I was born in Cape Town, South Africa. I attended Rondebosch Boys Preparatory and High School for 12 years, followed by 4 years at the University of Cape Town’s engineering faculty. Later I spent a year part-time studying business management at Damelin Management Institute. I attended more computer technical training, self-help management skills, and personal improvement courses than I care to document.
Linda and I married in 1971. We are proud parents of a highly successful daughter and son. We have four of the most intelligent and adorable granddaughters on this planet, 2 by each of our children. I am not given to hyperbole.
My career started at Mobil Oil in an engineering capacity. A year later I transferred to the computer department where I progressed from programmer to systems analyst. I was privileged to be of the first to learn to develop COBOL programs on the IBM 360 computer. Career-wise I moved frequently to develop a wide-ranging skill set, all within corporate and service company computer centers, prior to starting my own consulting businesses.
We moved many times in our lives. In South Africa, after a start in Cape Town we moved to Johannesburg, Pietersburg (now Polokwane), Cape Town, back to Johannesburg, and finally after Christmas 1986 to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. To be accurate we have lived at a few locations in the suburbs, not the city itself, including the cities of Brookfield, and New Berlin where we currently reside.
I have enjoyed 5 decades in the computer industry functioning in numerous roles: solution architect, providing consulting services, management education, training, project management, business process re-engineering, and marketing and sales to name a few. I started my first of 3 businesses 4 decades ago. That allowed me to travel across Southern Africa, North America, Western Europe, and India. During that time I have represented a few different software companies. We built our own solution with our team. The common thread throughout my career is inventory management for retail, wholesale, distribution, and manufacturing companies. I am proud of my 20 YouTube videos with 2 representing 90% of the 30,000 views. They are both of an educational nature. Material Requirements Planning and Sales and Operations Planning. If I know anything, it is the challenge of starting my own business three times, each bootstrapped with no available funding.
Our family accompanied me on many local and international trips. As a family, we enjoy travel and developing a more tolerant attitude of others by celebrating their differences and appreciating local foods and customs.
Travel has always been an interest and further stimulated by watching travelogues by Rick Steves’, Kathy McCabe, and Joseph Rosendo. It is my goal to be able to record my experiences as we plan opportunities to travel to local venues and distant shores. I have no intention to compete with the professionals, but to add color to those places we are fortunate to experience. With all the knowledge I have gained over decades of life, I have some strong views and many stories. I will use this platform to share some of those experiences—and maybe offer my opinion on controversial current topics. My other passion, aside from anything technology, is reading non-fiction.
Thank you for visiting my website.
John Barry