La Grande Rivière
I stumbled on the Internet in 1991 while researching a play about computer hackers and started actively using and contributing to the World Wide Web in 1996. This stream has been the centre of my life ever since.
For the first few years I ran my own web development company (wontonsoup) where I worked for a number of small to medium sized clients developing their first web presence. In 1999 I joined up with some friends from advertising and we formed Sputnik Agency.
Sputnik (1999-2007)
We grew the business from two of us sitting on opposite sides of a trestle table in 1999 to a staff of over 40 when I left in 2007. During that time we experienced the dotcom boom, the dotcom crash and the revival of confidence in online solutions.
Sputnik Agency was a "digital agency", applying the client service model and brand building practices of the advertising industry to the online world. My business partners provided the advertising experience and I supplied the online experience.
As Technology Director I was responsible for anything "technical" which varied from Flash applications to custom built content management systems. Project budgets ranged up to $500,000.
My responsibilities covered account management, project management, business analysis, infrastructure management, training and documentation design and development. By the time I left the company I was managing a development team of 10 fulltime developers plus a number of contractors.
Sputnik was initially a technology neutral company, with our choices often driven by the requirements of our clients. This lead to development in Cold Fusion, ASP, and dot.NET. However we came to favour open source solutions as they matured and in the last few years of my time leading the development team our development was exclusively in PHP and Java.
For many years it was difficult to find an off-the-shelf solution for our clients' needs and we were often frustrated reinventing the same wheel over and over again. However, open source content management solutions finally developed to a stage where we were using both Joomla! and Drupal and after leaving Sputnik to work as an independent consultant I have been using Drupal as my platform of choice.
Drupal (2009-now)
I began using Drupal in 2009 and in 2010 started working with PreviousNext, one of Australia's leading Drupal shops, as a Senior Producer for a number of large Drupal projects. The projects were mainly for NGOs and government departments and required client management, business analysis and project management.
It was (and still is) an exciting time for Drupal in Australia as it finally made its mark on government and commercial online projects. The challenge was to encourage that growth with PreviousNext clients while managing expectations so that clients had a realistic idea of what could be achieved with Drupal.
Drupal is a flexible and at times frustrating development framework that has a fantastic community of dedicated people. For the implementer this means a robust product that is actively supported.
But beyond that it continues the new way of doing business that has developed from the original ideals behind the Internet - sharing information and aspiring to build something better.
More detail on my work is in my curriculum vitae (resumé for the Americans).