About this site

This site contains a series of bulletins and essays that deliberately mix up my business activities — as DJ Alchemi Ltd — and the stuff that excites me as a consumer, punter or amateur. It's deliberate because these feed off each other, and interesting stuff happens in the interstices between culture and business. Whisk them up in an unholy brew and create opportunities for alchemy to happen.

The DJ comes from the initials of my name rather than anything to do with playing records. Some people ask how the 'alchemi' name came about. It was a snap decision, made one afternoon in 1999 under the constraint of time and the requirement that it had to begin with an 'a'.

Some of the rest of this page is written in the third person because it sounds even more pompous in the first person.

DJ Alchemi Ltd

DJ Alchemi Ltd was incorporated in 1999, and absorbed the business created by David Jennings, trading under the name of DJ Associates, since 1992. The company is wholly owned by David Jennings.

DJ Alchemi Ltd carries out projects that integrate the fields of learning, psychology, online/interactive media and music. The company achieves this integration by drawing on the extensive experience and network of contacts of David Jennings across each of these fields.

The historical client list for these projects includes:

  • Ufi (learndirect)
  • Forced Entertainment
  • British Standards Institute
  • National Centre for Popular Music
  • Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
  • Department for Education and Skills
  • General Telecom/Telewest
  • Trades Union Congress
  • Yorkshire Forward
  • North West NODE
  • FD Learning

In 2008 I've done work for lots of acronyms:

  • NESTA — National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts
  • NCSL — National College for School Leadership
  • NCETM — National Centre for Excellence in Teaching of Mathematics
  • mica — Music Information Centre Austria
  • JISC — Joint Information Systems Committee

On three of these assignments I've worked in partnership with Seb Schmoller. I've also worked with Luke Razzell, Nancy Baym and Eleanor Ford as collaborators.

DJ Alchemi is a Limited Company registered in England and Wales (Number 3824672). The Registered Office is 8 Matham Grove, London SE22 8PN. The VAT Registration Number is 737 5823 06.

Contact DJ Alchemi Ltd/David Jennings

David Jennings

David Jennings

I began my career as an occupational psychologist, working on the human factors of corporate IT systems in the 1980s. As the application of technology broadened into more and more domains, and beyond corporate functions, I sought out the areas where IT affects team communications, learning and creative production — the places where sensitivity to human and social characteristics is most critical.

Currently I'm interested in creating online environments that help people learn and discover things that interest, excite and challenge them — in particular how we forage our way around a world of cultural surplus where everything is available on-demand and we have to decide for ourselves what to attend to next. My recent book explores the mix of social networking, automated recommendations (such as Amazon's) and trusted gatekeepers that aids discovery.

I have three degrees in psychology and communications, am registered as a Chartered Psychologist, and am a Fellow of the RSA: you can download full details of positions held, qualifications and so on in my CV/Resumé (PDF file, 98 KB).

As well as being the sole director of DJ Alchemi Ltd, I have held non-executive director positions for:

I come from a long line of patent attorneys: my grandfather, father and uncle were all partners in Gill, Jennings and Every, who worked for Frank Whittle in connection with his invention of the jet engine, and John Logie Baird, co-inventor of television.

Contact DJ Alchemi Ltd/David Jennings