Sir Ian Taylor
Ian's story mirrors New Zealand's growth from its days as an agriculture-based economy where he laboured in the freezing works during the school holidays. Through the swinging 60s and 70s he was a singer in a rock and roll band, before being called up in the army. By 1980, he had completed a law degree and started an entirely new career in television, where he was part of an industry that went from black-and-white film to colour video and on into the digital age.
Today, working from their base in Dunedin, ARL (Animation Research Limited) covers sports events all over the world. They also have a joint venture with Airways New Zealand, who market the Air Traffic Control Simulator ARL built for them something they had never built before. They continue to service the F1 Race Car simulator they built for one of the world’s leading F1 Race Teams. They had never built one before. They built an online Risk Assessment platform for one of the world’s largest mining companies. They had never built one before. They built an online application to demonstrate the power of the IBM cloud-based analytics engine, which they presented to a conference of 22,000 delegates. They built it in three weeks. They had never built one of those before, either.
In 2019, Ian started Land of Voyagers which he says is the “most important work of his life.” Land of Voyagers documents the Polynesian voyage to Aotearoa in a way that’s never been done before, in order educate New Zealanders and to celebrate the incredible story of our Polynesian ancestors.
Watch Sir Ian Taylor's Ted Talk here.