When David’s family asked me to say a few words today, I had mixed emotions about standing here. Initially I felt honoured to be asked, then I realised I was faced with the dilemma of recollecting suitable tales which would be appropriate to share in a church !!!! Needless to say I have gone with the safe options ! David started his career with Synchro back in 1998 on a six month trial basis. When I first met David he was a gangly looking youth all arms and legs with a ruck sack that was permanently attached to his back. David always used to call his rucksack the parachute. His only means of transport at that time was an old racing bike the likes of which I hadn’t seen since watching an episode of last of the summer wine. David’s first role within the company was working on the Rugby World cup project and he was asked to carry out the very simple task of creating seating plans for the venues involved in the tournament. It was apparent from these early days that David had a flair for technology and whenever he thought he could get away with it he would forget all about his rather mundane seating plan creations and set off in the direction of what ever piece of equipment that he would decide to take apart on that particular day. Taking equipment apart and analysing software became quite a popular pastime of David’s. Whatever task he should have been carrying out you could guarantee that you would find him with either a printer in bits on a desk or telling a senior programmer that their programming was seriously lacking in performance. I distinctly remember one day being called into Paul Williamson’s office who was then MD of the company. Paul had a smile on his face, I knew it meant trouble. Paul said to me I’ve got some good news for you, you are about to have a new member of staff in your department……………….. I looked at Paul and said………….Not the gangly youth on the bike !!!!! So, David had passed his probationary period with flying colours and he was to start working in my department immediately. In the early days we broke him in gently and we used to send him out visiting clients to perform system upgrades and also his favourite pastime of mending ticket printers. After a few struggles in the early days of getting David to remember to take either his tools or his software with him he started to show some real potential of becoming a serious and gifted member of staff and ever so often he would come up with an idea or a suggestion which was bordering on pure genius. We gradually allowed David more responsibility and we started to challenge his bright and eager young mind with more problems he would take them on board digest them and come up with fixes and solutions. When challenged in the right way David would appear as though he had been an IT professional for years but in fact was he was still only in his early twenties. Over the next few years David got his head down and worked hard and became an expert in the field of Credit Card processing systems. I doubt if there is anyone who could match David’s vast knowledge and experience of how to configure and install such complex systems with so many different variables and components. Such is the complexity of this work that many have tried to get their heads around these products but given up in shear frustration at the complexity of the setup and configurations. To David this was fun and exciting and he could talk confidently and knowledgably to anyone at any level and still not be daunted by the vast amounts of money which passed through the systems which he had configured. Another invaluable skill that David had was in the area of systems performance and speed. If a client called with a problem with a slow database or a server that wasn’t performing as they expected it to there was only one direction that query would go and that would be straight to David. He was well know within the organisation to have a real passion and flair for this area of work and for this reason he would be the first person I would pick on to take with me for technical client meetings and he was my secret weapon. On many occasions I could be sitting in a meeting with David next to me and I could be faced with a bombardment of technical queries which merely bamboozled me, at an appropriate moment I would look at David and ask him to comment and then sit back comfortable in the knowledge that their techies were no where near as good as mine ! In fact few were ever in the same league. In 2005 David announced the fact that he had met the love of his life and as ever with David, nothing was straight forward as his love interest wasn’t exactly a local. Annemiek live just a short distance away in Holland. Over the next 2 years there was only one important day in David’s week and that was a Friday, the day that either he flew to Holland or Annemiek flew to England. It was quite apparent even in the early stages of their relationship that David was determined to start a new life in Holland with Annemiek and rather selfishly I tried to persuade David to get Annemiek to come to England. My best persuasion attempts failed miserably but for me their was a compromise by David going to Holland still as a TM employee where I knew I could still “pick his brains” and remain in contact. Tragically as we all know life for David and Annemiek in Holland took a dramatic turn for the worse. Now at this point for those of you who are not familiar with the phrase you’ve been “pottered” I would like to explain a little more. Each and everyone one of us at some point has been “pottered” For me this would be David telling me that I was useless at planning his work schedule or he would be telling our head of development that there were better ways to be writing software and that we should consider the potter style of programming to be the best. Probably the most famous recipient of being “pottered” is a man called Terry Barnes who is the CEO of Ticketmaster in the US. This is a man who is as high up in the Ticketmaster organisation as you can possibly get. Ticketmaster were celebrating 25 years of business and to mark the occasion Terry sent out an email which contained a timeline of activities of TM over their 25 year history. Included in this timeline were the acquisitions of various companies which TM had acquired however Synchro had been omitted from this timeline. David being David was not happy to be excluded and sent Terry Barnes an email telling him that it wasn’t good enough that we had been excluded and he that he wasn’t very impressed. Terry sent an apology to David and he ordered the re-design and reissue of the timeline to the whole of the TM world. Now David was on a roll, not only had Terry Barnes been pottered once but he was about to be Pottered for the second time. For the 25 year celebration every member of Ticketmaster staff were to receive a 25 year celebration birthday cake. The day of “cake” as it was know came and went but sadly we didn’t see any cake, you guessed it David was straight back onto Terry Barnes telling him yet again it wasn’t good enough and we wanted cake. Once again terry apologised and ensured that every Ticketmaster UK employee received a cake. A few weeks after all of this, Chris Edmonds who is the managing director of TM UK attended a conference in the US. Terry Barnes was also in attendance at the same conference. Terry Barnes went to speak to Chris Edmonds, you would expect Terry to ask the usual questions of how business was in the UK or how many tickets had we sold, but all Terry wanted to know was…. who is this David Potter guy !!!!!!!!!! I could stand here all day and recollect tales of people being pottered or the many examples of pure genius which David often portrayed, but sadly I have to sit back down at some point, but before I do it would be inappropriate for me to go without saying a massive thank you to that gangly youth on the bike who grew to be a hugely respected and well loved colleague and friend. By just being himself David endeared himself to everyone he ever met and I along with many others will miss him dearly.