My name is Tom Gleeson, I’m the Gobán Saor (pronounced Gobawn Sayer) a master datasmith. Living in Eadestown, in rural Co. Kildare, Ireland with my wife Caimín, two kids, a Jack Russell terrier,a cat and a rabbit four chickens.
I’m a Data Processing and BI professional with a special interest in the “last mile” of data and process delivery. I’m a creator of Time Assets; software artefacts that enable my clients to package time for reuse when there’s not enough time in the day.
My IT passion is data, particularly in its raw, untamed and often unloved state that many businesses are forced to use day-in day-out i.e. the un-conformed, un-cleansed, un-safe extracts from operational systems. If there’s any value to be extracted from such data then I’ll find it.
I also love data when it’s on the move, I’ve been building data interfaces for 3 decades, but the thrill of extending systems by getting them to talk to other systems still remains.
Although most of my data work is now within the realms of Excel models, BI and general data crunching, the sight of an OLTP database schema still stirs the blood. Looking at nothing more than a system’s database you can tell everything the system was and everything the system is going to be (apologies to outhouse assassination scene in Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven where William Munny, tells the shaken kid wanting to be his protege “it’s a hell of a thing to kill a man. You take away everything he has and everything he would have.” ).
Data is the DNA of any business, systems come and go, data lives on forever.


Excellent logo,liked that very much.
Regards
Haleem.
Thanks Haleem, all my own work.
Tom
Did you see last night’s Nationwide on RTE1 Tom? [It's online if you haven't] Great piece on the Goban Saor island and Derrynaflan horde. I love your choice of ‘datasmith’ btw and the explanation above.
Hi Tom,
I have read and admired your articles for some time now, and looked up your profile today.
As a fellow IT Smith (database programming, MQ Series, XSLT, Perl, Python, R, etc), I fully understand the breadth and depth of your experience.
Many thanks for your excellent expositions on matters technical.
Best wishes,
Atish
Thanks Atish, for your kind comments.