The CIO Questionnaire: Andrzej Zydron, CTO at Lingo24

Andrzej Zydron has been CTO at UK-based global translation company Lingo24, since June 2009.

Where were you born? The Royal Bucks Hospital, Aylesbury Where do you live and work? I live in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, work from home and commute between London, Edinburgh, Romania and the United States

Who do you work for? I’m the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for Lingo24, a UK based global translations company and the founder of XML International, an innovative computer-assisted translation company, which I still watch over.

Describe your work for Lingo24 I’m in the process of implementing XTM for the company and refining their technology requirements to levels of even greater sophistication. Lingo24 is the first company in the UK to adopt XTM, translation memory software which I designed. It acts as an interface between human translators and their documents, allowing hundreds of translators and reviewers to work on the same document simultaneously.

How many people work in your IT department? 14 What did you do before you joined Lingo24? Technical Architect of translation systems for Ford Europe, Chief Architect for Xerox Global Language Services and IT Director Multilingual Technology Ltd.

What is the basic structure of your IT department? Development, Support, Operations Who are your key suppliers? (list up to 10) • Apache Foundation • Google • Open Office • Dell

Who has/have been the most influential people in your career? Roger Battye – one of my line managers in Xerox back in the 1980’s. He always had a very positive attitude and helped people develop – a great guy!

Do you believe in mentoring? Yes – it is very important as a strategy for allowing people to develop to their full potential. I do it a lot. I myself found this kind of help particularly useful when I was a young software developer at Xerox. Which tools or tactics have given you most success in communicating up/down/across? Talking to people face to face frequently.

What has been your biggest mistake? Fixing a system that was not broken with predictable results. And your greatest success? The design and architecture of very large scale enterprise systems; there have been quite a few of which I am very proud. How do you keep up to date with the march of technology? This is almost a full time job in its own right! I read a lot of IT related articles. How do you deal with stress? I run. What profession would you most/least like to attempt? Most: Lecturer in 20th century history. Least: Clergyman. Which word or phrase do you most use/overuse? Super! Great! Brilliant! Which business (or other) books have been influential in your career? Kernighan & Ritchie’s C Programming Language – a truly great work! Do you have a sport you practice or sportsperson/team that you follow? Running.

What else do you do outside of work? I keep up with developments in the IT industry.