Off the Record with Stuart Rawling

Get to know inspirational characters of the Security Industry in GIT SECURITY's new series.

Name: Stuart Rawling
Position, Company: Director of Segment Marketing, Pelco by Schneider Electric and member, ONVIF Steering Committee
Date of Birth: October 19th
Hometown: York, England
Favourite homemade dish: Bread and Butter Pudding

1. Right now: Right Here – is almost a great fat boy slim song.
2. When I’m stressed I drink a lot of coffee.
3. My biggest struggle on a workday is when someone sent 2342348 emails instead of picking up the phone.
4. I can never resist trying to make people laugh. Even at the worst of times, there is always a lighter way to look at the world.
5. My biggest motivation is seeing people who get fired up every day at their job.
6. At 7 o’clock in the morning I am usually 2 hours into my work day.
7. The natural talent I would like to be gifted with is fluency in multiple languages.
8. Guaranteed to make me laugh is a guy called Eddie Izzard.
9. Three characters I would like to have dinner with (dead or alive, fictional or non-fictional) are (Dead) Queen Victoria, (Alive) Stephen Hawking, (Fictional) Captain Kirk.
10. I have the completely useless talent of being able to fall asleep anywhere. Seriously, plane, train, meeting room floor, sat up in a park, anywhere I need to I can make it work.

11. Three things that I am most grateful for in life are my wife and 2 children.
12. The best decision in my career so far was to move to the US and try a career in technology.
13. The best compliment anyone has ever given to me was actually intended as an insult: You care too much for people around you. The business world can be cutthroat, and as a leader you have to make hard decisions that impact people’s lives. The least we can do is be humane and dignified about it, if hard decisions have to be made.
14. If my life was a movie, I would be ­portrayed by Liev Schreiber.  
15. I am entering the wrestling arena and the crowd is calling out my ­wrestling name: “The Geeky Brit!”
16. At the most horrible job I ever had I cleaned the men’s bathroom and locker room at a golf club.
17. The language I would most like to speak is Spanish and I pretend to know how to speak Chinese.
18. The biggest challenge for me/my industry at the moment is we are on a cusp of another game changer – intelligence and ­automation are incoming fast, and cyber security issues are going to start to get painful.
19. When I have done something forbidden I never tell anyone about it except when I catch someone doing the same.
20. The last thing/gadget I bought was a ridiculously expensive, yet amazing OLED TV.

21. In the shower I sing musicals, because I was born for Broadway.
22. As a child I was teased, because I was a know-it-all – but that stopped when it became apparent I could help with homework.
23. The most hideous/favorite piece of clothing I own is in my possession, ­because I never clean out my wardrobe.
24. As a child I collected allergic reactions – I used to drive my poor mother crazy, I am sure.
25. From the first money I earned I bought a terrible CD – anybody remember Shampoo? #Guilty.
26. If I was trapped in a skyscraper for one night, I would sleep on the roof looking at the stars, and watch the sun wake the city slowly. At least that would be the dream, I would freeze my backside off and invariably sleep past sunrise in reality.
27. I was utterly perplexed when people are in a meeting to discuss a topic – and someone wants to take a critical item “offline” – i.e. Have another meeting about it.
28. I would like to have the superhero superpower of mind reading – that has a wide variety of applications.
29. My first car was a Toyota Corolla – silver with only a handful of cracks in the windshield.
30. I had the opportunity to shake hands with too many people who don’t take ­personal hygiene seriously.