Thursday April 14th 2022 will be my last working day with Epimorphics. After a short break, I’ll be starting a new chapter, but after twelve years – and being here since the start – I wanted to look back and reflect a little.

We started Epimorphics with some very deep expertise in linked-data and RDF technology, but little idea what the market opportunities were. What developed was a series of consulting and managed services engagements, building and running linked-data applications for a wide range of clients. I found myself gravitating towards the front-end of those applications, building web applications and web UIs in Ruby-on-Rails and JavaScript, learning more CSS and JS frameworks than I care to remember (but I’m very happy to have focussed on VueJS lately). 

Epimorphics’ approach – a combination of deep work in data modelling and data engineering, together with striving to craft truly useful, usable and accessible user experiences – meant that a strong feature of our work has been really getting to know the problems clients were trying to solve, and the domains they work in. Given that, I feel very fortunate to have worked with some great teams, and learned more than I ever expected to about: bathing water quality sampling, hydrology catchments, hydrological data visualisation, food safety alerts, regenerative agriculture, educational publishing, house prices and their statistics, and what manufacturers are permitted to put in our food, to pick out just a few examples. Not to mention localising several complex web apps into Welsh, even though, regrettably, I don’t speak that lovely language.

But beyond the code, the PRs, the tickets – and the endless hours staring in frustration at a test that “really ought to pass now!” – it’s the people that make a great place to work. I feel very privileged to have worked with some really knowledgeable, creative and talented people, both at Epimorphics and among our clients and partners. I wish you all every future success, and may your data models be rich, your triple-stores bountiful, and your applications delightful!

Ian

PS I have a feeling we’ll be building at least one knowledge graph in my new role, so I’ll still be in the intellectual neighbourhood. Do stay in touch!