IT Week's IT Leader Profile

Mike Blakemore is the group technical director at Lovefilm. He heads a team of 30 staff

What does your role at the online DVD rental giant entail?
I’m responsible for the management of all hardware, software and engineers across the company. On a day-to-day basis my team will handle queries ranging from fixing a broken laptop in London to rolling out a new distribution centre in Germany.

What was your first job?
Designing military aircraft. I worked for BAE Systems as a sponsored undergraduate while studying maths at university. Geometry was my specialty.

How did you get into the IT profession?
I’ve always been interested in computing. I grew up programming my Amstrad CPC 464 in Hex opcodes, as I couldn’t afford a Z80 assembler at the age of 12. I naturally found myself in the technical computing department at BAE Systems after graduating from college.

If you weren’t in IT, what kind of work would you be doing?
I suppose I could have ended up as an accountant or even a maths teacher.

Which IT vendor has had the biggest impact on your career?
Sun. Not particularly for its hardware, more for the Java programming language. Java, and the open-source community that sprang up around it, had a huge influence on me.

Which technology would you most like to have invented?
MPEG compression – the enabling technology for CD, DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-ray and digital transfer of music and film around the internet.

What keeps you awake?
When I worked at a startup, I used to lie awake worrying about the site going down. Thankfully, I now have a budget to spend on building in resilience. What keeps me up now is my baby son.