He's a man who has been unafraid to turn his hand to several different professions: as a journalist for the regional press in Newcastle, then in PR with several volunteer positions in between - and blogging all the while.
Now on his fifth blog since January 2004, and on his third stint of volunteering - his second for Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO) - he is an evangelist for why development organisations and charities should be using blogger voices to get stories into mainstream media.
Using his blog platform, OurManinCameroon.com and Twitter account to communicate with the rest of the world, Jackson has used social network tools to raise awareness of his volunteering activities in Cameroon since he arrived in September 2008.
"We should never under estimate the importance of writing", he tells Journalism.co.uk. "Even with social media it’s not about technology, it’s about content. We talk of journalists being putting out of work by blogging - it shouldn’t be that way.
"Social media should be creating jobs for journalists - the nuances of the blogging genre aren’t so very different.
"Newsrooms are dwindling, in part, because of blogs," he says. "Ironically as a result of that they need help from bloggers to fill their papers.
"Letting PRs do it would be one way - but I reckon even the hardest bitten blog-hating hack would prefer to source a decent tale from a blogger than just cut and paste yet another press release.
"It's not about by-passing mainstream media, it’s about sharing. If Amnesty has fabulous footage then, of course, they want it on their website first and yes they’d want the BBC to show it too. But they'd be even happier if a million people worldwide took their embeddable movie and put it on their own blogs.
"They are all platforms. They all help you develop that narrative. Each blog post, each photo, each movie tells a little bit more of your story."
Jackson believes that there are no limitations for development organisations using social media tools: "I remember being told by VSO, in an earlier attempt to get them to take up social media, that it was all well and good for targeting geeks, but what about everyone else?
"But then we saw how Obama used social media to get elected. I don’t see anyone saying that his supporters are all geeks.
"The Sarah Palin/Tina Fey Saturday Night Live skits? Do you put that down as mainstream TV or social media? Certainly most people saw it through YouTube-esque means. It’s all info. It,s all shareable. The lines are blurred.
"But, however big Twitter gets it will never replace blogs or mainstream media - Twitter is just a device for signposting. It is not the destination - you need writers and people who are either experiencing the news or have the skills to uncover it for themselves."
Jackson's own dream job would be co-ordinating VSO's use of social media and the content of its blogs. While the organisation does have a home for their individual blogs now, Jackson believes it could be vastly improved.
"I don't think there is an organisation in the world which could benefit quite as much from social media as VSO. Just think of all their volunteers, in tropical locations across the world, diligently blogging their adventures for a minimal readership. Imagine what could be achieved by harnessing that.
"All it takes is RSS to follow them and a blog to highlight the best bits and to use those stories to inform and inspire both current and potential recruits," he says.
"What you want is to be more regularly sourcing your own stories, films and photos that are so good journalists want them," Jackson adds. "I want to be a full-time, teleworking NGO blogger. I hope that’s not too much of a niche position," he says.
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