Mick Moignard's Blog

I'm Mick Moignard, Lotus Notes Consultant and Model Railroader.    Anything written on these pages is my personal opinion and not necessarily that of past employers, customers,  Unipart Group, DominoPower magazine or Zatz Publishing, and should not be construed as such.

After more years than I really care to remember working for Unipart Group in the UK, in the Unipart Expert Practices consulting division, I'm now a self-employed freelance consultant, offering Lotus Notes and Domino services in the UK and Europe.   Please take a look at my resume for more details of what I've done and what I can do for you.  

I  grew up in Solihull, West Midlands, UK, but now live a few miles east of Oxford, UK with wife Nikki, two adult kids (when they are here) and a somewhat manic cat.

My first encounter with a computer was the Marconi Elliott  4130 at Uni in Aberystwyth, and that was what got me interested in programming as a career option.  I started my first job with Lucas Aerospace, as an IBM Mainframe programmer, using PL/I (what a nice language that was) and starting to use the IMS database management system.  I then joined Systems Resources, a Coventry-based systems house that sent me to Unipar, where I spent four years working on a dealer stock control system, which included the world's first dialup IMS application, jointly developed with Ian Tree.  A year then spent with Aramco in the UK and Saudi Arabia was followed by joining Unipart as an employee in 1983, still doing mainframe-based work, still PL/1 with IMS DB/DC,  and increasingly using DB2.   PCs started to appear at Unipart around 1986 - anyone remember IBM's PS/2 range? - and by 1989 I was working on an OS/2 Rexx (another nice language) and OS/2 Database Manager application.

Then I discovered Lotus Notes.  Version 2, on 15 August 1991.   I evangelised Notes within Unipart, and as they say, the rest is history: a corporate rollout of Lotus Notes in 1993 was followed in 1994 by Unipart establishing a Lotus Business Partner practice, and I've been with that ever since - it's now a part of Unipart Expert Practices.   I've worked as part of the team with customers all over the UK, Western Europe and in the US.   I'm a Notes AD 3/4/5/6 PCLP (actually the P bit only since R4), but have also done a fair bit of infrastructure consulting as well as development and development management,  

I write about Lotus Notes, too.  I'm Senior Technical Editor with DominoPower Magazine. This Google search will show you some of the pieces I've written over the years.

I have another passion, too, Model Railroading, specifically the Rio Grande 3-foot gauge railroads of Southwestern Colorado, USA.    That's been going longer than Lotus Notes, too. I started that interest in around 1978.  And in the last few years, I've become especially interested in the use of Digital Command Control, using equipment from Digitrax and Soundtraxx,  among others.   I write about Model Railroading and DCC, too.  I had a series on my Colorado models  in the UK magazine Continental Modeller in the 1990s, and more recently a 13-part set on DCC for Scalefour News.  You can get a download of those articles from my downloads page.  I'm active in the NMRA Achievement Program, gaining so far two certificates in the Author and Cars categories.   I also run a small business in the installation of DCC decoders, particularly sound decoders and as of June 2012, I'm officially Soundtraxx Factiry Trained, via my association with Sunningwell Command Control.  If you'd like to know more, or have me do installs for you, please get in contact.

You can contact me via:

• Email: mick@mickmoignard.com
• Skype: mickmoignard
• Twitter: @mickmoignard (though I'm a reluctant and very occasional twitterer).
• And some some details that may be found in my resume.