About Me
My name is Meg Pickard. I describe myself as a creative geek, which covers both my personal and professional passions - and they seem to overlap more and more as time goes on.
But before we get to that, some personal stuff: I was born in Nigeria and educated in West London and British Columbia, Canada. I attended university in Liverpool and then Manchester, and have also spent long periods of time living in Seville, Southern Spain, and Bolivia. I’m currently based in South West London, where I live 100m from the Thames with my husband, Paul, and my cat, Pickle.
I love writing, Italian food, photography, tea, creative tinkering with things (and ideas, code…), chilly walks, the internet, making carrot cake, the west coast of Scotland, my friends, family and travelling.
I’m interested in people and communities both on and offline, as well as social uses of technology and web applications. This is probably related to my background in Social Anthropology: In the mid-1990s, as part of my studies, I conducted ethnographic research into cultural identity and customs with communities first in highland Bolivia and then subsequently on the internet. Despite departing academia for the bright lights of the Internet industry over a decade ago, that strong interest in cultures, communities, communication and computing has stayed with me, and in many ways has influenced much of what I’ve done since.
I’ve been working in New Media for about ten years, mainly in creative roles for companies you’ve probably heard of. I’ve worked and consulted with small startups and big corporations, global brands and charities. My main area of expertise is in social media, consumer experience and product strategy, but I’ve also had years of experience of creating content as well as commercial solutions and strategies.
As a creative technologist and product owner, I’m completely comfortable with things like agile development methods and prototyping or R&D, as well as innovation programmes. I’ve also managed teams of people including developers, editors, project managers and strategists.
I currently work at Guardian Unlimited where I’m Head of Communities and User Experience, responsible for developing and managing existing and new social web strategy and experiences for The Guardian. Before that, I was Consumer Experience lead for Social Media at AOL Europe, which involved devising, developing and delivering new and experimental social media experiences for the organisation.
But I haven’t always been a professional creative geek. Before that, I worked in magazine publishing, in a cybercafe running internet training courses and, during holidays at university, as a cook in a variety of Scottish youth hostels and coffee shops. In fact, if required, I can make delicious soup, scones and shortbread for 70 people (though this doesn’t come in particularly handy these days, unfortunately).
Oh, and I look like this:
