After leaving Hymers College in 1979, Gary Halliwell had a gap year as a labourer for a local engineering firm before going to Worcester College Oxford to study Geology. After graduating during a recession, he spent two years in Hull before being hired as a diamond exploration geologist in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana. Whilst there, he picked up his interest from computer classes at Hymers and created De Beers first digital field mapping and GIS (Geographic Information System) system.

After 5 years working in Africa and Canada in remote locations, he decided to return to the UK and switch careers; first to a small film company that made films about earth science, then to a digital information company in the financial sector. The rest of his career has been in the US, building data companies, always leveraging new data technologies to disrupt markets like fintech, martech, and now, in live music event information.

His favorite teacher was Mr Watton, a physics teacher whose classes and demonstrations always held Gary's attention and interest the most. "I used to always look forward to Mr Watton's physics demonstrations and practicals as he unfolded the laws of physics to us each week. There were also plenty of lovely eccentric characters like Mr Stiles, whose explosives after-school lecture was unbelievable"

His fondest memory of Hymers is playing soccer every lunchtime in the grounds and muddy suits, especially knees.  He played 2nd and 3rd team rugby.  Gary proudly remembers playing for the Hymer's 3rd team who beat the 2nd team in the final that year.

Gary started Area4 Labs Inc in 2018 and they have just launched their live music coverage for Hull and across the UK on hearby.com.

My co-founder, Ian Condry and I go out to see a lot of live music. We were frustrated that the shows we are interested in were hard to find. So, we launched Hearby, a completely new way to find live music nearby - in and around Hull and in cities across the UK and North America. We use AI to map all the shows from arenas to smaller, more intimate grassroots venues, including 60% of shows not found elsewhere, and we use anthropology to create fun pathways to discovering our local live music scenes.

To read more about Gary, please visit his website www.morethan1000.com 

To find out more about Hearby and the live music happening nearby, please visit their website www.hearby.com