Born 17th March 1976, I was educated first at Cloverlea County Primary School and then at William Hulme’s Grammar School in Manchester. Leaving with 9 GCSEs and 5 A-levels in music and sciences, I then embarked on a 3-year degree course at Newcastle University.
I chose to study music although a career in that discipline did not materialise. (I had made the realisation early on that to succeed in music you had to be extremely talented or extremely lucky.)
After university I held various posts as a music publisher and call center worker until I gained my first experience in I.T. as a helpdesk manager for D.F.E.S. Several additional contracts came and went and I was secure in a future in Information Technology.
I had used Internet pages as part of my University studies and so a progression into the world of the Internet seemed natural. My first “web” employment was in start-up company Rocket Science which thankfully led to my first stint at Ebac Limited in 2000.
At Ebac I was lucky to be under the direction of a manager who I had a great admiration for. We worked hard together and I learnt the foundations of PHP, MySql and Unix; all goose for the sauce.
Ambition got the better of me and I left Ebac to become Development Manager of new hot-house agency thecreativecake.com. My 4 years at ‘The Cake’ saw me in a multi-faceted role from development and programming to sales, marketing and management. It was all about forging relationships with some fantastic clients, from so-called Blue Chips to SMEs.
Of particular pride was my almost single-handed management of Cake Education, a slice of Cake which came to serve the private schools market.
A loss of the pivotal Managing Director and an obvious and visible decay of business ethics softened me to take up an offer to become part of a whiz-bang marketing team which was being formed at my old employer, Ebac.
Unfortunately it was a false dawn. The edges fraid quickly amongst the new marketing team and I found myself as the longest serving member 9 months into my tenure. I left to work for another agency again as Development Manager and Server Administrator. I was then to discover I had joined a company which was bought out 2 months later.
I made the decision in late-2005 to become self-employed and freelance, something I should have done after I left Cake.
My clients are as interesting and diverse as the sites I have created for them. A mixture of SME, start-ups and large organisations have asked me to help with their internet presence and long may it continue.
