Alan Haarhoff

Favourite Pastime
Spending time with my family - with my kids, that keeps you fit!

Favourite Movie
Gladiator and Mamma Mia!

Favourite Destination
The village of Dahab, on the Red Sea, in Egypt

Product Manager

In 2001, after Managing a restaurant for 3 years, I had had enough of working late hours and all weekend.

I quit my job and took a year off to study web development, as it was the "buzz" word at the time and seemed an exciting space to be in. Studying at I.T Intellect (MCSD and Web Development) was fantastic, and a huge learning curve.

My first career epiphany was realising that websites you create can be viewed by anyone in the world, anywhere, at anytime. Endless possibilities.

While studying I managed to cut my teeth by developing websites for various business's. This was to stand me in good stead, as Rob Fisher liked what he saw, and offered to take me on for a month to gain experience at Always Active Technologies, and I have not looked back.

My first years at AAT where spent cutting my teeth in the design, development and systems architecture environments. AAT’s incubatory environment helped loads, with special mention to Richard and Kieron. ASP, SQL, JavaScript and eventually .NET was the order of the day.

Since then I’ve started to slowly migrate from the development environment, and become involved in the business side of I.T, while studying towards a Diploma in Marketing.

I’ve also had loads of fun implementing on-line marketing strategies, combined with current Web 2.0 features. It’s clear that the future role and structure of marketing is changing rapidly, with schools of thought such as the "Cluetrian Manifesto" moving from theory to reality. Adaption is the order of the day, and this means self knowledge, humility and external awareness.

Being a Product Manager at AAT is challenging, refreshing and most of all fun, and I love working in the dynamic and diverse Team that we have here at AAT.

Alan has been with AAT since March 2002.