This special edition features two female tech founders who came to technology from completely different directions — and both ended up solving problems the tech industry had been ignoring.

Olivia Parks is the founder of ITOMS — a B2B platform that powers fashion retailers with AI recommendations based on a consumer's existing wardrobe, their unique style (captured via "style ontology" — the rules that govern how people dress), and the retailer's own inventory. Olivia started in brand marketing and consultancy, not tech. She talks candidly about building a manual MVP stitched together from Notion, Tally, PowerPoint and soon Calendly, while fundraising to build the real product. She has a sharp take on why non-tech founders often build better products — they have no bias about which stack to use and stay relentlessly focused on the customer problem.

Lauren Murphy is the co-founder of Friday Initiatives, a data law and data mapping consultancy. With a background in data law at firms with clients like Ford and Amazon, Lauren noticed that 90% of data projects fail — and traced it back to the basics: companies simply don't know what data they have. Friday Initiatives cut data mapping from four years to two weeks using a people-first approach (map jobs and workflows, not metadata) combined with AI tools. Lauren's story includes pivoting a first dashboard product that was too advanced for the market, and building law firm partnerships as their primary growth channel.

Guests: Olivia Parks, ITOMS | Lauren Murphy, Friday Initiatives — https://www.fridayinitiatives.com/

Recorded for The Technology Show on Voice FM 103.9, Southampton — broadcast 8 November 2024. Listen live on Fridays at 1pm. More episodes: thetechnologyshow.uk

This special edition features two back-to-back interviews with people solving very different but very human problems with technology.

First up, Catherine Ann Reid is the founder of DOQIT (doqit.io) — an app coming to iOS and Android that gives you one secure place for all your household paperwork, reminders, expiry dates, and important numbers. Catherine Anne's story starts with a divorce, a daughter with complex additional needs, three years of missed tax returns, and a £100 fine she couldn't afford. She couldn't find anything that solved the problem, so she built it herself — with DVLA API integration that tells you when your MOT is due, biometric security, S3-encrypted document storage, and a roadmap for a machine learning copilot. Her daughter Chloe, who was told she might never walk or talk, has been her inspiration throughout.

Then Keith Broni, editor-in-chief of Emojipedia, joins Natalie to talk about why most people only use four emojis a day, why the skull emoji now means laughter for Gen Z, and the polite-giggle-vs-shock disaster that happens when the same emoji looks completely different on Android versus Apple. Keith is working with 3UK on their Mind, Body and Scroll social fitness events.

Guests: Catherine Ann Reid, DOQIT — doqit.io | Keith Broni — emojipedia.org

Recorded for The Technology Show on Voice FM 103.9, Southampton — broadcast 1 November 2024. Listen live on Fridays at 1pm. More episodes: thetechnologyshow.uk

This week there's no guest — just Natalie, fresh from an AI society launch at the University of Southampton and a spa conversation about a DJ friend whose Facebook account was hijacked to sell fake Oasis tickets. That's all the prompt she needs to spend an hour on something she thinks everyone should know more about: staying safe online.

She covers the CV-uploading trap (sending your full CV to ChatGPT hands your address, phone number and entire work history to a public model), the case against reusing passwords across sites, and how to fix it without memorising dozens of unique credentials — including a free option in KeePass and a business-grade one in Keeper. She explains social engineering through the Facebook quiz example (those "what was your first pet's name?" posts are literally mining your security answers), breaks down how phishing emails work, and reveals the counterintuitive reason why the scammers deliberately leave spelling mistakes in.

The episode ends with a practical summary: change your shared passwords, get a vault, stop filling in random quizzes, and if something looks too good to be true — Oasis tickets at a bargain price included — trust your gut.

Mentioned: KeePass (free, open source) — keepass.info | Keeper — keepersecurity.com

Recorded for The Technology Show on Voice FM 103.9, Southampton — broadcast 25 October 2024. Listen live on Fridays at 1pm. More episodes: thetechnologyshow.uk

It's a solo show this week, but Natalie has plenty to cover. She opens with two pieces of good news: Emma May's Quirk card game has been featured in Country and Townhouse's Children's Gift Guide 2024, and Barbara Gotardi — a UK female tech founder Natalie has been getting to know — won £100,000 at the HIS Lab pitch in London. Barbara will be appearing on the show soon to talk funding.

Then Natalie gets into the five tools she recommends to small business owners right now. Zoom Pro's AI meeting summaries (around £13/month) save you from note-taking while staying present in the call. Canva handles your graphics and marketing materials with a generous free tier. ChatGPT is genuinely useful for writing website bios and pitches — just tell it your audience, the format, and the word count, then edit the output yourself. MailChimp goes beyond newsletters: it can automate birthday emails, purchase anniversaries, and client touchpoints you'd otherwise forget. And if you're paying monthly for Calendly, Tidy Cow does the same thing for a one-off £20.

All five are available free or cheaply, and none of them require a developer.

Mentioned: Canva — canva.com | MailChimp — mailchimp.com | Tidy Cal (Tidy Cow) — tidycal.com | Calendly — calendly.com

Recorded for The Technology Show on Voice FM 103.9, Southampton — broadcast 18 October 2024. Listen live on Fridays at 1pm. More episodes: thetechnologyshow.uk

This week Natalie is joined by Alex, a third-year journalism student at Winchester University who's spending time at Voice FM as part of her studies. What starts as a conversation about what drew Alex to journalism quickly becomes a genuinely interesting tour of the technology behind modern media production.

Alex explains how Adobe Audition works for audio editing — specifically what "peaking" means and why it matters if your audience has to work hard to hear you — and how Final Cut Pro handles video, from the timeline to the rough cut, and why you always need a second pair of eyes. She also has a clear-eyed take on AI: it's made her job harder, not easier, because deep fakes mean you can no longer take a clip at face value. Verifying that a famous person actually said what they appear to have said is now a genuine part of the workflow.

They also get into gaming (Alex is a Sims 2 loyalist), and Natalie's handbag-sewing hobby leads to a genuinely useful conversation about time-lapses, tripods, and when a phone is actually better than a professional camera — which, it turns out, is in low light situations where phone sensors adapt and cameras don't.

Guest: Alex, journalism student, University of Winchester

Recorded for The Technology Show on Voice FM 103.9, Southampton — broadcast 11 October 2024. Listen live on Fridays at 1pm. More episodes: thetechnologyshow.uk

There are two Natalies in the studio this week. Natalie Mayer is a productivity consultant whose business, All In Good Time, helps small business owners plan, prioritise and stop procrastinating. She makes an important distinction from the start: productivity isn't about getting more done, it's about getting the right things done — the ones you'd still be proud of on Friday night over drinks with a friend.

They get into how technology can help and hinder. Natalie Mayer makes the case for digital calendars as the foundation of any productivity system, explains why turning off all notifications by default (and only adding back the ones that matter) reclaims your focus, and walks through the app landscape — Google Keep, Notion, Asana, Trello, ClickUp, Monday.com — like a washing machine where most people use two or three of the sixteen settings, just different ones.

There's also a frank conversation about procrastination. Natalie Mayer distinguishes between boring tasks (reconnect to the why), uncomfortable conversations (practice arguing without arguing), and fear of doing it wrong (just start). Her advice: treat your calendar like an exam paper — spend ten minutes at the beginning figuring out what's actually relevant before you write anything down.

There's also a lovely moment where Natalie Mayer reveals her daughter is studying astrophysics at A Level, and shares the quietly depressing story of a company STEM visit where the only woman visible was working in the kitchen.

Guest: Natalie Mayer, All In Good Time — find her on LinkedIn (search Natalie Meyer M-E-Y-E-R)

Recorded for The Technology Show on Voice FM 103.9, Southampton — broadcast 4 October 2024. Listen live on Fridays at 1pm. More episodes: thetechnologyshow.uk

Natalie sits down with Sam Gaskell, founder and CEO of DataFit, who helps businesses understand, organise and get value from the data they collect. Sam's route into the industry was anything but conventional: no university, a brief stint in a nursery, then a leap into an NHS data quality role she openly admits she knew nothing about on interview day.

What followed was thirteen years of learning on the job, being the only woman in the room more often than not, and eventually going on maternity leave — and launching a business. Sam is refreshingly honest about the loneliness of being in a male-dominated field, the subtle challenges of being talked over, and how those experiences made her more determined rather than less.

They also get into the practical: how to break into a data career without formal qualifications (start with W3Schools, search job descriptions for required skills, and look beyond "data scientist" to analyst, engineer, governance and business partner roles). Sam talks about building visibility through panels and self-nomination for awards — something she admits she didn't know was even allowed — and why fractional support, whether IT directors or PR managers, is the secret weapon of small business owners.

Guest: Sam Gaskell, DataFit — https://uk.linkedin.com/in/sam-gaskell (free introductory call available)
Next Tech Girls — nexttechgirls.com
Women in Tech Hampshire — search on LinkedIn

Recorded for The Technology Show on Voice FM 103.9, Southampton — broadcast 27 September 2024. Listen live on Fridays at 1pm. More episodes: thetechnologyshow.uk

Natalie is joined by Lauren James, marketing and operations lead at Spectrum IT Recruitment — one of Southampton's best-known tech recruiters — for a frank conversation about the state of the IT jobs market.

Lauren shares what she's seeing on the ground: hiring is picking up, salaries are holding steady, and AI is the skill everyone is suddenly asking for. Not to replace people, but because — as one IT director put it to Natalie — "AI won't replace you, but people who know how to use AI will." They get into which roles are growing (machine learning, LLMs, data), how to dust off a CV that hasn't moved in years, and why an interactive CV with animation might impress a developer but fall flat if someone prints it.

They also talk about the website rebrand project Lauren led at Spectrum — eight months of layouts, content reviews, URL redirects and SEO — and what it really feels like to press "go live" as a self-described perfectionist. And Lauren explains how she and colleague Amy Lee spotted a gap in Hampshire's tech community and built Women in Tech Hampshire from scratch, which now runs events every other month at the Southampton Science Park.

Guest: Lauren James, Spectrum IT Recruitment — spectrumit.co.uk
Women in Tech Hampshire events — search Women in Tech Hampshire on LinkedIn

Recorded for The Technology Show on Voice FM 103.9, Southampton — broadcast 6 September 2024. Listen live on Fridays at 1pm. More episodes: thetechnologyshow.uk

Natalie is joined in the studio by Emma May, founder of Immersed Studios Limited and designer of Quirk — the family card game published by Gibson's — and its new single-player app version, Go Quirk, available on iOS, Android and Steam.

Emma's route into game development wasn't through a computer science degree — she started as an artist. She shares how she taught herself to code by breaking problems into tiny pieces, finding YouTube tutorials, and refusing to be stopped by not knowing the answer yet. Her advice for anyone who wants to build a game: just start.

They also get into the challenges of being a woman in a male-dominated industry, why Emma finds the "I'm an artist, not a programmer" mindset more limiting than gender ever was, and what it really takes to test your idea with an audience beyond family and friends.

Guest: Emma May, Immersed Studios Limited — Go Quirk available on iOS, Android and Steam

Recorded for The Technology Show on Voice FM 103.9, Southampton — broadcast 9 August 2024. Listen live on Fridays at 1pm. More episodes: thetechnologyshow.uk

Keith Broni is editor-in-chief of Emojipedia, the web's go-to emoji reference, and in this short episode he explains why those little yellow faces matter more than we think. There are now close to 4,000 emojis, yet most of us stick to about four a day (Gen Z manage six). Research from Three UK suggests a third of people are unsure which emoji to use, and one in four have sent one that didn't mean what they thought it did.

Keith explains how the same emoji can be drawn differently on Android and Apple devices, so a polite giggle can arrive as a shocked stare, and how meanings shift over time: for Gen Z the skull now means 'I'm dying laughing' and the baseball cap means 'you're capping', or lying. Natalie wonders whether the green being-sick face might one day mean something cool. Keith isn't convinced yet.

He also talks about 'social fitness' (using the digital tools in our pockets to build stronger connections with friends, family and colleagues) and the Mind, Body and Scroll event he took part in with Three UK in London.

Guest: Keith Broni, editor-in-chief, Emojipedia (emojipedia.org)

Recorded for The Technology Show on Voice FM 103.9, Southampton — broadcast 2 August 2024. Listen live on Fridays at 1pm. More episodes: thetechnologyshow.uk