Dominic Smith
Geek, Solutions Architect, Agilist, and Linguist
Cloud Solutions Architecture
I work as a Solutions Architect in the Technology department at the Royal Society of Chemistry. My primary job is helping a team with a major software rebuild project in the Amazon Web Services cloud and I am an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner.
Prior to my current role, I was a certified Scrum Master™ and Agile Coach, working with teams at the Royal Society of Chemistry, and previously at Redgate and hotels.com. As such, I am very keen on the opportunities for rapid experimentation and prototyping afforded by using cloud technologies, supported by build-measure-learn cycles based on feedback from real users.
Latest blog post: Agile Cambridge 2019: piecing it together (8 October 2019)
Amateur Radio
I am a very active radio amateur, and a member of the Radio Society of Great Britain, Camb-Hams and Cambridge University Wireless Society. I hold the callsign M0BLF in the UK and W0BLF in the US.
I participate in contests at both HF and VHF, and I'm a Summits on the Air activator, with over 500 points. I've been on many DXpeditions, most recently as VP2MUW, FP/M0BLF and JW/M0BLF. At weekends in the summer, I can often be found using my communication skills at community events (such as triathlons) with Cambridgeshire Raynet.
Latest blog post: Pyrenees SOTAs 2023: EA2/NV-021 Saioa & EA2/NV-023 Zuriain (16 July 2023)
Cambridge 105 Radio
I volunteer as an Outside Broadcast engineer at Cambridge 105 Radio, the community radio station serving Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire on FM, DAB and online. This includes planning, stage managing and rigging for events as diverse as live music gigs from festivals in a field, to Remembrance Sunday services, to an annual glitzy awards ceremony. I can also occassionally be heard behind the microphone in The Weekend Waffle, on Friday evenings from 10pm.
Latest blog post: Keeping Cambridge 105 Radio running (28 March 2020)
Education
I hold a MA in Modern and Medieval Languages (French and Spanish) from Girton College, Cambridge, an MPhil in Corpus Linguistics from Birmingham University, and a PhD in Hispanic Studies, also from Birmingham, where my thesis was on the language of Hugo Chávez.
orcid.org/0000-0002-5271-6890
