Zach Soijo has worked in IT for more than 25 years, starting on a support desk in 2001, back when he had to explain the internet itself to callers. From there he grew through functional application management, technical management and web development, watching internet and broadband adoption happen from the ground up.
His curiosity for how systems work started even earlier, taking apart and rebuilding home computers and programming music on early MS-DOS software. That hands-on curiosity turned into a lasting interest in IT projects, and from 2002 onward he saw IT's impact accelerate fast, especially once the first iPhone arrived.
What did not keep up was people. Waterfall gave way to Scrum, one technology replaced the next, and even end users struggled to keep track of what they were using and why. There was more to pay attention to, and less reason to stay engaged.
As a functional application manager, back when job openings still had to be faxed to head office to go on the internet, Zach built a small pub quiz to explain the basics of working online, inspired by a colleague who ran themed quiz nights on news, music and sport. It worked. People who were normally guarded around "technical" topics responded with real enthusiasm once the content was broken into short, fun, sharply written pieces.
That is the gamified micro-learning BiDR still runs today. Because Zach's background spans both IT delivery and marketing, landing the message is treated as part of the work, not an afterthought: keep it engaging even inside a serious agile project with a hundred sprints, and run a short, interactive check-in on a regular rhythm. Attention turns into engagement, teams leave with a genuine sense of ownership, and that carries all the way through to the end users who have to adopt the result. Better quality, more engagement, longer retention. That full circle is the mission behind BiDR.
