Sign here…

On a dark and rainy December evening, I sat in the boardroom of Norton Rose Fulbright’s London headquarters. Spread out before me were a series of contracts. To my left, Harry Theochari pointed at my name on the signature page. Across the table were Stuart Wright and Adam Marchant-Wincott from The White Ensign Association. 

Adam uncapped his pen, caught my eye for a moment with a look that captured the gravity, then reached over and offered it to me.

To my right, Luke Davey and Ivan Shaw looked at me expectantly. 

I took the most fleeting of moments to think of the journey that had led us all to this point…

But where did this particular journey start?

We can always go back further, but as four of the people in the room are military veterans and three have been my students at dt-squad, where I helped them learn how to solve hard problems with code, perhaps I’ll start with them. 

Luke and Ivan were both still serving when they responded to a post on TechVets where I offered my services to help veterans learn to code. 

Luke started lessons in November 2020 and Ivan in August 2021. Like a number of others, they had an innate talent for deconstructing intractable problems into smaller parts that, on their own, suddenly become solvable! Orchestrating those components into a problem solving thing was not such a big step. Suddenly,they were away and hungry for bigger and harder problems to solve.

I met Adam in September 2023, he was really interested in the work we were doing in helping veterans develop skills. I offered him some lessons so he could get a feel for what the other 30 or more veterans had gone through on their journeys. 

In lesson 3 Adam was writing and running code that could set variables, create and loop over lists, use dictionaries, create functions, use conditional statements and print things out to the console. Once students get to this point, we create a project that they can solve. I make sure the project has a lot of headroom so they’ll still be working on it for many months iterating their solution as they learn to build websites using Flask and Vue and all that goes with them.

Adam’s idea for a project was like no other that my students had come up with before. He wanted to build a system that would help naval veterans make their transition from military service to civilian life. It was a fantastic project for a student. 

We talked for many hours and Adam visited me at what we call “dt Towers” (an office in my garden in south Northants). The evening disappeared quickly as we explored ways in which process, systems, people and ai could be brought to bear to dramatically increase the number of veterans his organisation could help and at the same time transform the quality of help they receive. 

It became clear that while Adam was definitely pretty good at coding, his real passion was thinking how these newly understood tools could transform operations at White Ensign.

As the scope and impact of the “learning project” grew, it became clear that the veterans would be waiting for quite a long time if Adam was left to create the solution by himself.

I spoke to the team and we all agreed it would be good to try and create some proofs of concept. It’s safe to say, those first attempts landed well!

Over the next 15 months, we worked with Adam and his colleagues building those initial proofs out into working applications. Excitement was high and we started to contemplate a collaboration to bring all the ideas to fruition!

And now, here we all were, back to that rainy December evening in the boardroom. 

Harry is the sponsoring member from The White Ensign Association Board of Trustees and the host of our contract signing ceremony. 

Stuart is the CEO of The White Ensign Association and responsible for creating the digital transformation of the fantastic services they provide to naval veterans and those approaching the transition to civilian life.

Adam is the Finance Director and Company Secretary of The White Ensign Association. He took his hunger for a “better way” and worked with us to find it.

Ivan is the veteran naval meteorologist who learned all the skills to become a great full stack developer and data scientist. His own lived experience of transition inspired so much of the solution.

Luke is my co director and team member number 1 of dt-squad. Tirelessly advocating for our clients and using his own transition to shape our work.

For me, it was an incredibly proud moment. More than 5 years ago I started to contemplate an organisation that could help veterans engage with technology and hopefully have more choices in their careers. 

And we’re about to start the final development and deployment of really amazing tools built by veterans to help veterans be more successful in one of the biggest transition periods of their lives.

I signed the contract with Stuart and Luke.

We cracked open a couple of bottles of fizz. 

And we enjoyed the moment chatting about life, cars, hopes and dreams. 

---

If you’re a veteran or approaching the end of service and would like to know more about what it means to be involved in a team of professional software developers, please reach out. If we can help then we will. 

---

If you’re serving in the navy or a naval veteran and would like to know more about the ways The White Ensign Association can help with careers, financial planning, legal issues and much more, start by visiting the website and ask for a consultation. 

---

If you’re responsible for running an organisation (or part of one) and you suspect there may be a better way of delivering “your thing” using new technologies, please reach out, it’s always a pleasure helping people start that journey.