TechBlackboard builds and applies practical technology, products and systems for sustainability, enterprise and real-world environments.
The group
TechBlackboard builds its own products, advises organisations on technology decisions, and runs real-world experiments. Each activity checks the other two: a recommendation we would not build on ourselves is not one we give.
We build and operate our own software, because running a product teaches things that advising on one never will.
We help organisations choose, shape and integrate technology that fits their context — including the decision not to replace something that already works.
We test ideas in real environments — farms, remote sites, constrained hardware — before they become recommendations.
Products
Software and hardware we operate ourselves — which means we carry the consequences of our own architecture decisions.
Sustainability Technology
Live product
Sustainability work, without the chaos.
A platform for managing sustainability information, assessment, evidence, actions, workflows and reporting — built for organisations that have to produce defensible disclosures without a large sustainability department.
Applied Field Technology
TechBlackboard Labs project
Technology built for the field.
Sensing, telemetry and edge systems for places where connectivity is unreliable, power is limited and equipment gets wet. FieldLab is where our environmental monitoring and offline-first field data work is developed and tested.
Consulting
Our areas of practice, connected by one question: what does this organisation actually need?
Making the systems an organisation already runs on work better — and connecting them to the ones it needs next.
Applying AI where it measurably reduces effort or error — and saying so plainly when it does not.
The structural decisions that are expensive to reverse later: boundaries, data, integration, security.
Sustainability reporting is a data and evidence problem before it is a disclosure problem.
Systems that have to keep working when the network does not.
From a problem worth solving to something real enough to test with users.
Philosophy
The best technology is not necessarily the newest or most sophisticated. It is the technology that fits the context and creates meaningful outcomes.
Every recommendation we make passes through the same sequence. Skipping the first three steps is how organisations end up with impressive systems nobody uses.
What actually hurts, and for whom.
The people, existing systems and way the organisation really works.
Cost, infrastructure, capability, maintainability, security.
Only now: what to build, buy, integrate or leave alone.
A measurable change in how the work gets done.
Experience
Two decades of enterprise systems work, plus the hardware and AI work we run today.
These are technologies we have worked with directly. Experience with a technology does not imply an official partnership, certification or endorsement by its vendor.
Organisations do not start from zero. We modernise systems pragmatically — retaining what works, replacing what creates friction, and integrating new capabilities where they create measurable value.
Where the process starts, in VBA or Apps Script
When it needs approvals
When it becomes the system of record
When it needs to connect
When the volume outgrows the people
Every stage on this line is still running in production somewhere, in an organisation that depends on it. That is the point.
Labs
A selection of what is currently running, prototyped, or still an open question.
A low-cost weather and soil monitoring station running on solar power at a working farm, reporting over intermittent mobile coverage.
The open question
How much useful agronomic signal can you get from hardware cheap enough to lose?
A field gateway that buffers sensor data locally and reconciles it when a connection returns, rather than assuming one exists.
The open question
What is the smallest reliable sync protocol for a site that is offline half the week?
A chat assistant embedded in GIS tooling that understands the layers actually loaded and can execute mapping actions on them.
The open question
Does an assistant with real layer context beat a general chatbot enough to justify the integration?
Ecosystem
TechBlackboard works with technology providers, specialists, consultants, research organisations and implementation partners to deliver solutions appropriate to each context.
We are formalising this ecosystem. Partnerships are listed here only once the relationship has been confirmed with the other party — a policy that costs us a longer page and buys accuracy.
Media
A TechBlackboard publication
Exploring agriculture through technology, science and hands-on field experience.
Field notes, experiments and explanations from real agricultural work — what was measured, what was built, and what did not survive contact with a rainy season. Agritech Life is a knowledge and media initiative, not a software product.
About
TechBlackboard exists to bridge the gap between new technology and the realities of organisations, people and physical environments.
The most useful first conversation is about what is not working — not about which platform to buy.