Overview
- Current
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- Founder at More Monsters
- Past
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- Chief Innovation Officer and Co-founder at Aframe
- Co-founder at Help Me Investigate
- Fellow at Clore Leadership Programme
- Digital Culture Associate at Made Media
- Co-founder at Type Records
- The Daddy at Odadeo
- Trustee at St. George's School, Edgbaston
- Co-Founder at Creative Republic
- Director at Fierce! Festival Ltd.
- Co-founder - Creative Director, then Managing Director at 3form
- Director at Plus Expo Ltd.
- Creative Director at WebXpress
- Freelance Designer (Self-employed)
- Education
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- Clore Leadership Programme
- Enterprise City High Growth Programme
- The University of Birmingham
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The University of Birmingham
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Oaklands College, St. Albans
- Recommendations
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17 people have recommended Stef
- Connections
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500+ connections
- Websites
Summary
Playfully hacking on things that matter.
I'm a designer, software developer and startup person. My work focusses on playful approaches to technology and its cultural, social and political applications.
Most recently I co-founded Aframe, a cloud-based video production platform, as the technical founder, helped grow the company from two to over thirty staff, saw it through $10m of private investment and on to expansion in North America.
Prior to that I undertook a Clore Leadership Fellowship, sponsored by the Cultural Leadership Programme, having previously been more-or-less simultaneously involved in a boutique web agency (3form), a record label (Type), a creative industries membership organisation (Creative Republic), and a number of experimental startup projects and festivals.
On exiting Aframe my work can be summed up as "playfully hacking on things that matter" through my company More Monsters, where I'm working on diverse projects and collaborations involving an array of tangental areas of interest: open data, education, extreme sports, charity, democracy, hack days, rapid innovation projects, applying agile approaches to digital cultural innovation and using "the hack" as a method for exploring new ideas by "sketching with code".
Day-to-day I use Ruby/HTML5/etc. for code, Illustrator for design, and agile processes for the startup approach. Think "Hack, Play, Learn" leading on to "Build, Measure, Learn".
Over the next year I'm focussing on researching, exploring and experimenting with new ideas, developing new applications through collaborations with the aim of probably throwing myself into an exciting "just do one thing" project by early 2013. I don't know what it'll be yet, but that's the point.
In my spare time you'll find me drawing monsters, taking photographs, doing hack days and thinking about what's next.
Specialties
Web, internet, innovation, startup, leadership, public speaking, agile, culture, creative, Ruby, TDD, video, film, javascript, mobile
Experience
Chief Innovation Officer and Co-founder
Aframe
Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Broadcast Media industry
April 2009 – April 2012 (3 years 1 month) London, United Kingdom
Aframe is a collaborative video platform for professional TV, video and film-makers that takes away a lot of the pain of working digitally.
I co-founded the company and helped grow it from 2 to 36 people, raising $10m of finance in the process.
I lead an agile team of talented developers to build a set of products and services, including our own web-based asset management platform, distributed transcode and ingest system, team collaboration tools, rapid metadata annotation apps, desktop application, Avid and Final Cut integration, and lots more.
Day-to-day it was a mixture of technical architecture, research, experimenting with what's next and new, working out what to do (and what not to do), design work (I did the initial branding), and a lot of code - Ruby, Javascript, HTML5, C++, API-wrangling and everything else inbetween.
Co-founder
Help Me Investigate
Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Online Media industry
January 2009 – December 2010 (2 years) Birmingham, United Kingdom
One of the first investments for Channel 4's innovation fund 4IP, Help Me Investigate is a website for people to ask difficult questions that they can't get answered elsewhere and collaborate with other people in their local community to answer them. Eg. "Why was the tree outside my house cut down?" or "What was the £400,000 of regeneration funding for my area actually spent on?"
The Daddy
Odadeo
March 2008 – May 2010 (2 years 3 months) Birmingham, United Kingdom
An attempt to build a social networking and digital toolbox for dads. Built a wonderful little site for involved dads, only to find that what most dads really wanted was a shop and a forum about what to buy for their kids in the shop.
Trustee
St. George's School, Edgbaston
Educational Institution; 201-500 employees; Primary/Secondary Education industry
December 2006 – November 2009 (3 years) Birmingham, United Kingdom
School governor of St. George's School - Birmingham’s first fully co-educational independent day school for ages 2½ to 18 years.
Co-founder - Creative Director, then Managing Director
3form
Privately Held; 201-500 employees; Plastics industry
May 2001 – March 2009 (7 years 11 months) Birmingham, United Kingdom
An award-winning digital creative agency I set up with Antonio Gould. Originally 3form started as a brand for freelancing as a designer, doing VJ shows (with VHS tapes!), animation, illustration, branding. After leaving WebXpress we founded a company and built a reputation for doing good quality web projects. We got our big break when we were commissioned to build Vivienne Westwood's site from the ground up, so with Antonio using our own hand-rolled PHP CMS that we'd developed together, and me on design we started a boutique little agency out of the back room of the house we were sharing with a bunch of our friends.
Soon came clients like Mars, Sprite, Kitekat, as well as cultural / creative industries clients like the V&A, Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery and First Light Movies. For the latter we won a Webby and along the way we picked up a clutch of business and creative awards.
By 2008 though, I'd become abstracted from the actual creative process. I was young and I found myself running an agency, dealing with contracts, having meetings and it turned into "feeding the beast" rather than "being in flow".
I wanted to try my hand at a more product-based approach, so I slowly and gently wound down the activities of the company and undertook the Clore programme. Through that experience I found that my instincts were correct and that I wanted to really follow the "startup" path rather than the "agency" path. I've not looked back since, except to be proud of what our small, talented little team achieved!
Creative Director
WebXpress
June 1999 – May 2001 (2 years)
Whilst at WebXpress I was responsible for all visual output of the company. I joined the small team which quickly grew to a full-time staff of eight, quadrupling turnover in the time that I was there. It was later sold to WAA so it's no longer online.
Projects
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Chircle
- March 2012 to Present
Team Members: Stef LewandowskiA new way to give to charity each month with your circle of friends.
Pick a fixed monthly amount to give to charity, and easily slice it up into a pie chart of charities. Add a charity in a couple of clicks.
Delegate some of your giving to your friends so you give to whatever charities they give.
Honors and Awards
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Best Title Sequence
NASTA- 1999
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Gold Award: Best Non-Profit Organisation Website
World Media Festival Hamburg 2001- 2001
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Creative City Award for Outstanding Innovation
Birmingham Creative City Awards- 2004
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Best Start-Up
Mustard, Birmingham- 2004
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Shortlisted - Entrepreneur of the Year in Birmingham
Arena Magazine / O2- 2005
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Champion of Industry
Mustard- 2005
Slightly ridiculous title, but nice to be recognised in a 1% of high growth companies in the West Midlands category.
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Channel 4 Creative Class
Channel 4- 2005
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Birmingham Young Professional of the Year
Birmingham Future- 2005
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Birmingham Small Business of the Year
Birmingham Creative City- 2005
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Alumnus of the Year
Birmingham University- 2006
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Digital Pioneer
British Council- 2007
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Finalist - User Generated Content
Royal Television Society Innovation Awards- 2007
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Guardian MEGA for Best Independent Blog (Joint)
Guardian MEGAs- 2008
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Webby Award
The Webbys- 2008
For the First Light Movies website. Also picked up two honoree certificates in the web-art category.
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Courvoisier Future 500 - Top 5
CVTF500- 2009
And at the party I met my soon-to-be co-founder of Aframe!
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Finalist - Disruptive Technology MEGA
Guardian MEGAs- 2011
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Smarta100 Winner
Smarta- 2011
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Bully Award - Young Bull
White Bull Summit- 2011
Skills & Expertise
Education
Clore Leadership Programme
Fellow, Cultural and Creative Leadership
2008 – 2010
Enterprise City High Growth Programme
2008 – 2009
The University of Birmingham
Alumnus of the Year
2006 – 2006
The University of Birmingham
BSc, Computer Science / Software Engineering
1996 – 1999
My main interest was in artificial intelligence, so I chose AI options where possible.
Activities and Societies: BubbleUp!, Robots in Disguise
Oaklands College, St. Albans
International Baccalaureate, -
1994 – 1996
Additional Information
- Interests:
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Photography (one day I'll do an exhibition), music (mainly listening, but I DJ occasionally), new technology, hill walking, snowboarding, art, film.
- Groups and Associations:
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Birmingham University School of Computer Science Natural Computation Industrial Advisory Board, Birmingham University 1900 Society, British Humanist Association, PAST: Digital Central Interactive Steering Group, Digital Central Steering Group, Department for Culture Media and Sport Creative Economy Programme Working Group - Access to Finance for the Creative Industries 2006, Advisor on NESTA Creative Pioneers Programme 2006, Mentor on the Boost Scheme with Hi8us
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