"I Love Startups And Building Completely New Things From Scratch", Interview with Chris Horn

You know that feeling when you work really hard on something for really long and it feels like nobody really notices?

Hacker Noon’s Annual Tech Industry Awards, the 2020 Noonies, are here to help with that. Vote for the best people and products today at NOONIES.TECH.

Speaking of the best people and products in technology, here’s a quick (and interesting!) intro to 2020 Noonie Nominee, Chris Horn from United Kingdom, who’s been nominated in the Software Development

1. Which 2020 Noonie/s have you been nominated for?

Hacker Noon Contributor of the Year - CHATBOTS

2. Tell us a bit about yourself.

I'm the CTO of ONEm Communications Ltd (https://www.onem.com). I've been in the tech industry and software development for 30 years, and have the grey hairs to prove it :). I love startups and building completely new things from scratch. I innovative love ideas that can make a real difference to people's lives and even better if the idea can benefit the masses and not just the privileged few.

3. Tell us about the things you make / write / manage / build.

At ONEm, we've built a 'micro-app' API framework that allows software developers of all abilities to build enterprise-quality omni-channel applications in hours or days. We've 'eating our own dog food' and currently using our own framework to provide a membership engagement service for cooperatives that we call anycoop (https://anycoop.zone). I'm a fan of Node.js, React and Mongo.

4. What are you most excited about right now?

Being nominated for the Noonies of course!

5. What are you worried about right now?

The growing rate of COVID-19 cases in my city and country, and the impending collapse of medical healthcare facility. Really anxious about keeping my parents (and myself) safe through this pandemic.

6. What's the most useful advice you've ever given somebody?

Take people as you find them

7. How has the pandemic changed your life and/or career?

Being able to spend more face-to-face time with my family has been a big plus in all of this. Being able to sit down and talk as a family over dinner each evening has been great. Oh and enjoying watching wildlife much more than ever before. It's fascinating how quickly wildlife can adapt to change.

8. If we gave you $10 million to invest in one thing right now, where would you put it?

Battery technology / next-gen power storage. It's the one thing that still has a long way to go and can change humanity.

9. What's an opinion you have that most people don't agree with?

Allowing governments access to citizens data in a freely elected democracy is not necessarily a bad thing.

10. Which apps can't you live without?

iMessage and BBC News. Everything else is just fringe stuff.

11. What are you currently learning?

Brushing up on my math so I can really get into ML and deep learning.

For much the same reasons Hacker Noon decided not to put good ideas behind pop-ups or paywalls — nor abuse your personal data to target you with creepy ads — we also decided that you don’t have to be a #thinkfluencer or have 50k followers on Twitter to earn the recognition that comes with a 2020 Noonie Nomination.

Make somebody’s day and nominate them to be recognized in the internet’s most independent and community-driven awards: NOONIES.TECH.