Michael Thompson

Founder and director of artisan biscuit production, using local ingredients with some of the worlds finest whiskeys.

As a co-founder and the marketing director, I'm responsible for B2B and B2C strategies, content production and public relations.

Director of Big Blue Squid and media manager for brands seeking to develop their social media presence.

The search and rescue and security and defence industry have a wide range of requirements and specialist situations. It is my role to identify and align the capability of our products with the needs of our clients.

I look after social media accounts on behalf of our clients to bring their brand before their potential customers and engage them to turn them into buyers. I also provide training for those companies with sufficient staff to handle their own accounts but lack the expertise in setting up and managing a campaign.

My original role was IT Manager looking after 20 terabytes of storage and Picture Editor to a team of photographers. I also worked regularly as a PR photographer and expanded the image editing of the business to a professional level. Additionally I managed all of the business contracts, e.g. phones, utilities, marketing, advertising. I designed and built the company website, Facebook and Twitter accounts as well.

I owned and operated a online retail shop selling underwater camera equipment serving hundreds of clients, personal and professional around the world including government fisheries.

Self-employed web developer for SMEs. Specialised in online marketing. Experience in HTML, Flash, PHP & MySQL.

Junior designer, compiling websites and code.

Twelve new staff were brought onboard during the .com era. Blackstar was the largest DVD supplier in the UK and Amazon's biggest rival in the UK. In four months I produced £250,000 turn-over in sales using affiliate programmes and going after 'lost' customers from the companies blacklist. After four months (one month over contract) all of the newly appointed team members were downsized and two of the three directors resigned after floating the stock. The company now operates as SendIt.

Designing print and video presentations for use by youth workers and in workshops for young people. The Internet first arrived in the YMCA Belfast during my time there and I took on using it and training others in it's use.

Image editing