I’m a radio presenter with Clyde 1 where I host the weekday 10am-2pm slot and Sundays 8am-12noon. There’s a lot of music on my show but I like to get the listeners involved as much as I can via their phone calls, text messages and increasingly, Facebook and Twitter. Since last April I’ve been working in television too, as the gadget expert on STV’s “The Hour”.

What inspires you?

Broadcasting to the people of Scotland gives me a huge buzz and is a privilege. I started off in journalism and that curiosity about the people and the world around me is the reason I go to work each day. There’s nothing makes me happier than finding a listener with a story to tell and putting them on the radio. Almost everyone listens to the radio while they’re doing something else so reaching out to them and making a connection is the biggest challenge of my job but when it pays off it puts me on a massive high.

In your opinion what are the biggest issues that digital could be used to address?

At the risk of sounding like a self help manual or an old BT advert, I do believe human beings work best when we work with others. 2 people who’ve never met and are thousands of miles apart could have the solution to each other’s problems. The digital world we live in now makes it easier for these people to find each other and collaborate.

Recently, I saw a powerful example of Twitter being used to fight crime. A woman in Glasgow suffered a horrific sex attack and one radio station bombarded its followers with the victim’s descriptions of those responsible. The speed with which those details made their way all over the world was incredible and as more people see its potential Twitter will eventually help catch criminals.

Who/ What is the next big thing?

If I knew that I’d be working with them! My wife’s a school teacher and through her work I’ve seen a new generation coming through who don’t recognize any division between old and new media. They see no barriers to creating and distributing their content and have no respect for so called heritage brands. They have an idea they want to pursue, or something they want to say and they find a way and go and do it. There’s a wealth of talent in music, animation, film making, business, marketing etc and it is just about to explode and it will be a massive challenge for the rest of us to stay relevant. To a 12 year old girl in my wife’s English class it is absolutely alien that she should ever spend time listening to a radio station playing a song she doesn’t like, or sitting through adverts in the middle of X Factor. And as she gets older if she wants to read about what’s going on in her local area it makes no difference to her whether she finds that content in the pages of her local newspaper or on the blog of some citizen journalist. So the next big thing, right now, is in the mind of a teenager probably messing around with a mobile phone or laptop in their bedroom and we should all prepare for an exciting roller coaster ride of more change and possibilities.

The best advice I was ever given ….

“Just be yourself” is a mantra for many of us in the media. It really does work but it has to start with “find out who you really are” and that’s quite a difficult process to go through. Worth doing though.

In 5 years time …….

I know what all the questions are but have none of the answers so I’m not even going to attempt.

I will make 2 points with reasonable certainty…

I) In 5 years time Scotland will be regarded as a world leader in the creative industries
II) A young man or woman, who’s at school as a write this will have the wealth and power Simon Cowell currently enjoys.

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