Rosie Project (Simsion)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1956-57
• Where—Auckland, New Zealand
• Education—B.S, Monash University; M.B.A., Deakin University;
   Ph.D., University of Melbourne; Advanced Diploma, Screen-
   writing, RMIT*
• Awards—Victorian Premier's Unpublished Manuscript Award
• Currently—lives in Fitzroy, Victoria, Australia


Graeme C. Simsion is a New Zealand born Australian author, screen-writer, playwright and data modeller. He won the 2012 Victorian Premier's Unpublished Manuscript Award for his book, The Rosie Project.

Prior to writing fiction he was an information systems consultant and wrote two books and several papers about data-modelling. He established a consulting business in 1982 and sold it in 1999. At that time Simsion Bowles and Associates had over seventy staff. He co-founded a wine distribution business, Pinot Now with Steven Naughton.

From 2002-2006, as a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, he conducted the largest published study of data modeling practitioners (489 participants, most with substantial industry experience), to address the question, Is data modeling better characterized as description or design? The research included interviews with thought leaders, surveys of practitioners, and practical modeling tasks.

He concluded that, in contrast to the assumption implicit in most data modeling research, data modeling is best characterized as a design discipline (the term design is used in the broad sense of design theory, rather than its more narrow and casual usage in the information systems field). His work was published as his PhD thesis "Data Modeling: Description or Design," University of Melbourne, 2006 and in Data Modeling Theory and Practice (Technics Publications, 2007).

He is married to Professor Anne Buist and has two children. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/03/2013.)

* RMIT is the renamed Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology