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Our people : Haydn Shaughnessy

I began my professional career as a journalist making television programmes in the UK (BBC and C4) typically on social futures. After television, and after I'd developed a project to provide pan-European training to migrant workers via satellite (in 1989 on the first ASTRA platform)) I was invited by the European Commission to work in Brussels supervising advanced communications projects for the EU (for example in distance learning, Postal & Distribution, medicine, and mobility). As early as 1992 we were experimenting with broadband applications and beginning the process of developing 3G mobile. I was also responsible for writing the documents that explained these technologies and applications to a wider audience as well as being secretary of the group that drew up the telecoms research policy for the Maastricht Treaty.

After the EU I helped private sector companies to devise innovative communications projects, working with some of the leading European companies and research institutes; during this period I also wrote reports for the EU on the future of audio-visual search engines, the future of networked audio-visual Services, and grid middleware.

I returned also to journalism and have written for the Irish Times (where I still write), Times, Sunday Times, Wall St Journal, NRC Handelsblad, Long Range Planning, and mamy more as well as making documentaries for the BBC and RTE.

lately my work has evolved into virtual worlds and social media. I've been a blogger for five years and as a journalist I can't help being interested in the persuasive possibilities in social media generally. Companies are now asking how they can use this environment successfully. I am also working on design and build projects in Second Life and I am responsible for developing the new media and social media practice at Depo Consulting in the UK.

I was educated at the London School of Economics and St Antony's College Oxford.

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