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2020
Friendship, compassion, and laughter all proved to be essential tools in the arsenal for 2020. A year like no other and one that has shown that human relationships are more powerful than we knew. Work was done, good work and all from the comfort of my own desk. That said, I long to sit in a sweaty conference hall someday soon.
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2019
Started my consulting business with the goal of helping Shopify foucsed agencies, developers, and technology partners. Since then I've had the privilege to work with amazing companies and individuals.
In association with long time friend Cat Hunter, we launched a Shopify Partner community event called De:brief. This took place after Shopify Unite in Toronto and was attended by over 150 people. It was a good day.
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2018
After almost 7 years I decided the time was right to move on and venture out on my own once again. Working at Shopify was a life changing experience and one that set me up well for the next adventure.
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2016
Launched A Day with Shopify in Bristol, UK. Over the next two years we grew out a crack team and took the show on the road. Later morphing into Pursuit we were lucky enough to host events in Bangalore, Melbourne, Seattle, New York, London, Berlin, and many other cities.
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2013
Learnt quickly that growing up in the UK does not prepare you for a Canadian winter. This didn't put me off and after dropping some serious coin on an insulated jacket began to relish my trips across the pond. That said, you'll never get me to enjoy a Ceasar!
Started work as one of the first 100 at a small Canadian ecommerce company called Shopify!
Launched The Back to Front Show podcast with Kieran Masterton. Over the next five years we somehow manage to dispatch 50+ episodes of varying audio fidelity to an unsuspeting public. To our amazement people listened and to this day old episodes are still downloaded.
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2011 – 2014
For three years I worked on a number of side projects with Elliot Jay Stocks under the banner of Viewport Industries. These included Insites: The Book (Free PDF Download), Digest (Free PDF Download) — a one-off lifestyle large format magazine, and Insites: The Tour — a four cities in four days tour chatting with web industry pioneers about their work journey. Our book launch party was something else, happy days!
Attended web conferences, made new friends, and learnt from the best in the business. Today I reminisss fondly about the pre Brooklyn Beta Clover Club get togethers, Marc's wonderful Beyond Tellerrand series, Jonny's Brighton late summer fun and heading to the land of grids and concrete cows for pizza and mighty yarns courtesy of the geeks of MK.
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2011 – 2012
During this period I was also honoured to work as an editor with the amazing team at Smashing Magazine. I helped curate and edit weekly articles and was privileged to work with writers at the forefront of the web industry.
Outisde of my technical content projects I worked as a freelance web developer, with a focus on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and WordPress development
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2008 – 2010
Moved from London to Bath, had children, and accepted that I was now an adult proper!
Worked in a variety of roles at Carsonified (acquired in 2011), the UK based company known for web-focused events such as The Future of Web Design and The Future of Web Apps.
Additionally, I hosted and produced the podcast Think Vitamin Radio (check out the zesty freshness of the logo). The show made the shortlist for the annual .net awards two years running, which was nice. If asked, I say it came joint second in 2010! We were beaten by Zeldman, I'll take that!
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2007
Built my first Shopify theme for a client!
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2004 – 2008
Got an education in code thanks to mentors Chris and Craig whose development agency focused on large scale data-driven web applications. Started to dabble in WordPress and undertake a variety of freelance projects. Around this time I managed to be banned by Heart Internet for consuming 70% of their FTP bandwidth but that's another story.
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2000 – 2004
I held a number of mostly web-related positions in the NHS (National Health Service) in East London, UK. In addition to fixing printers, installing Exchange servers, and helping local GPs understand the benefit of the internet we built an intranet (rememeber them) using Dreamweaver and Microsoft Access that was used by thousands of users for many years!
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Pre 2000
Before my first tech job proper I spent two years working at the famous London venue The Royal Albert Hall. I have many funny tales from this era, feel free to quiz me if we meet.
Built my first web site thanks to hosting that came free on the front cover of a magazine. From HTML 4.1 to stolen scripts and Classic ASP the journey had begun.
Sent my first email proper using Pine in a Terminal window on a Radius Mac clone. Downloaded more guitar tab than I could ever learn courtesy of free and untracked university internet.
Had my first taste of AOL and slowly realised that what I had seen in War Games in 1983 was becoming a reality. It wasn't long before I was playing online Tic-Tac-Toe with a stranger in Wisconsin and thinking about the possibilities this "internet" thing offered.
