The Zuvolati
Steven Abrams
The Guvnor
Steven is Zuvolo’s founder and product owner – he makes sure that all the lovely new features that the rest of the team dream up are properly defined and organised and scheduled for inclusion in the Zuvolo app.
He loves to be outdoors either cycling with friends or walking with his dogs, and finding great places to chill and have a coffee. Having worked for Microsoft for many years, Steven has acquired a vast array of mugs, squeaky toys and other useless objects with the Microsoft logo on them. He keeps them in a display cabinet by his bed and looks at them occasionally, remembering fondly the halcyon days of his long departed youth!
CHRIS YATES
THE CRAYON BOY
Chris is Zuvolo’s UX and designer guy – he makes sure that the outlandish and frankly ridiculous screen designs actually come to life in the app. He make sure that everything we do looks great.
We believe in him because he is cool and hip. Chris has earned an enviable reputation as a mean bagpipe player and has toured the world and elsewhere. His fusion of Gaelic laments and Modern Jazz is definitely something to behold – preferably from within a soundproofed room, many miles away from the actual performance.
Mike Parker
The Enforcer
Mike is the app guy. He is responsible for writing all the code that will end up on your iPhones and Androids. He is a stickler for process and using the right tools for the job.
Mike’s only problem is his puns-tourettes. He has been known to utter the most excruciating puns from time to time – he simply blurts them out at random whenever the mood takes him. His puns got so out of hand that many of the team started suffering from rashes and nervous twitches which stunted productivity.
Mike is very much a family man. He mostly works on Zuvolo while everyone sleeps. At least that’s what he tells us. We think he actually gets his kids to write most of the code these days. He spends his downtime listening to 80’s rock music, drinking strong coffee, and telling Dad jokes!
richard florance
THE ENGINE ROOM
Richard, or “Flo” as we like to affectionately call him is the back-end guy.
For those of you familiar with the original Star Trek, Flo is our “Scottie in the engine room”.
He knows absolutely nothing about design. Ask him to draw a wheel and he’ll start with a square but we don’t care, because his knowledge and experience when it comes to anything that requires very clever server code is second to none. We can ask him for the most outrageous feature and instead of just cackling in your face like many backend developers, he simply just nods, licks his lips and gets to work. In fact, we don’t think he has ever spoken since he joined us.
Flo is most comfortable in his den like surroundings which no one has ever seen, we can only assume it’s like something out of the Matrix but all we know is that it’s the engine room of Zuvolo and without Flo, Zuvolo wouldn’t do very much at all!
If he isn’t out on his bike fixing yet another puncture, you’ll find Flo at home on Sundays waxing his car with sandpaper and buffing up the paint work with his tongue, we tend not to ask any questions!
frazier carr
THE RACER BOY
Frazier is Zuvolo’s chief tester (and quite a talent on the cycle racing scene) – he really does try very hard to break the app (and sometimes succeeds). He is there to keep us on our toes and, because he uses the app so much on all his many bike rides, we are constantly fixing stuff for him.
Frazier likes to tinker with stuff – until it breaks! He will then ask awkward questions of whoever made the thing he broke until they feel very guilty about it and painstakingly fix it for him. Frazier knows a lot about Physics, so we don’t ask him about it – that way we don’t look stupid. Frazier cycles all the time. He races, he cycles up mountains and down the other side again, then he races some more. When we go out riding with Frazier he drops us at the first hill, does 100km more than us and STILL beats us back to base. He is young – this is our excuse!