My career began working for a tiny company selling speech recognition software. During the course of this work I was shocked to discover that the skills I had picked up tinkering around the university computer lab, avoiding lectures, could actually generate real cash. Once this realisation sunk in ("You mean you'll pay me to build web-sites? You're kidding?") it didn't take me long to quit the drudgery of university and light out for the territories, otherwise known as the .com boom.

After a bout of freelancing, running my own company, Anthropic, for two years and a stint as a project manager for a US .com I bailed out a few months before the bubble popped, taking my skills to the non-profit sector. I worked as Chief Technology Officer for almost two years at a well-capitalised, innovative, little start-up called smartchange, project managing the build of online products to connect corporate sector employees to small non-profits.

Along the way I became part of a global learning community of change agents called Pioneers of Change . Through conversations within this community, I recognised my vocation as a writer, wrestled a little bit with my fate but finally accepted it. I've been putting my writing and communications skills to use over the last two years working with Pioneers of Change trying to understand (and practice) how to better document emergent group learning processes.

Since submitting to my fate I've written about pretty much anything that has taken my fancy; all of which has been written for my community and some of which has been published beyond. These have included pieces such as "Subverting the Three R's: Reading, Writing and Freedom" - about my resistance to modern education - all the way through to "The Commodification of Identity" - about my distaste for the growing phenomenon of Landmark education.

Worldchanging pieces have included a report on ten years of democracy in South Africa, Democracy Age 10, a progress report on the Lula government, in The Continuing Story of Lula as well as numerous shorter pieces.

As a writer I define my domain of interest as pretty much everything, in the process casting the modern pre-occupation with focus deep into the void. Use what you can and don't worry about the rest.

I was born ('73) and live in London, England. I've have spent most of my life here, apart from a twelve year sojourn to India and the United Arab Emirates between 1980-1992. My work with Pioneers of Change has ensured that my wanderlust is continually satiated with 2003 taking me to the Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, India, the Netherlands, Pakistan, South Africa, the UAE, the USA and Zimbabwe.

E-mail me at zaid@worldchanging.com.