David Hartley

Full Name:	David John Hartley
Citizenship:	Australian
Date of Birth:	4 March 1945
Location:	Runaway Bay, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia Time Zone: GMT +10:00
Contact Info:	Email:david@elanelan.com Tel:+61 7 55 377 634 (It is now in Runaway Bay.) Skype:davidhartley70

The Adventure in Progress

The adventure has involved civil engineering, computing, business (4 companies in 4 countries), life in 8 countries, and 4 wives. There have been big successes and big failures in both business and love. The failures are part of the learning process that has led to greater wisdom for the next rounds - hopefully!

After starting professional life as a civil engineer in Australia with the Brisbane City Council in 1966, my serious computing started in Namibia, Africa in 1969 with the mathematical modelling of a large river basin using 100 years of rainfall data. To get the job done on the computer available, an ICT 1500, I had to get into the guts of the Fortran compiler - great fun.

After a period back in Australia working with a consulting civil engineering firm, I decided that the computing was more interesting than the engineering, and so started Hartley Computer in 1974, targeting the Accounting Profession, as Accountants needed computing but were not into doing it themselves as engineers then tended to be. My colleagues and I developed the HArtley Professional Accountants’ System - HAPAS - and associated systems, both hardware and software, while building one of the first mini computer vertical market successes in the world, with ultimately 250 staff and 3,000 sites in 7 countries. In the process I became known as “the father of computer client accounting”, and we won several awards.

The Hartley Computer success was killed by hubris and a messy divorce. Big lessons, only partly learned at the time.

Then from 1985 there was Banksia Information Technology (BIT) in Hong Kong which designed and manufactured IT gear (PCs, modems, and the a voice activated fax/phone switch we called PHAXswitch), and more design awards...

And so to the UK in 1993 via Australia and New Zealand, with HAPAS Mark II, named Hartley.Accountant. By 1998, my partners and I in Hartley Computer UK had gained 1,000 Accounting Practice Clients ranging from one man practices to PricewaterhouseCoopers.

But in 1999, my new wife Caramia (#4 by then) was diagnosed with Primary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis. Caramia had served as MD from Jan 1999 to July 1999 while I concentrated on the R&D side of things, but the MS diagnosis ended that. Hartley Computer was sold to Sage PLC, so that Caramia and I could move to a warmer climate in Antigua in the Caribbean, which Caramia thought would help her, as it has done.

Hartley.Accountant, renamed Sage Accounts Production Advanced (SAPA) remains the flagship product of the Sage Accounting Division to this day, some 12 years later, attesting to its fundamental quality.

In the Caribbean, I pursued various online business and consulting interests with little success - I was out of my element - though the high business, living, and medical costs continued inexorably. A period in Panama from 2005 to 2007 was most enjoyable, though.

Caramia wanted to stay in Antigua - it had been her lifeboat - but it was not good for me or my finances so finally I returned to the real world in March 2012, and am now back in Australia.

From Runaway Bay on Queensland's Gold Coast I am continuing work on an iXBRL project started in Antigua in January 2011, with the overall objective of making iXBRL elegant. More will follow...

Education

Nudgee State School, Banyo High School, and University of Queensland (B.E. Honours Civil 1966), all in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

Public Service

• Member of the Advisory Council of the (Australian) Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, 1980-83
• Founder Board Member (1981) and then President of the Australian Computer Manufacturers’ Association (ACEMA) 1984-85
• Member of the Electrical, Electronics, and Information Industries Council, 1984-85, a Council providing industry policy advice to the Australian Government
• Member of Queensland Science & Technology Council, 1983-85, providing industry advice to the Queensland Government
• Member of the Science & Industries Forum of the Australian Academy of Science, 1983-85

Awards

• 1981 Inaugural “Chips” Award from the Australian Computer Society for Services to the Australian Computer Industry
• 1983 Australian Design Award for the Hartley 3923 Computer
• 1986 Hong Kong New Product Award (Electronics) for the BIT PEP range
• 1987 Hong Kong New Product Award (Electronics) for the BIT PHAXswitch
• 2003 The Pearcey Hall of Fame (Australia) for “Distinguished lifetime achievement and contribution to the development and growth of the Information Technology Profession, Research and Industry”