tweaked and sweated my way through every section, and spent two years as editor. In 2008, when Dennis acquired bit-tech.net, a website and community focussed on similar topics to CPC, I began working across both publications. I was an occasional guest on BBC Radio 5 Live shows such as Up All Night, and freelanced for the BBC website, as well as a wide range of IT and technology magazines such as PC Pro, Computer Shopper and Mac User.

Now, I’m Dennis’ Head of App Development. I work in a new team called Dennis Media Factory. On the one hand we’re interested in publishing, journalism and stories. On the other, phones, tablets and readers. We’re a small team who help the company make new things on new platforms. In media, the biggest risk is to not take any risks at all, and our job is to make sure Dennis is moving forwards.

I write a blog called The Wired Jester; it’s been online in various forms since 2004, allowing me to talk about books, the Far East, photography, creativity, music and the 1960s. My family moved around a lot while I was growing up, so although I was born near Manchester, I grew up in many places around the North West, and then the South East of the UK. When it was time to strike out on my own, I went to Sixth Form College in Luton, then studied English Literature at York University, had a great time, made some terrific friends, and edited the student paper* for a while. I owe much of my success to a series of terrific English teachers at these schools. Later on, I went to UEA in Norwich to study the MA in Creative Writing, although ‘study’ is too dry a word for a marvellous year spent writing, reading and talking about books. I started work at Dennis, and bought a house in South East London where I live with lots of computers and books.

Drop me a line if you want to know more: alexwatson117 [at] googlemail [dot] com, or follow me on Twitter.

* If you’re a York person, I worked on the better one, Vision :p