Graeme C. Simsion

Who is Graeme C. Simsion?

Graeme C. Simsion is a New Zealand born Australian author, screen-writer, playwright and data modeller. He won the 2012 Victorian Premier's Unpublished Manuscript Award for his book, The Rosie Project. Text Publishing has sold the rights to the book internationally for over $1.8m. The screenplay has been optioned to Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Prior to writing fiction he was an information systems consultant and wrote two books and several papers about data-modelling. He established a consulting business in 1982 and sold it in 1999. At that time Simsion Bowles and Associates had over seventy staff. He co-founded a wine distribution business, Pinot Now with Steven Naughton.

From 2002-2006, as a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, he conducted the largest published study of data modeling practitioners, to address the question Is data modeling better characterized as description or design? The research included interviews with thought leaders, surveys of practitioners, and practical modeling tasks.

He concluded that, in contrast to the assumption implicit in most data modeling research, data modeling is best characterized as a design discipline. His work was published as his PhD thesis Data Modeling: Description or Design, University of Melbourne, 2006 and in Data Modeling Theory and Practice.