Prior to his 20 years developing technology solutions, Ed Bowers worked in the arts; ranging from performer to producer to fundraiser. He was involved in a number of non-profit theatre organizations and ran a record breaking tele-funding campaign with Orchestra London.
At one point, helping a friend with a document conversion project he said, “There’s got to be a better way.” This was the start of Ed’s career as a solution developer, with a focus on data and application integration. He has worked with major banks, telcos, a pension fund, and one 3 person boutique office with a pretty cool music royalties search engine. On a contract for a Dept of Defence vendor, Ed worked with front line support staff to create a MS Word app that merged 7 legacy databases into a single search form, resulting in reducing relocation documentation process from 7 days to 20 minutes on a single phone call. While contracted to TD Securities, Ed worked on process improvements to communications and data flow between executive office and exchange floor.
After spending 7 years as head of IT for an international spa/salon chain he wanted to work with projects with more social purpose, which led to Audienceview Ticketing for a short term contract. While there he helped over 70 small to mid-sized theatre companies, choirs, churches (and one big dinner theatre) clean, import and migrate their data such as tickets, contacts and donations. At Grantbook he feels that he has found an ideal launchpad, where he can use all his experiences to help good people do good things.
Things that prevent him from working 24 hours a day include but are not limited to: his partner Thea, cats, travel, birds, jazz, friends, turtles, squirrels, beaches, eating, rivers, iguanas, more jazz, trains, hammocks, photography, sailing, theatre, and the other cats.