I joined CFA as senior web developer heading up the established web developer team. Having been successful in PR and marketing dating back 20+ years, they specialise(d) in the construction industry. Despite the economic climate of the last few years, the company had moved into the digital arena and were venturing in to new industries. Starting out in .Net they had also produced their own CMS system in php and had a number of sites well received since the digital department’s… Show more I joined CFA as senior web developer heading up the established web developer team. Having been successful in PR and marketing dating back 20+ years, they specialise(d) in the construction industry. Despite the economic climate of the last few years, the company had moved into the digital arena and were venturing in to new industries. Starting out in .Net they had also produced their own CMS system in php and had a number of sites well received since the digital department’s creation.Shortly after my arrival the head of the department was offered an opportunity he could not refuse and moved on. As the most technically senior I now started to help the department’s direction. Looking at the details from the ground up, my experience (in particular with Enterprise) had taught me that we had to establish workflow and process to improve efficiency and delivery. Website development relies on efficiency to be profitable from narrow profit margins. At the first opportunity I pushed to get SEO established as an extended department from digital. With the history Fabrick (was CFA) had in providing copywriting, this was a natural progression for Fabrick (was CFA) and Fabrick (was CFA) Digital in particular. With this as a foundation, we were on the right road and with a tactical decision to make html5 our standard, I have been able to now extend our services to cover mobile apps as well as mobile-capable websites. We have provided static (CD based), public and private web applications involving and even document DBs.I am very proud of my team of developers and the Fabrick (was CFA) Digital department and look forward to greater success now that we also provide corporate CMS services with Episerver. Show less

I arrived at Lightmaker after they had had some calamities at the office involving a flood so loads of the floor was up and it was rather like a building site. Seeing through this I could see they had come from a successful and esteemed background working for some big names to produce glamorous and visual sites. After a few interviews, I was hired to head up their .Net team as they were trying to gradually make the move over to .Net instead of their mainstay which had been Coldfusion – a… Show more I arrived at Lightmaker after they had had some calamities at the office involving a flood so loads of the floor was up and it was rather like a building site. Seeing through this I could see they had come from a successful and esteemed background working for some big names to produce glamorous and visual sites. After a few interviews, I was hired to head up their .Net team as they were trying to gradually make the move over to .Net instead of their mainstay which had been Coldfusion – a technology whose support was being called in to question so expected to die out.I certainly had to get used to a new working environment – some laid-back, some rather more rigid. I found it ironic that there was more subdivision in roles than I had seen at a large corporation like Enterprise but it was all good for the experience - I found myself introduced to my first experience of agency life.I think you always have (at least) one particular project that you remember and appreciate from a place and for me at Lightmaker it was the Wall of Life. A combination of Flash at the front end, coldfusion and .Net it created mosaics based on a large collection of headshot images that were uploaded by users (kidney donors), which build up to create a large image of a donor recipient. It was a brilliant concept and it worked really well - a real team effort (and one of those that was one created by developer hours (well that is myself and my fellow .Net-eer Chris Williams) into the early hours of the morning. No longer active, I thought it was elegant in concept and execution.In a time of recession and upheaval I sought a different challenge with a new agency. Show less

Enterprise are a large corporation responsible for some high end application and internal management web properties (for some big infrastructure companies).It was an honour and a challenge to work in this environment and I found my knowledge challenged and embellished from day 1. This was a very different environment to what I was used to but the thing that made it successful was that the team work was intrinsic to everything we did. I was proud to have been part of helping build the… Show more Enterprise are a large corporation responsible for some high end application and internal management web properties (for some big infrastructure companies).It was an honour and a challenge to work in this environment and I found my knowledge challenged and embellished from day 1. This was a very different environment to what I was used to but the thing that made it successful was that the team work was intrinsic to everything we did. I was proud to have been part of helping build the applications that I did here like the web-mobile work gang management system we developed. It was sold to large water companies in order to manage their road crews and to allow up to the minute communication and authorisation from the administrator. At one end the mobile application was used by the gangs to take pictures of the work they had done, these were sent back to the administrator office where he would check them via a web application and authorise whether they could finish and proceed to the next job.It was a sad day for me that I had to leave but unfortunately I had to move due to family illness. Show less

At LCN I oversaw the whole IT operation. Despite having been a web developer previously, I had also dealt with a lot of practical IT areas and infrastructure over my career - especially while I was self-employed. With two offices, one in Salford and the other in London, part of my job was split with me travelling down to stay and attend to the London office (I lived in Preston at the time) which I enjoyed.An extension of this job (and one I had seen a lot of potential in further developing)… Show more At LCN I oversaw the whole IT operation. Despite having been a web developer previously, I had also dealt with a lot of practical IT areas and infrastructure over my career - especially while I was self-employed. With two offices, one in Salford and the other in London, part of my job was split with me travelling down to stay and attend to the London office (I lived in Preston at the time) which I enjoyed.An extension of this job (and one I had seen a lot of potential in further developing) was for their internal management system which was written in Classic ASP. Clearly this needed redoing in ASP.Net and that was a challenge I was looking forward to. As with many positions that we begin with goals in mind, they did not materialise due to the practical interruption of more urgent issues - chiefly the age of the infrastructure’s hardware. I spent a lot of time firefighting and nursing the hardware to continue working - a 22 hour shift trying on and off the support calls for hours of it to get the email server working for instance. One day a central part of the London half of the infrastructure died and before I knew it I was doing data rescue along with server rebuilding (without plans of how anything worked). After a year despite having been provided with a nice company car and the enjoyable split between the two offices, I decided that I no longer wanted to cover many areas, I wanted to concentrate on one area of my career - web developer. Show less

Just4 was a commercial company in which I made the switch from Classic ASP to ASP.Net. I worked with a fantastic team here and really got a lot out of my job. Moving from asynchronous web to object orientation was quite a daunting task (as most developers will tell you) but I relished it and have never looked back.Unfortunately, the company went bust but I took a lot from this job and I am still in contact with most of the team I worked with there.

I became self employed as a web developer. I also expanded my work remit to encompass hardware installation, repair and management (for instance managing networks and even installing broadband). I still did some subcontracts for my previous employer and also worked as a subcontractor for the hardware side of things for a local computer retailer.

Started my education as a web developer developing in html, javascript and Classic ASP. I spent as much time working with SQL and learning the database side of the job.