Ant Solomon is one of Aqua's longest standing employees, going
on 13 years now, and I was excited to chat to him about his recent
promotion to chief technology officer. Ant is a dynamic man, and
whether you spent two minutes or two hours talking technology to
him, it's immediately obvious how passionate he is on his
discipline.
Running an army
Ant runs one of the bigger teams at Aqua: sitting at 14 team
members reporting to him, it's not hard to imagine that when it
comes to Ant's brand new role, the pressure is on. Luckily for
Aqua, pressure isn't something Ant shies away from. Having started
at Aqua in 1999 as a junior developer, he was bumped up to
developer with tech lead following and, not long after, tech &
development manager. In September this year, Ant received some very
good and some slightly sad news. Zsolt Votin had decided to spend a
while abroad with his family and therefore passed on an opportunity
to his protégé, the prestigious position of chief technology
officer.
Big shoes to fill
In my interview with Ant, he states that although Zsolt has left
very big shoes to fill, he's going to tackle his new role with both
hands and all his might. Having a great team behind him, he's
confident that together they can achieve his outlaid goals and take
Aqua to new and even better heights. I asked Ant what his goals
were, and he listed an impressive number of tasks ahead:
- Enhance strategy and develop frameworks to include mobile
- Utilise HTML5 in rich application development, due to the
changing landscape of Flash, for fuller solution campaigns
- Focus on social media-an opportunity to integrate development
and applications into strategic and creative campaigns
It's a revolution
Ant has watched Aqua revolutionise itself from what started out
as a very tech-based team into a conceptual and creative staff
complement, which was what led Aqua into the new realm of digital
agencies. Having learnt from that, Ant sees Aqua as a strategically
focused agency that encompasses social media, creative development
and design through the art of technology. He's embraced the 'less
big idea, more client value' theory, and is taking that with him
along for the ride.
Congratulations on your promotion, Ant, we're behind you all the
way!