IT Life: The Millionaire Maker

If you’ve ever bought a lottery ticket or a scratch card then you will have been at the mercy of something that Moira Morrison helped design.

She worked for Camelot, the operator behind the games that you hope will make you considerably richer, and is now running a start up, the latest chapter in a career that has spanned over 20 years and countless failed lucky dips.

Luck of the draw

Who do you work for now and how long have you been in IT?

I am doing a business start-up at the moment. I’ve been in IT for 24 years or something like that.

Is there a favourite project that you’ve been involved in during your career?

When I worked with the National Lottery, quite a few things were developed from scratch and I would be involved during the whole lifecycle of a game, from having heard about it as an initial project to it actually appearing in the shops and people playing it.

Is there one project in particular that you enjoyed there though?

I was there through the whole project lifecycle of Euromillions and Thunderball as well as a variety of online games.

What was your role in these projects?

I was part of a software development team. It was quite a large department as there were around 20 people, as well as business analysts and board members. A host of people would be involved in the project and it would take maybe in the region of six months from the first mention of a project to a game going live in the shops.

What technology were you involved with ten years ago?

I was actually with the Lottery at the time and we were replacing the terminals. So that was quite interesting as there were in the region of 35,000 lottery terminals in high street shops and each of these was being replaced by a new brand of terminal. That was quite a major project and it was bespoke stuff, not the kind you could buy from the shop to have in your own house.

What do you expect to be using in ten years?

I think it will go completely in the opposite way towards mobile. I know from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that they’re actually talking about phones becoming more cheap and cheerful so that they will have the same functionality as an iPhone, but cost four times less.

More Millionaires

Who is your tech hero?

I have to say Bill Gates. Steve Jobs, I think he had all the right ideas and I like how he always had the customer in mind, but at the end of the day, it’s Bill Gates who has set up charitable foundations which are on schedule to cancel out many diseases in the world today, so it’s Bill Gates all day.

Who is your tech villain?

I don’t tend to think that way. I can’t think of anybody in the industry immediately that I could give the crown to!

What is your favourite piece of technology?

If I have to choose, it has to be the virtual reality glasses that do what you tell them to do. I would honestly do my shopping in them. It was quite an experience and shows that you can multi-task. I also love Xbox Kinect, I think its brilliant technology.

What is your budget outlook for the next year?

I’m running a startup, so my budget is going to be low unless my product takes off and there’s an audience for it. I’m not imagining I’m going to have a lot of money, although I’m considering having a Groupon event in order to get started.

Apart from your own, which company do you admire the most and why?

Well, I like Camelot because I like the idea of producing millionaires. When I was there, we produced over 2,000 millionaires and I think in a country it raises morale to have millionaires! I like the stories where people had little more than one pound left and they bought a lottery ticket.

I also admire the company behind Angry Birds as well as that came from a very small team, but they were passionate and that’s how you get on in this industry.

What is the greatest challenge facing an IT company today?

I wouldn’t say that the industry has itself sorted out with regards to cybercrime. I think it’s horrendously shocking that we don’t have the tools we need. Since I came off a corporate network and started putting together my own security, I was shocked to find that there’s little or no help when it comes to intruders.

The most vulnerable people, the oldest and the youngest, are not treated with any sympathy. They are seen as stupid. I don’t see anywhere where you can buy the correct tools or anything that resembles cyber-policemen that can get intruders off your system and track them down.

I’ve heard some people say that the solution is to close down your system. That cannot be the way for small businesses in Britain. If they have an intruder on their system, they can’t be expected to close down their system every single time it happens.

You hear about breaches from the big companies, but not from the small ones.

What are your views on the cloud?

The cloud’s alright. A lot of people don’t like the cloud, but the likes of IBM and Google are, in my opinion, the best people to protect the information on it.

And finally, what did you want to be when you were growing up?

An air hostess. It just seemed so glamorous!

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