Professional Development Timeline
In 2010, I moved back to Canada and continued working as a freelance developer out of my home in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
In 2009, I worked as a freelance web developer based in Melbourne, Australia. In addition to continuing to collaborate with Fjord Interactive on several projects, I worked with Sitepoint to design the user experience of their new startup, volunteered to develop the branding and web site for the Pirate Party of Canada, and launched my own startup file sharing service. Having pumped out five WordPress-powered web sites, I successfully realigned myself as a WordPress specialist.
In 2008, I attended the WDN conference again and won an award as one of the best blog sites of those in attendance. I was encouraged to thrive at Fjord. I quickly became the only frontend developer and the WordPress specialist in the office. With Fjord, I helped push out some high profile sites using Silverstripe and WordPress as a CMS. I blogged about my experiences and gave my first talk at BarCampVancouver2008. I launched my first Facebook application just in time for the Canadian election. In December, I quit my job with Fjord Interactive to move to Australia for a year and do some traveling.
In 2007, I attended a web development conference that really opened my eyes to the enthousiasme and excitement that exists in web development. Having worked on the web for almost ten years, I found new energy to continue what I do. Inspired by a Microformats talk at the conference, I wrote and published my first WordPress plugin. Later that year, I started working for my company and gradually phased out ActiveState. While working for my company, I developed an E-mail Setup Wizard to help new web hosting customers setup their e-mail client, worked on some client projects, and redesigned our web site. Although I was getting lots done, working from home wasn’t for me, and in December, I took a job offer from the fine folks at Fjord Interactive.
In 2006, I developed my first WordPress theme and attended my first developer conference.
In 2005, I earned my Computer Science degree, with a major in Software Systems. I then moved to Vancouver and landed a job with Future Shop as a web designer, working on their large rebranding project. After managing the Best Buy Canada web site for a short while, I landed a job with ActiveState as a web developer. I was the sole web developer in house, but responsible for managing the corporate web site, e-commerce system, software licensing system, customer survey system, internal sales system, and community portal web site. After six months of madness, I convinced management to hire another developer and they eventually let us build a small team. Also in 2005, I released version 2.0 of PHP TreeView, rebranded Zenutech.com and developed a download manager.