My digital life: Nathan Doughty

What’s your favourite site?

Other than asite.com, where I spend most of my working day, I live by nytimes.com for US news (and election coverage at the moment). There’s also the satirical news website theonion.com for a levity fix and buildlondonlive.com to keep me excited about making BIM (building information modelling) a reality in the building industry.

I came across a new web 2.0 video editing site recently called animoto.com – it’s a neat way to while away an hour or two making a slide show of my daughter!

What’s your favourite way to network?

I try to steer clear of Facebook just for the sake of sanity, although I admire the fact that the makers have basically delivered a web application development platform to their users. We will soon be seeing similar types of development in web platforms for global construction. I use linkedin.com and webex.com for web meetings – but nothing beats a phone call and a meeting down the pub. There are some excellent old pubs near the Asite offices at London’s Old Street – check out the Windmill if you are in the neighbourhood!

What’s your preferred means of communication?

I’ve kept some form of blog since 1995 when I set up my first personal site on the Rice University Unix network. Nowadays my blog is at freecollaboration.net. I’m not a prolific poster – I like to think I choose my moments. I twittered regularly during the Build London Live event in June to provide updates and got a few in at last week’s Be2Camp event. I haven’t got into the daily twittering thing – I’m wary of the line between enthusiastic and obsessive-compulsive!

What was the last book you bought online?

My last Amazon purchase was a book about how to parent through the toddler years.

Being both a book lover and a long-term digital citizen I keep most of my library catalogued online at an excellent web 2.0 social library site called librarything.com.

What’s in your digital holster?

Pride of place in the holster is my Blackberry Pearl. I am a certified crackberry addict and do most of my communications and my work on Asite via the handset.

It is also my camera for everything from shots of my daughter to shooting straight from sites into the collaboration platform – and it fits in my jacket pocket.

What games do you play?

I have been a long-time fan of the Tiger Woods golf franchise on the PlayStation – my game is much better there than in real life. In the past year we have also discovered Wii Sports and that is great fun for the family.