A lifelong amateur entomologist and more recently a specialist in European parasite flies and one of the founders of the Tachinid Recording Scheme. My role as the Manager of the UK Species Inventory at the Natural History Museum makes good use of my commercial experience in software/database development and my involvement in amateur taxonomy and biological recording. My main focus is in identifying insects and from my childhood I have always needed to know what everything is. Currently I spend a lot of my time mentoring amateurs in identification skills and encouraging novices to be curious about the natural world.