David Walker

 

I gave up full time academia very early - in 1988 (aged 45), when I left Darwin. For some years I did a mix of contract computing work (database and user-interface design, and programming) in the public service and a range of teaching-related work at University of Canberra. The UC work was highly collaborative, including sessional teaching (which included some team-taught masters' units on various areas of human-computer interaction), teaching development (including development and evaluation of role-playing games and the development of a new degree course in computing for Business Analysts (Bachelor of Business Informatics)), research on use of groupware in teaching, and on collaboration between institutions on teaching activities and on flexible delivery of courses, and administrative work in preparation of accreditation documents (internal and for the Australian Computer Society). This work wound down slowly over time, the contract work dropping from full time to three days a week to two days a week then petering out (because I wanted it to), while the UC work (all intermittent and casual, but steadily reducing in quantity) finished with the retirement of the person who employed me (Penny Collings) a couple of years ago, although I have recently collaborated with another colleague at UC on a paper on use of Facebook by government departments.

I have also been doing a small amount of paid editing work (desktop publishing and scanning and editing of photos), plus similar unpaid work for friends and for Boris Books. I also help organise the Poets' Lunch, including content maintenance on the Poets' Lunch web site: http://www.anu.edu.au/emeritus/poets.

I have also been writing - one poem a year, short stories, and a detective novel (set in a battery egg farm) in collaboration with Frankie Seymour.

I also garden, read, cook, eat and drink, and talk to the cats.