Ladies and gentlemen, Danny K’s in the house! Well, no, since Daniel Brett Kopping would never introduce himself as Danny K.
He’d also never handle spiders. Although why anyone would voluntarily remains a phobia-inducing mystery.
Danny Kopping is one of the newest Flow members (he’s joined the development studio), and a more-than-competent musician (he plays the drums).
He spent a year at Switch, an advertising agency in Bryanston, and before that ran his own company, which specialised in PHP and web application development. The majority of his work involved developing systems for small businesses, and occasionally training clients like Discovery, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Vodacom.
After an email and brunch with dev studio head Richard Frank, Danny was sold on Flow – the kind of people who work at Flow are the kind of people with whom Danny wants to expand brain cells. He’s been here for three weeks, and “loves [his] job”, although his “love” could be attributed to meeting Kate Turkington (no introduction needed), who he regards as a local hero.
Reatile Tshikalange, fellow Flow programmer, calls Danny his “Special K” and thinks he “is an interesting character who has [brought] new views and expanded the diverse dynamics of the studio”.
Danny’s interests range far and wide. How far, how wide, you might ask? From science and linguistics, to biology and music – fusion jazz and progressive rock, to be exact.
This ex-member of a metal band dropped out of CTI because “the syllabus was outdated” and he “was not pleased about being taught by second-years instead of lecturers”. He left mainly to pursue his work career more intensely.
Mensa accepted him with open arms after “just an IQ test” and he’s also a member of the Gauteng Skeptics, a club where “members get together to discuss science-y stuff over drinks”.
He’d love to attend a lecture by experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author Stephen Pinker, and thinks the late author and journalist Christopher Hitchens is tops – for his “funny and sharp wit”. He would love to have met Hitchens.
So, when he’s not at his desk furiously programming while listening to audio books, or skateboarding in his spare time, he’s only busy being a genius. Visit him, give him a high-five and then you can tell people that now you know Danny K – Danny Kopping, of course.