Rufus Grig

What has been your personal highlight of 2020?

At work - helping tens of thousands of our customers switch to homeworking and keeping frontline staff in hospitals, care homes and local authorities connected and communicating delivering key services.

Personally - a sell-out reunion gig for our band. That was on 4 January. Frankly 2020 has been a bit downhill since then.

Which three celebrities would you invite to a Zoom party?

Eddie Izzard, Graham Garden, and Yo-Yo Ma.

What has been your guiltiest lockdown pleasure?

Working at home in bare feet when it was hot in the spring and summer.

Which tech figurehead has inspired you most this year, and why?

I think the tech community has in general been terrific this year in supporting the efforts against the pandemic - but I might have to go for Bill Gates again for his work supporting vaccine development.

What piece of technology, or app, have you not been able to do without during the pandemic?

My hands-free speakerphone (an Avaya B109 for those who care). It has saved my ears from death by headphones.

If you could be anyone else for a week, who would you be and what would you do?

I'd be an astronaut on the International Space Station and I would watch the Earth from up high, do summersaults in zero-G and generally be in space.

Do you miss face-to-face events?

Absolutely! But not at ExCeL or the NEC.

How will COVID leave its mark on the way the channel operates long term?

It has accelerated cloud and digital transformation by at least three to five years - it's like we've time travelled to 2023. This will have profound implications for anyone who thought they could gently navigate from legacy to next gen.