Before I start, I should declare a potential conflict of interest: Tony Whitmore is my other half, and has been for the past 12+ years.

That doesn’t mean I blindly think he’s great at everything even when he isn’t. He has his faults. And he does daft things at times, like occasionally forgetting to press Record when we do an Ubuntu-UK Podcast show; though even then, he’s usually planned for such an eventuality (he has a backup recording of the stream running on his VPS).

He’s quite good at planning.

The first time I met his family, his brother Mark joked that we probably had a written schedule for meeting their grandparents and other family members. Mark was wrong. It wasn’t a joke. We actually did. Tony’s Sunday roast dinners used to get their own Gantt chart.

The brilliant fun that is OggCamp probably wouldn’t have come about without Tony’s planning ability. As fellow UUPC-founder Alan Pope says “the podcast would almost certainly not exist” either. That’s not to say that Tony has done either of those things alone. Alan, who came up with the original idea for UUPC, is probably the creative genius of the project – coming up with a lot of the content ideas over the past 4 years and typically thinking up wacky ideas on his 50 mile drive to our house to record the show. OggCamp’s organising team is pretty big and varies from year to year but Tony’s hand is usually firmly on the budget, making sure we break even (for which I’m sure we’re all grateful as the event is financially underwritten by the individuals on the two podcast teams).

Alan, and all the HantsLUG guys we’ve known since moving to Hampshire, would probably agree that Tony’s planning and his lists are pretty epic but it generally gets things done (except when trying to get his phone to work at FOSDEM).

I think the thing that impresses me most, though, is that once he’s decided to do something, he gets on and does it to his best ability and that thing is pretty much always a success. Things like:

 

• Installing an all-new Dolby Digital EX sound system at Lancaster University FilmSoc (including wiring up the new rear speakers and reorganising the projection box so all the new kit would fit). The engineers were astounded, when they arrived, to find that the physical installation was complete and they were mostly just needed to calibrate it.
• Teaching himself Linux well enough that, for a long time, his website howto was the first hit whenever you searched for Core Linux, and he quickly settled in to HantsLUG as one of the people you went to for help with your Linux installation.
• Producing the Ubuntu-UK Podcast (which has had over 1.5 million downloads since it started in 2008), honing his audio production skills (and buying lots of new toys).
• Devising and producing the amazing documentary that is Don’t Listen Alone. I just love it!

His latest project is too young yet to judge its overall success but I have faith because he has form. Last month, he set up Tony Whitmore Weddings, his new wedding photography business. He’s always enjoyed photography, crafting photos with technical precision and artistic flare. Inspired by our friend James Hodgson‘s Christmas present to us, Tony decided to set himself a photo project a couple of years ago where he had to take enough photos in 12 months that he could produce a calender to give as Christmas presents the following year. On the back of that calender, he got his first wedding photographer gig.

As usual, he practised and did a lot of research, including watching tutorials by the awesome Jasmine Star. Jasmine’s focus is only partly on the photography; she talks a lot about the business side of being a wedding photographer. And at the start of this year, Tony decided he was going to give it a go. He went on Jasmine’s course when she came to London in July, and he attended a few of the free courses offered by the HMRC.

Last weekend, he launched his business website (with logo kindly donated by my new cousin Jeff and his funky graphic design skills) and Facebook page, and he already has not only a reasonable portfolio but also bookings for future weddings.

I think he’s amazing – but then I would. I don’t think I’m alone, though, in having a huge amount of admiration for what he achieves when he sets his mind to something.