About me

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what is seren?

Seren

The Seren Development identity owes its origin to many things. I am a re-united adoptee. My original father, as it turns out, was also a developer (and engineer) and had produced and marketed an application under the name “Seren” (both my original parents are Welsh and Seren is Cymraeg for “star”). As one in a long line of adoption synchronicities, this application was designed to provoke creative thought process (inspired by the work of Dr Edward de Bono) and to as a repository for the results. One might wonder just how many people had ever written such a piece of software? At least two, it turns out. I wrote a (much simpler) application to do something similar back in the 1980s on the old Atari ST. Seren Development is named, in large part, as a way of honouring that connection, both of my heritage and of personality and interest which I seem to have inherited despite there being no contact between us until I was in my 40s.

The use of the Anahata or Heart chakra severs at least two purposes. First, it connects the star (in the symbol) and the heart, the symbolic source of compassion. The concept of “careware” is core to Seren Development. This is not a freelancing project, but an opportunity to collect together a few projects that I believe will make some small difference in the world. I first came across the concept of careware in the 1990s when I used Paul Lutus’ Arachnoid HTML editor. Loosely, careware is the idea that “Sometimes money is not the best way to convey value. And sometimes money is so completely inappropriate that it destroys the transaction . CareWare is one of those transactions.” (Paul Lutus).

I shall extend the concept loosely in its use here. My choice of what to work on, what to produce and what to put out into the world is also transactional. Some of these projects are here purely because I think they might make the world a better place. For someone. Not because they might make me money.