Dubai: Stephen Field is a bookworm. Yes, the busy lawyer works on cases in London and Dubai, but his real passion is books.
Not law books, but literature.
Field had always combined his business acumen with his love of fact and fiction. One day, an idea came to him — and he hasn’t looked back.
It took Field more than three years working in his spare time to create and develop BiblioTrek.
BiblioTrek is a map immersion app developed for the iPhone where places travelled in books occupy real spaces in the world. For instance, if you want to know which authors wrote about Dubai, it’ll list them, and refer you to the books.
“They say you’re not an expert till you have done 10,000 hours of something,” Field said. “I’ve done the 10,000 on this. There are 700 books in here. I read 400 books, and 300 are biographies I had to write.”
To get the most out of the immersion behind the immense collection, Field compiles research of authors to include their life story as part of the adventure.
“I included William Shakespeare’s life in BiblioTrek,” he said. “From what I learned from various books and quotes, I found out that he never actually left England.”
For most of his life, Field limited his travels to two towns in south London just 12km apart. Then he came to Dubai 18 months ago and his life changed.
Field is a legal consultant at Sanad International Law Group and is also a visiting lecturer at the University of Dubai. He invests his spare time in adding to the content of BiblioTrek.
“I had the opportunity through work connections to come to Dubai,” he said. “Even though I’m the only English speaker in the firm, the contacts I made were so valuable and genuine. I really love Emirati lawyers.”
As a lawyer, Field would finish a trial and start his real work on the train. Even with half an hour to spare, he’d add a book to the app.
And through this process of almost five years, Field built an app that he believes would be suitable for kids and adults to learn about books in a comprehensible way.
In fact, he has a friend that teaches Shakespeare to her students in England and uses the app as a teaching aid.
“If you’re teaching kids the book and show them that it’s a modern place the kids will start understanding it,” Field said. “Then the story will create a picture in their mind and everything will start to make sense.”
Field understands that Shakespeare can be difficult for young and old to understand. That’s why he has a solution.
“He has a play called A Comedy of Errors and its set in ancient times and the place names don’t mean anything so you can’t follow the journey properly,” he said. “But once you see it laid out on the map you’ll understand the story progression immediately.”
But will he be turning a new, green leaf anytime soon?
“I’m not trying to make money from the app,” Field said. “I just want to share my passion.”
