Hello, I'm Gilbert West. I build tools to help people and their organisations.

I'm always open to discussing what I can bring to interesting, impactful projects.

// Articles

Below are my latest articles. I've been writing about whatever takes my fancy since 2007, often with multi-year gaps.

A happy coincidence

I rewatched an old Ted Talk that made a great impression on me when they first started publishing. I couldn't believe this one was from 2006, nearly 20 years ago. Sadly, Ken Robinson, passed away on 2020. I've resolved to watch it at least once a year and I hope you will too. It's one of the funniest and most poignant Ted Talks. Rewatching it today gave rise to a wonderful coincidence.

Boo hoo. Don't be mean to advertisers

Silicon Valley's belief in free speech doesn't stand one simple test. You cannot comment on ads on their platforms.

Remember 20% Percent time?

Enlightened companies since the 90s (as far as I know) had given some of their employees 1 day per week to work on side projects. Their motivation was to incubate new ideas that they legally owned. It's apparently how GMail and Google Maps were born.
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There are another 26 articles covering bikes, books, business and coding.

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// Side Projects

Below is a selection of pro bono and personal side-projects that I have built in recent years.
It is not a portfolio of my professional work for clients.

Solar Paths

A thought experiment in co-locating solar panels alongside rural active travel paths in order to reduce the need for grant funding, increase their feasibility by reducing land purchase barriers and getting greater community benefit than conventional models..

Carbon.scot

A tracker of progress towards decarbonising Scotland's economy. This is a data heavy project with over 21 million records analysed and presented as charts. New data is gathered every few seconds from a variety of sources.

Renewables Today newsletter

A free bi-weekly roundup of news from the world of renewable energies every 1st and 3rd Monday of the month.

Public sector renewables league table for Scotland

An annual survey a league table of local authorities and health boards in Scotland to track their roll out of renewables.

Love Dumfries (on behalf of DPAG)

Directory of businesses, clubs, services and events in Dumfries. Free listings for anything in Dumfries.

// Launching soon

Missing Links (on behalf of Cycling Dumfries)

Missing Links are the gaps in the active travel infrastructure in and around Dumfries. The project began as a series of blog posts by Cycling Dumfries, morphed into a community funded book and is now a website for tracking progress towards filling in the gaps.

The Ratchet Podcast

Plumbers, electricians, HVAC and wind turbine engineers will save the world. We interview the people wearing the hard hats and working at the 'coal face' of the energy transition and find out how they got where they are and learn about the opportunities in a variety of sectors.