Doug Robbins

Technologist I (Forteau office)

Tel: 709-931-2072
Fax: 709-931-2370
Mail: P.O. Box 40, Main Street, Forteau, NL, A0K 2P0

Biography

Born and raised in St. John's, Newfoundland, Doug completed Bachelors and Masters degrees at Memorial University of Newfoundland, specializing in Archaeology. His PhD studies at McGill University, Montreal were waylaid in 1991 by an intense craving for gainful employment (see next paragraph. A desire to complete that PhD thesis still lingers...) From 1978 to 1990 he worked at numerous historic and prehistoric sites in Newfoundland and Labrador, including 12 seasons at the 16th century Basque whaling site at Red Bay, Labrador.

In 1991 Doug accepted the position of Executive Director with the Labrador Straits Historical Development Corporation (LSHDC), a position he was to hold for the next 10 years. The LSHDC is a regional, non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and enhancement of the region's heritage and historic resources. Working in partnership with other agencies and government the LSHDC developed a thriving heritage tourism industry in the Labrador Straits.

Since the early 1980s Doug has been involved with several Information Technology projects (though, in the early years, he did not recognize them as such). Early in his involvement with the Basque Archaeology Project at Red Bay he development a cataloguing system for archaeological artifacts, using dBase II. That system, with refinements, persisted for some 10 years and came to include more that 50,000 entries. During his time at McGill University in the late 1980s he developed an "Annotated Bibliography" system using dBase III and (later, a big mistake) dBase IV, used by fellow graduate students (for some years after his departure) as well as himself.

In the 1990s, after acquiring official Labrador residency, Doug became active in a number of IT projects through Labrador Software, Inc., a Labrador Straits company. These included: development of the Labrador Straits Tourism Database (initially a kiosk application and later a CD release), the Labrador Business Database (for the Voisey's Bay Nickel Co.) and the Economic Development E-Reference (for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency). The latter two were developed using Microsoft Access, a product which he vows never again to use (unless, of course, very well paid).

In 1996 Doug launched the Labrador Straits website -- Labrador's first regional website -- which has since grown immensely in scope and popularity. Since then his web skills has progresses significantly (or so he likes to think). Currently his web development is focused on the use of PHP and MySQL technologies. Doug's passion regarding today's Internet is web independence, meaning, simply, utilization of the web as it was originally conceived: as a platform- and browser-independent communications vehicle, a concept which seems to escape many of today's web developers.

Doug joined the SmartLabrador Initiative in September, 2001.