Lewis Jenkins: Head of Roaming
Quickfire
What's your go-to karaoke song (if you had to choose one)?
Maybe something easy like: Sympathy For The Devil by The Rolling Stones.
If you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would it be and why?
Leonardo Da Vinci - He was a master of interdisciplinary thinking. Not many people like that.
Do you have a favourite book, movie, or TV show that you recommend to everyone?
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
The whole book is a conversation between a man and a gorilla. Fantastic read!
Can you describe your role at Clenergy in one line?
Software, Integrations and Roaming - oh my.
What’s your favourite part of your job or the work you do?
Other than the team, of course; I enjoy working with the OCPP & OCPI Protocols.
But what I really enjoy is the competitive nature of working in a new industry.
Longer read
How do you relax after a busy working week?
I tend to spend my down time with my family. My daughter Eleanor is almost 5 now, so we play a lot these days. She can even play Mario Kart.
Personally though I spend my time playing video games and the odd bit of passion programming.
If you could shadow anyone in the company for a day, who would it be and what would you want to learn from them?
Probably somebody from the office.
I like the idea of finding something done in the office and offering software to help or even automate it.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, professionally or personally?
Write it down.
It sounds simple but the lesson really was to transfer thoughts to paper.
A couple of boxes connected by some arrows, bits of text etc. It can all help keep you focused and on goal.
What’s the most memorable project you’ve worked on, either here or in a previous job?
It was at Clenergy EV. When I joined the company we did not have roaming but it was quickly becoming something we needed to stay competitive. I had not long joined and although I had experience in building software I was still new to Javascript, MongoDB and our entire tech stack.
Working with protocols is something I have done a lot. So when I was asked to pick up OCPI/OICP for Clenergy I felt pretty happy. My first big task was a familiar one but in a new technical environment.
I soon adjusted to passing around JSON objects instead of byte arrays. Asynchronous functions instead of threads. Modules instead of classes. It was a fantastic project that kept my whiteboard busy & taught me a lot. But most of all it was fun and engaging.