From a 1541 Floppy Drive to a Core Value: A Lifelong Journey of Curiosity

I had a lovely surprise in last week's quarterly Town Hall Shout-outs. I was given an award for one of our core values: Be Curious. It was a genuinely proud moment — not just because it's always nice to be recognised by your peers, but because curiosity has been such a constant thread through my entire career. It actually sent me on a bit of a trip down memory lane, trying to pinpoint where that curiosity began.

I think I can trace it back to a very specific piece of hardware: a Commodore 1541 floppy disk drive.

My journey with tech started like many others my age. First a VIC-20, then the mighty Commodore 64. I was hooked. But when I was gifted that floppy drive, everything changed. It wasn't just about loading games without the screech of a cassette tape anymore — it opened a window into the machine's soul. For the first time, I had programmatic access to how it worked.

I spent hours just… looking. Poring over machine code. I didn't understand most of it, but I could see the patterns. I could feel the logic. It was like staring at sheet music in a foreign language and somehow knowing there was a beautiful, complex symphony underneath. That was the spark.

And then came the Tandy.

I still remember typing line after line of code — one typo at a time — and finally hitting Run, only for the machine to reply:

"I cannot do that."

My immediate, out-loud response was:

"Why not?"

That honest, slightly indignant question has followed me ever since. In every job, every project, every challenge, I've kept asking "Why not?" — and it's served me well.

I've been lucky to have technical leadership roles where I'm still hands-on — still exploring, tweaking, experimenting. I poke at the edges of what systems should do and what they could do. And I work with brilliant technicians who now work for me and all of whom who share that same curiosity. Together, we keep asking "why?" and "why not?" until we uncover the best solution — not just the fastest fix.

What's incredible is that the question that started it all — "Why not?" — can now be asked of the machines themselves. With modern AI, we're building systems that don't just respond, they explain, reason, adapt. It's full circle — and it's exhilarating.

So, when the Be Curious award popped up last week, it felt like connecting a dot from years ago to today. The official company description for this specific value is:

"Our appetite for learning and understanding fuels continuous improvement, enabling us to deliver better outcomes for our customers."

That couldn't be more true. It's exactly what I still remember that feeling from staring at hexadecimal code on a screen: the belief that there's always more to learn, another layer to uncover. That feeling has never left me.

And in my day job, that curiosity translates directly to how we build, scale, and improve our systems. Whether it's optimising SQL performance, designing resilient infrastructure, or leveraging AI to deliver smarter support — it's all rooted in the same mindset. We're not satisfied with "it works" — we want to understand why it works, how it could work better, and what's next.

That's the power of curiosity. And I'm glad to say — all these years later — it still knows no bounds.

How about you? Has your own technical curiosity ever led to a better outcome — for a customer, a colleague, or even yourself? I'd love to hear where your 'Why not?' moments have taken you.