Rupert Mills

What has been your personal highlight of 2020?

Keeping Krome pushing forwards and hitting growth year on year has always been a target and achieving that again this year, even with the pandemic has been a great achievement for all of our team. On a personal level, achieving a better work/life balance with enforced working from home has also been a highlight.

Which three celebrities would you invite to a Zoom party?

Jenson Button, Mark Webber and Daniel Ricciardo. I'm a motorsport fan and I think they'd be open with their opinions and have some interesting stories.

What has been your guiltiest lockdown pleasure?

YouTube, I've stopped watching a lot of TV and just started subscribing to content I think is good on YouTube, it's addictive.

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

I think Michael Dell with his views on moving towards a complete service model and Tim Cook for saying that he's looking forward to people returning to offices for the benefits of communicating informally with your colleagues.

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

Teams, my headset and webcam: keeping in contact with people either in our team or customers and suppliers when you can't meet physically is just so much better now than it would have been 10 years ago.

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

I think I'd be Elon Musk just to see what's going on in that head. I'd go take a look at what's coming in the future for SpaceX and Tesla.

Do you miss face-to-face events?

Honest answer to that is "some", I miss meeting up with people in the smaller gatherings and getting to talk properly, I'm not sure that I miss the big glitzy vendor events as they don't allow you to have real conversations.

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

It would certainly appear at this point that COVID is bringing with it a recession and as we've seen before in recession, those in our market who don't add value to what they sell will likely struggle for business. I think now more than ever before, it's being able to deliver a consistent service that makes the difference.