When I set up FOD-detection.com in January 2010 the hope was that the site would not only act as a one-stop-shop for all FOD detection news, but also as a portal for my consultancy work. Unfortunately the market for FOD detection systems (and therefore also for my consultancy work) has not taken off in the way many in the industry had expected.
It has now been 2 years since I held the position of Product Manager for the Tarsier FOD detection system, and I no longer feel that I have the up-to-date knowledge required to offer my services as a consultant (although some FOD vendors have been happy to have a consultant working in this area, and have offered demonstrations of their latest systems, the behaviour of other system vendors can only be described as hostile), for this reason the consultancy section of this site has been removed.
Before leaving QinetiQ I had the opportunity to fill a massive feature gap in the Tarsier system i.e. reporting. When I started as Product Manager there was no automated reporting available to Tarsier customers, no historic data, no maps, no images, no database. In order to fill this gap I proposed the Tarsier Toolbox, a SaaS solution built on Google Maps. It was not an easy task to get the Toolbox built, I had a great technical team working with me and they shared the product vision, unfortunately the project had to be justified to management at almost every stage of development (not something that makes for a particularly positive working environment).
The one thing I did learn from my time working on the Toolbox was that I wanted to continue to help build great SaaS solutions, and that is what I am now fortunate enough to be doing. My current employer is dedicated to building a SaaS solution while also offering a great experience to end users.
FOD-detection.com will continue as usual…but now with videos! The Consultancy section has now been replaced by a Videos section, this area will contain a collection of various FOD related videos from YouTube (I’ve done the searching, so you don’t have to). In the future I hope to add further reference sections to the website (map of current installations, FOD company profiles, FOD related patents etc)