Riffable.com was established as an innovative response to the pandemic, providing a booking platform that connected students with professional music teachers for in-person or online lessons via teleconference. As the solo founder and full-stack developer, I led the end-to-end development, driving the platform’s growth and success.KEY ACHIEVEMENTS:◼️ Rapid MVP Development: Designed and launched the MVP using PHP and Laravel, customising WordPress and WooCommerce to create a scalable platform. This allowed for a swift time-to-market and a foundation for future enhancements.◼️ Market Fit & Revenue Growth: Successfully launched the open beta to a cohort of 50-100 students, achieving revenue positivity within the first year. This demonstrated a strong market fit and profitability, supported by customer engagement initiatives, including discounts for feedback and bug reports.◼️ Infrastructure Optimisation: Migrated the application to a fully serverless architecture, transforming it into a custom React application using TypeScript. Leveraged AWS services such as S3, SES, DynamoDB, Lambda, Cognito, CloudFront, and CloudWatch, reducing monthly expenditures by 90% and enhancing stability and production speed.◼️ Strategic Market Research & Product Management: Conducted comprehensive research to assess market size, competition, and opportunities for innovation. Made key product management decisions, including contracting a third-party developer for a complex application component, accelerating time-to-market.◼️ Cross-functional Collaboration: Managed the project using tools like Google Calendar, Slack, and Trello to coordinate between graphic designers, marketing contractors, and educators.◼️ Security and Performance Enhancement: Strengthened infrastructure with Cloudflare, bolstering security and reliability, ensuring a smooth user experience.◼️ DevOps & Automation: Established and maintained the entire infrastructure using tools such as Git, SSH, Node.js, and Pulumi.

Strangeways Studios is an award-winning production company that produces and licenses original music for film & TV, advertising, video games, and content creators. With a 17-year legacy and collaborations with renowned artists like Wolf Parade and Carly Rae Jepsen, Strangeways expanded into a 1,500 sq ft music studio in 2015, featuring a large sound stage and two isolation booths.KEY ACHIEVEMENTS:◼️ Custom Web Application Development: Led the development of a custom serverless web application using TypeScript and React.js on the AWS backbone. The application, built with Webiny CMS, provides authorised agents and music supervisors with secure access to the song library, featuring a bespoke music streaming player and a 3D virtual tour of the studio built with React.js.◼️ Collaboration with High-Profile Clients: Partnered with notable clients such as Sub Pop, CBC, eOne, Arts & Crafts, Hallmark Channel, Bravo, and Epic Games. Facilitated the recording of dozens of albums, EPs, soundtracks, and singles for a multitude of artists, with many projects, particularly soundtracks, receiving award nominations.◼️ Infrastructure Optimisation & Cost Reduction: Designed and implemented an in-house data redundancy and backup system on offsite hardware running Ubuntu Linux, accommodating terabytes of audiovisual data. This solution reduced costs by 95% compared to third-party services like Dropbox or Google Drive.◼️ Client-Facing Technology Solutions: Developed and maintained a digital document signing and editing application, further streamlining operations and reducing overhead costs.◼️ Advanced Mobile Production Rig: Engineered a completely custom mobile production rig capable of simultaneously capturing and broadcasting 42 channels of mixed, latency-free audio and four streams of UHD video @ 8K. This rig ensures unmatched quality, speed, and reliability for clients during remote or studio productions.

Tiger Mountain Music was a vibrant music venue, rehearsal space, and lessons facility located on Vancouver Island. Over six years, I balanced teaching and administrative responsibilities, contributing to the growth and smooth operation of the business.KEY ACHIEVEMENTS:◼️ Student & Teacher Management: Managed schedules, communication, billing, and student registration for over 130 students and 6+ teachers. Taught music theory and technique to students aged 5-80, averaging 15 students of my own across guitar, piano, singing, and drums.◼️ Rapid Growth & Capacity Management: The student body more than doubled every year for the first four years until room availability and teacher workloads reached full capacity, demonstrating effective growth strategies and high demand for our services.◼️ Curriculum & Event Planning: Developed tailored lesson plans and provided weekly instruction across multiple instruments. Organised and hosted bi-annual recitals, fostering a sense of community and giving students opportunities to showcase their progress.◼️ Community Engagement & Marketing: Sponsored numerous community events, including fairs, jazz festivals, and concerts, which became the sole source of new student acquisition. This grassroots approach proved far more effective than social media marketing, generating 100% of our customer base.◼️ Website Development & Lead Generation: Established a website to streamline lead generation, directing potential clients to the appropriate teacher via automated email communication. This improved client-teacher engagement and ensured a steady influx of new students.◼️ Automated Systems Implementation: Set up automated billing, payments, and payroll systems, integrating time-tracking data from teachers. This automation reduced administrative workload and improved accuracy in financial processes.

A film production company best known for award-winning films; 'Occupy: The Movie', 'Down River', 'Shark Out of Water' and 'Float'. Strangeways Media expanded into new media production including web development upon the success of the Occupy: The Movie web series, which garnered millions of views on YouTube in 2011.

We made this film about poker right at the height of the Texas Hold’em craze. I secured filming in a real casino with the newest 4K digital camera on the market (The RED One) and had the eleven time world poker champion, Phil Hellmuth, make a cameo appearance. We sold DVDs all over the world.

What started out as a popular web series eventually became a comprehensive feature length documentary covering the protest movement that spawned from the 2008 financial collapse. We travelled around to Ivy league universities and throughout Manhattan gathering the aggregate opinion of those within and outside of the movement to provide an objective sense as to what was going on behind the scenes. The film is now available for everyone to watch through Youtube, Vimeo-on-demand and iTunes.

I took on a multitude of responsibilities with this award winning feature film including data management, footage processing, logistics, equipment rental and crew hiring. The film stayed in the Canadian cinemas for over a month and can currently be seen on SuperChannel, Shaw-on-demand and iTunes.

I managed an ecommerce company that sold music equipment across the UK and Europe. My role required me to have a thorough understanding of PHP, Javascript, SEO, analytics, advertising on the web, database management, purchasing and accountancy.