Roger Oldham

I'm a dad of 3, husband, digital leader and musician.

By day I develop digital businesses for major media brands. I've just wrapped up 3 ½ years as a Web Director for Europe's biggest B2B media company, Reed Business Information.

During my tenure I led a 35 strong multi-disciplined team to deliver many product and operational firsts. Here's a taste:

• I led and directed the first UK pilot of an innovative mobile classifieds service


• I was one of a team who pioneered the switch from waterfall to agile user-centred development


• I played a leading role in opening up new revenues by piloting online lead generation projects, such as Devmonkey


• I created RBI's fastest growing community website, caterersearch.com, taking it from launch to market leader


• I won the hearts and minds of print journalists to effect a crucial switch to multi-platform content delivery

This summer I left to start the new role of Digital Operations Director for CMP Information, the UK arm of another media giant United Business Media. Just days before I started, CMP was restructured into 4 smaller businesses, and the role eliminated.

So, I decided to take a short sabbatical. A rare pause to focus and invest in my young family. I've had a ball. And now I'm looking for the next venture. I'm hopeful this is it.

Oh, and what would life be without music? I've been described as a pretty mean drummer. You'll see why in Something astonishing I did...

I love digital. It's fast-moving, ever-changing, a hotbed of creativity and innovation and packed with great people. I was switched on to it in my first role as a marketer at the Financial Times as they poured £ into FT.com in the late 90s. And in 1998 when Drudge broke the Lewinsky scandal I got truly inspired about the power of the web.

As for music, well, nothing beats the nerves and adrenalin-fuelled buzz of playing a live gig.

All the best people end up starting their own company or thing. They know how to think differently about the world. How to adapt the world to themselves. And how to convert that into success: entrepreneurial, social, political.

That's what I hope to learn.

From exceptional people being themselves, not a mimicry of others, from their passions, their personal points of view. Skills to turbo-charge my career, yes. Truthful criticism and a slap in the face, probably. But mostly how to be a successful entrepreneur with a world-changing point of view and the courage to do it.

Sure, I'm curious. But for me, this isn't about learning for it's own sake. This is only a good idea if I use the learning to find a world-changing point of view, take it away and make something happen. Learn it, do it, and fix it as I go. And in so doing change my life, that of my family and many others.

Aged 11, I watched a friend play drums and it blew me away. Inspired and determined, I took a paper round, worked 7 days a week for a year, saved the money, negotiated hard and bought my first kit. I was out of the blocks like a shot, practicing every minute I could find. 2 years on, I sold that first kit for twice what I'd paid.

By 16 I was gigging with musicians 5 years my senior. I played with big bands, rockers, jazz/funk outfits whenever and wherever possible, and on graduating university took up a place at Europe's leading session school in London. Here, a raft of talented drummers were taught by the world's top players. I ended the one year course inside the top 10 for live performance.

Later, and by now working a day job, I played with upcoming soul/jazz artist Vanessa Freeman. I'd sat in on drums for a record company showcase and it had gone down a storm. I was in. We performed live on BBC Radio and played über-cool venues like Camden's Jazz Café. Corporate gigs followed, notably in front of 1,200 at London's Hilton Park Lane before a knee operation put my playing on ice for a time. It'd been a blast, and I transferred my focus to developing my digital career.

Privilege and disadvantage are facts of life. But I've always wanted to create opportunity where there's a deficit. After graduating University in 1996, I headed for the Salmon Youth Centre (SYC) in Bermondsey, a deprived working class neighbourhood in inner London where I took a room in the residence for volunteer youth workers.

Expecting to be there just weeks, I stayed 3 years, volunteering around my drum studies and later my day job to run sports sessions, drop-in clubs and music projects for local kids.

I saw firsthand the difference that a small group of us made to the lives of a community. I got far more back from the kids and richness of the experience. And especially in meeting my wife, a fellow musician and volunteer.

Today SYC's an outstanding success, having completed a £10 million project to become the biggest youth centre in Europe. It's testimony to the dedication of many, including that small group of us who lobbied the Trust for change and helped shape the redevelopment plans in the late 90s as it faced a crisis of funding and leadership.

My early career was all about marketing. In 2000, media group Informa snapped up my employer, the telecoms & media information arm of the Financial Times, along with our US competitor. Moving with the sale, I set-up a marketing team from scratch, developed a new brand for the $13m business and launched telecoms.com, it's very first online channel to market.

But by summer 2001 I was no longer stretched, and I hit a career dip. I quit and went freelance. 9/11 hit the economy hard as I stepped out the door, and expected projects briefly dried up. Determined to make it work, I networked ferociously. It paid off. My first project at Europe's B2B media giant Reed Business Information (RBI) led to another and another. I'd upped my earnings, cut my hours and widened my skillset, getting immersed in digital product development, search marketing, creating online content and communities. And I resisted many job offers that simply didn't excite me.

Then Jim Wilkinson, Publishing Director at RBI, turned to me for a 3 year online strategy and to lead the subsequent investment pitch to his UK board. It was a success, and when the new role of Web Director was created for me, I accepted in a flash.

In Feb 2008 when United Business Media approached me via LinkedIn, it was for the skillset developed through those years, a scarce mix of real experience in marketing, digital development and general management.

To create a radical new start-up with a game-changing digital vision. It's about the world it creates for the people who work there, it's tribe of followers who love it, and it's shareholders who reap incredible dividends. It combines the game-changing of Google with the wunderkind-design of Apple and it's own truly agile personality.

Everyone on the team gets stock. Everyone owns the ideas. It embraces alternative working practices and feel good stuff like free bikes for all the team. Every now and then we invite family and kids to hang out with us. We encourage innovation, reward bravery and fail, fail and fail again to succeed.

Somewhere along the way I'd like to collaborate with Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing. How? No idea...yet. And actively engage in issues of social justice such as reducing child poverty. How? Maybe in part via the 50% of company profits that we'll use and donate to projects that create opportunity for others.

A few great people generously wrote a few words about me. Here's a flavour. All these and more in full right here on my LinkedIn profile.

"Roger's understanding and application of online strategy are impressive..."
Andy Mihalop, Head of Search, i-level (leading UK digital agency and top 50 fastest growing digital media company)


"Roger is one of those rare B2B media execs who get the web and can combine strategic insight and ideas with pragmatism and the ability to deliver operationally."
Andrew Findlater, Strategic Corporate Development at Reed Business Information (Europe's biggest B2B media company)

"Roger has directed and led the implementation and activation of the first mobile classified in the UK ever"
Sacha Vekeman, Co-founder of Mobiya, Belgium


"He's intelligent but open-minded, decisive and flexible at once. I'd hire him again in a second."
Paul Way, Senior VP, TechInsights, USA


"He'd always find a way to make things happen...I can't recommend him highly enough."
Marta Armida, Group VP Sales Operations, Gartner Group, USA

I'm a rugby fanatic, foodie and lover of the great outdoors. An art and culture junkie who lived in Nice, France for a year.

These days I live in London, just near the spectacular Tower Bridge with my amazing wife Dorcas and kids Zach, Jasmina & Maia. It's pricey, but we love it, because there's loads of cool people to meet and the great City Hope church which is all about community.

Oh, and I spread the word about the MBA to at least a few hundred people thanks to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and my own chunky address book.