Jim Lynn

The View From The Tower

Who am I, really?

Hello, I'm Jim Lynn. I was the technical lead on h2g2 when it began its development at 'The Digital Village' in January 1999. I designed the database that stores the site, and wrote a lot of the software that powers it. If you want to contact me, leave a message here, or you can email me at account at jimh2g2 at uslot dot com.

I spent about nine years working on h2g2 and DNA at the BBC, extending it to support different BBC sites, and eventually taking over the messageboards and blog comments from other systems that had trouble handling load.

After DNA, I found other things to work on at the BBC, although very few of them were 'public facing'. Lots of interesting prototypes, and internal tools. But my most recent project was working on the Xbox 360 version of iPlayer, which was great fun.

In real life I'm married to Bernadette and we have four children: Charlotte, (who's thirteen) Isobel (who's eleven), David, who's nine and Emily who's seven. Our first son, Alexander was born 17 weeks premature on September 7th 1998 and died at 12 days old.

This picture was taken around Easter, on the day of Emily's christening. I'm probably biased, but I have to say, I have four beautiful children.