Myself

I'm a self-employed Website Developer and Designer. While most of my work comes through personal recommendations, I thought it would be interesting and worthwhile to see what new avenues of work might arrive by putting a portfolio on the Internet, so here it is.

I work from home, in Devon. I derive great satisfaction from a job well done, but I certainly don't spend all my time working. I'm in a band writing original music, I go for long walks in the countryside, I enjoy gardening, particularly bonsai, and I generally like sports which get me out into the wild, such as climbing and cycling. I have several positions of small responsibility within local clubs and organisations.

I became self-employed in the year 2000, in response to feeling frustrated with working nose-to-the-grindstone for an Internet start up company, where the management frequently changed and our months of work and relationship-building would be discarded in favour of a new approach and a new hierarchy. I had previously been looking for work in the computer games industry, but I started to take an interest in the challenges involved in making information accessible on the Internet. Realising that my existing job would lead me further away from the kind of work I wanted, I left, relocated back to Devon, quickly brought myself up to speed with the skills, and three months later I was working for myself.

I first learned HTML and CSS inside out, and indeed all my early websites were built with just a text editor, no fancy WYSIWYG tools. Next I learned Javascript as a new dialect for my existing programming skills in Basic and C++. A year later I was rocketed into full multimedia by a relation of mine in the music industry, as I was asked to take over a project building a driving game in Macromedia Flash, for the pop star Brian Harvey. This lead to more requests for Flash programming, which has over the years become one of my core skills. I also took a leap sideways into Macromedia Director programming for one project. In a later project I married my Flash, XML and Database skills to build a big online persistent strategy game; I've come to appreciate that Flash has great potential to provide slick front-ends to Databases, a potential which is rarely realised.

I've often worked on projects alongside graphic designers, particularly smallkandy and Craig Olney, transmuting their creative visions into real working websites, and it's usually been a very smooth and satisfying process, my technical skills and experience complementing their design flair. I do indulge in design work myself for some projects, though I wouldn't put myself in the same class of excellence as the designers I mention above. A predominant theme in my design work is my love of the natural world and a dislike of boundaries: a typical design of mine will use photographic images in a way which gives an "outdoors" feel.

In recent years there have been several requests for websites which the client can edit themselves. Particularly as I now use Macromedia Dreamweaver as my main development tool, I've recommended Macromedia's accompanying Content Management System "Contribute" as the solution. As with all CMSs, Contribute only works with websites which are specially modified to work with it. I've now got several clients using this system happily and successfully, and CMSs really do seem increasingly to be an essential part of websites for a lot of individuals and small organisations.

My workload fluctuates, occasionally I have no jobs for a period (in which case I take advantage of the gloriously reliable Devon sunshine) but more often than not, I'm working on two or three projects simultaneously. Given the nature of the [consultation -> work -> client feedback -> work] cycle, this isn't as much trouble as it sounds, and I'm often working on one project while waiting for a client to make a decision on the other project, and vice-versa. I have been known to complete urgent projects within a week, but typically a project will take a month or two between initial contact and completion. I resist the trend to outsource work and pass it off as my own; if I'm too overloaded with projects already, I'll turn down work or be honest and say that I can't fit it in for a few months. I know one or two skilled individuals whom I'd recommend as alternatives, but I must say that I've not been able to find many other developers who can do Flash, Databases and dynamic web pages; I've mainly met designers.

A lot of my work is either repeat work from well-established relationships, or new clients to whom I've been recommended. For me, the greatest satisfaction comes from a job which has gone smoothly, where the client's really pleased with the end result, and where there's enough money in the bank at the end of the day to pay the bills, feed the kids, buy a few bags of compost for the bonsai. I started off by undercharging (so people were quick to tell me), but quickly learned that was a mistake, as it made my business unsustainable, and devalued the industry as a whole. Now I charge reasonable rates, a compromise between affordability for the residents and businesses of Devon, and the going rate as set by companies in the cities. I usually provide a quote for small to medium projects, and stick to it. For larger projects with flexible or uncertain boundaries, I have been known to work to a daily rate.