Our Team

Soon after graduating in physics in 1972, John found himself working for Cutler-Hammer NZ designing microprocessor supervisory, control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems for South Australian Railways and Sydney County Council. 
 
This experience in the early adoption of a new disruptive digital technology inspired John’s “possibility” mind-set and set him on a trajectory of innovation.
 
He started his own electronics and software design consultancy and was commissioned to design many industrial and commercial systems. Among these was a microprocessor weighing and production control system for wire manufacturing, a spot welding machine digital controller, a messaging system for large electromagnetic and LED outdoor advertising displays, a numerical machine controller for the manufacture of printed circuit boards, a digital codec for wireless data transmission and radio paging and a vehicle speed detection system.
 
With this experience behind him, John saw the possibility of developing commercial software with scalable global potential and took the opportunity to work for an enterprising South African company to develop a complete financial and point of sale system for furniture and clothing retailers, known as Furnpac and Ragpac.
 
Returning to New Zealand in 1987, John co-founded Pacific Business Systems (now Excellent Software and Services) and developed a successful big ticket retail point of sale system known as Retail-Plus and a hire purchase ledger financial control system.
 
In 1997, John and his family who had all become confirmed café junkies were inspired to find a way to make life easier for waiters. The dream was to create a ground-breaking and innovative new hospitality point of sale system, encompassing wireless hand held technology for taking orders from tables. Wi-Fi was not available for portable devices at the time, so the solution required the design of a plug-in digital wireless transceiver circuit board for the Palm Pilot PDA and a corresponding wireless base station transceiver.
 
The solution John designed utilised a UHF FM narrow frequency band, with a range of 300 metres. Extremely low power consumption was a design objective with four days battery life being achieved through the use of CMOS technology.  In order to keep hardware production costs down, collision avoidance, radio noise filtering, and error checking and correction were designed into the transceiver software drivers rather than the hardware.
 
The success and reliability of this mobile solution, known as WizBang Waiter at the time, was the genesis of WizBang Technologies.
 
Today, John leads WizBang Technologies, with the single-minded purpose of driving innovation and growing global distribution channels.
 
In his time off, you’ll find John sampling local hospitality with family and friends, keeping fit pounding the streets or swimming at the local beach where he currently lives in Millwater, Auckland. He also somehow finds time to fuel his fascination for science and technology, especially cosmology which seems to resonate with his curiosity about the nature of things. John is also passionate and concerned about environmental issues, food quality, food supply and organics, and thinks the extraordinary movie “Food, Inc” should be mandatory viewing for all!

He has worked in different roles over the years within Wizbang and most recently came on board at the beginning of 2018 as a company director to aid John in leading the family business. He oversees various areas of the business and is passionate about developing those around him to deliver sustained long-term performance outcomes in this fast-changing world.

He enjoys being on and in the water, as he’s a keen surfer and paddleboarder. Every January you’ll find him camping near a beach with his wife and three young kids.

Fun fact: Jamie travelled with his wife through 15 countries in 3 continents in 2004. He has travelled through the Amazon jungle in Bolivia, obtained a dive license in Egypt and enjoyed a wildlife safari in Kenya.