Nicholas “Nico” Newhouse

Popcorn Eating Unicorn

(At the moment also known as: Head of Operational Systems & Delivery)

I make complicated things less stupid.

Drones · Emergency Response · Media · AI · Automation · Probably another side project

The graph

Percentages independently verified by absolutely nobody.

Why Problembarn?

I was never particularly good at school.

More accurately, I was never particularly good at learning the way school expected me to.

Give me a real problem, though, and things are very different. I can disappear into something new, teach myself what I need to know, build it, break it, start again and lose considerably more hours to it than was probably reasonable.

As I've got older, I've realised that I actually love learning. I just learn best by doing.

That is probably the common thread between media, cameras, drones, emergency response, software, AI, automation and the strange side projects I've become obsessed with over the years.

So, yes.
Problembarn.
Just perhaps not for the reason my teachers thought.

Nico: Feels a bit LinkedIn-ish?Designer: It is, but own it!

I ask annoying questions

I have a tendency to get stuck on things other people have learned to live with.

Why are we doing it this way?

What are we actually trying to achieve?

Who needs this?

What happens before and after this step?

Could we make it simpler?

Is there a better way?

Most processes exist for a reason. I want to understand the reason before I touch anything.

And only then: is there a tool that could do this better?

Sometimes the answer is a new system.
Sometimes it is an automation.
Sometimes it is changing one stupid step.
And sometimes, annoyingly, the old way was right.

Nico Question Generator

Press the button.
This is f*€ing awesome!

What I actually do

I work somewhere between technology, people and operations.

A lot of my work happens in regulated, safety-critical environments, where understanding why a process exists matters just as much as finding a better way to do it.

These days that means drones, emergency response, workflows, automation, AI, training, operational systems and a suspicious number of APIs.

My job is usually to work out what people are actually trying to achieve, what is getting in the way, and how the pieces need to fit together.

Sometimes that becomes software. Sometimes a workflow, procedure, training course, integration, drone operation or small tool.

I often sit between technical people, operational teams and management, translating what each side needs into something people can actually use.

The technology changes. The job is usually the same: take different needs, systems and constraints and turn them into something that works in the real world.

Technology for its own sake does not interest me very much.

Making it useful does.

Designer: We should probably add a proper employment history here.Nico: No.Designer: At least include dates?Nico: LinkedIn has dates.

Where the questions led

Questions, rabbit holes and real work. Not an employment history.

2020–2021 · Gjerdrum

How quickly can drone data become something the people running the rescue operation can actually use?

Drone team coordinating with rescue personnel in Gjerdrum
Photo: Anders Martinsen / UAS Norway

During the landslide response, I was part of the Andøya Space drone team on site from 30 December. My work was to turn drone flights into information the rescue organisation could use quickly: live video, thermal searches, maps and 3D models shared with incident leaders, geologists and other responders.

At the busiest points, several missions were running in parallel while drones, helicopters and emergency services shared the same operational area. The drone itself was only one part of the job. The real challenge was getting useful information from the air to the people making decisions on the ground fast enough to matter.

2021–2024 · CBRNE · Norway + Poland

Why send a person into the hot zone if we can send the sensor?

Handheld CBRNE sensor mounted in a 3D-printed holder on a drone
Photo: Tiepoint · DSB CBRNE report

I worked on the drone-operations side of the Norwegian-Polish CBRNE project, including field testing, procedures, training and the practical question of how existing CBRNE sensors could be carried by ordinary drones. One result was surprisingly simple: a 3D-printed holder that allowed responders to put familiar handheld sensors into the air instead of buying a completely new specialist sensor system.

Tiepoint was engaged by DSB as the drone-operations expert for this part of the project and wrote large parts of the final report.

2023 · Krakow / Poland

What if the Norwegian and Polish problems are basically the same problem?

I took part in the Krakow conference to bring practical experience from Norwegian emergency-drone work into a wider conversation with crisis-management teams, responders and researchers from across Europe. One of the cases we discussed was how drone mapping was being used by Norwegian emergency centres.

The useful part wasn't another conference about drones. It was comparing operational problems across countries and finding that many of them were remarkably similar.

2024–2025 · CoSky · Poland + Norway

Why do drones and helicopters still have to take turns during an emergency?

CoSky looked at one of the recurring problems in emergency drone operations: how drones and crewed aircraft can work in the same incident without simply taking turns. I joined the final conference discussion to share practical drone-mapping lessons from emergency operations in Norway and compare them with the Polish experience.

2025 · ESA / Arctic Eye

What does the satellite know that the drone doesn’t? And vice versa?

Drone view of the grounded cargo ship near Trondheim
Photo: Tiepoint · Trondheim grounding, May 2025
Video: Tiepoint · ESA Civil Security from Space

My part of this has been on the operational side: what responders actually need from satellite data, drone imagery and AI, how quickly they need it, and what has to work at the incident site rather than only looking good in a technical demonstration.

The question started with drone mapping and became much bigger: how do you combine information from several completely different sources into something useful while an incident is actually happening?

2025 · European emergency-drone work

Why is airspace coordination still one of the hardest parts?

I joined the DIREKTION webinar to bring Tiepoint's operational experience into the discussion around drones, emergency response and airspace coordination. My interest here is very practical: how do you make room for drones, helicopters and other aircraft when everybody needs the same piece of sky at the same time?

2026 · Red Hat Innovate Together · Oslo

Upcoming · 22 October 2026

What happens when the AI actually has to work at the incident site?

Next question: making emergency-response processing useful where the work actually happens, with local infrastructure rather than a distant promise. Red Hat Innovate Together takes place in Oslo on 22 October 2026.

Some small and large rabbit holes

Personal AI Memory

A searchable memory of meetings, conversations, ideas and decisions.

Chrome Activity Tracker

A local-first activity and project tracker for Chromebook, because the existing options did not quite fit.

Drone Operations Automation

Connecting pilot certifications, flight records and operational systems without people manually copying data around.

Content Sketch

A visual thinking and content-planning tool for cards, freeform ideas and AI sketches.

Interactive explainers

Small interactive tools for making technical subjects easier to understand.

Random things

Experiments that exist mainly because I wanted to know if they could work.

Ask for a link →

Designer: Could we make this section a little more professional?Nico: Flying ninja monkeys?Designer: No.Nico: Four flying ninja monkeys?

A fair question

Do people actually read this far down?

The sensible version

Need dates, job titles and the sensible version? My LinkedIn profile has those.

Contact

Not looking for a job. Just curious about things.

If you have a weird problem, a good question or just want to say hi, press the button.