The PCUG Volunteer of the Year for 2016, has been proudly awarded to Peter Barker, presented by Secretary, Bert Blink, and President, Anthony Glenn
Peter Barker has had an interesting history of skills and experiences drawn on in support of PCUG activities.
- When Peter left school, he worked for the Post Masters General Dep’t [PMG], now known as Telstra, as a cadet engineer, combining work and study.
- At Uni Peter not only completed an honours in Electrical engineering but also a Bachelor of Commerce
- After working for some years for the PMG, the nominated volunteer transferred to the Canberra working in various departments on development of mineral resources policies, including representing Australia at international meetings between 1980 and 1988.
- When IT was being brought to the desktop in the public service, based on volunteer’s engineering background and PC experience Peter was asked to manage not only the introduction of a LAN the work area, but to maintain it, provide user support as well as training users in the use of computers.
- Peter had always had a fascination with databases and on Peter’s first computer, a Micro80 developed a membership system in BASIC for use by his son’s scout troop, and later in dBase developed several systems.
- In 1996 the government decided to outsource IT services and Peter decided to take an early redundancy and establish a consulting company, specialising in development of desktop applications software, mostly involving database management. Peter has developed systems for several Commonwealth and ACT government departments as well as private clients ranging from wineries, ski lodges and even diamond mining companies in Western Australia.
- Peter also had a keen interest in training and taught computing for several years’ part time at CIT
- Peter joined the PCUG since 1988 after upgrading his old computer to a 286 PC.
- Peter served on the PCUG committee from 2006 to 2011, serving as treasurer for 4 years.
- Peter was Staffer Coordinator for the weekend volunteers at the PCUG centre as well as personally manning the office.
- Peter is one of PCUG’s long-term trainers, periodically leading courses in Microsoft Excel, and Access.
- Peter has and still does look after the coding needs of the PCUG database as required.