About Paul Dobinson

I’m Paul Dobinson. I write about Salesforce, AI, and the messier bits of enterprise technology, with the occasional detour into rugby, football, books, and life in Sydney.

I grew up in Plymouth and studied maths and sports science at the University of Birmingham, specialising in sports psychology, motivation and goal setting. Later, I did an MBA at Leicester University, studying remotely from the beaches of Bermuda, which felt like the right way to do a business degree.

I spent nine years in Bermuda, helping build a digital agency from the ground up. I also played rugby for Bermuda, picked up a few international caps, and made the most of living so close to the USA and Caribbean. There was plenty of travel, probably too much rum, and it’s where I met my South African wife.

Before Australia, we took a year out to travel the world, including six months in South America, where we got engaged. We eventually got married twice, once in North America and once in South Africa, and honeymooned in Asia. Apparently one wedding wasn’t enough.

Ten years ago we landed in Sydney with two suitcases and no real plan beyond staying for a while. We’re still here. We’ve got a young Australian son, two dogs, a Staffy who thinks he’s in charge and a Golden Retriever who definitely isn’t.

I eventually stopped playing rugby in my forties, but sport is still a big part of life. These days it’s football, futsal, cycling and running, with a fair amount of red wine and beer mixed in.

Professionally, I’ve spent nearly two decades working across enterprise technology, including Salesforce, CRM, MuleSoft, integration, consulting, sales and partnerships. More recently, I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to work out what AI actually means for enterprise software, rather than what the marketing says it means.

That’s mostly what I write about here. The practical stuff underneath the hype: how technology gets sold, implemented and actually used, where it goes wrong, and what might genuinely change because of AI.

I read a lot too, mostly business books and biographies, and review them over at Paul’s Paperbacks. No scores, just honest opinions.

If you want the short version: one Englishman, one Australian passport, too many opinions about software and sport, and a habit of writing them down.