Tech - The businesses I have helped
Product Director
My role at Gas Tag began as a Product Development Manager where I was hired as the first member of staff. My main directive was managing 3rd party vendors, ensuring that the product requirements were clear, and that deliverables met those requirements. I soon realised that the agency would not be able to deliver the envisioned product, and the decision was made to begin hiring a team. While the team was growing, I was hands on with the code, developing the framework that currently supports the Gas Tag UI.
I became lead designer for Gas Tag, as well as technical team lead and architect, ensuring best practice was carried out in both design and code. Over the course of a year I had hired and managed 6 developers and a full time designer. I implemented Agile methodologies, source control patterns and focused on our first public trials. I introduced and carried out code reviews for the team, teaching developers how to effectively communicate both within their code and to one another. I continually experimented with new technologies and trends, trying to break away from the stale norms of the gas compliance industry.
I was promoted to Head of Product in 2017, where my responsibilities included training of sales staff to demo the product, working closely with Marketing to create materials and influence direction, and gleam market needs to influence product direction. I was regularly interfacing with stakeholders to ensure that my vision for the product met their strategic objectives.
I was promoted to Product Director in 2018 after Gas Tag became funded by Waterland. It was very encouraging to see the business grow from humble beginnings to being valued at over £23m in two short years. While still working closely with the dev and design teams, I became responsible for the strategic direction of the product, and regularly interfaced with new industries and partners, seeing how our product could work alongside theirs. I mentored members of the team with best practice in both code and design, and taught many team members the value of knowing code with after hours classes.
At the end of 2018, Gas Tag went on to win the Lloyds National Business Awards Best New Business of 2018.
Lead Developer
I was renting an office from OPEN Magazine in 2013, and was contracted to build their website. I organically integrated into the team, and was soon officially hired. OPEN was branching out into digital media, and I was asked to head up the Taxi Top Advertising Program. Here I designed and developed the website and all animations for the company. Once funding was secured, I became lead developer on the project, putting together relatively complex systems that would synchronize advertising with external conditions such as weather, geolocation, sports scores etc.
I implemented multiple systems into the Windows powered car computers that needed to be completely automated. This included synchronizing source code to a taxi fleet in the field, and reinstating Node scripts automatically. These scripts would manage signals from GPS UPD devices, Broadsign advertising, and external APIs. The adverts needed to be ActionScript driven, so socket connections between Node services and adverts were created in order to deliver real time and reactive content. This was all powered by a php Laravel API, which fed into a real time dashboard for tracking plays, seeing live locations of cabs, and aggregating and displaying graphs and data.
In my spare time, I took an interest in modern Javascript (ES5 to ES6), and began tinkering with React in 2015.
Independent Creative
I moved from South Africa to Liverpool for a change of scenery. I worked for 4 years on whatever creative work I could get my hands on. My work was featured in several international publications, and my music videos have accrued nearly 3m views on Youtube to date. I also created adverts that were aired on national television in South Africa.
When there was no market for photography / animation / design / videography, I would design and develop websites for small businesses. This reignited my passion for code, and I began to learn best practice in WordPress / php, Javascript and jQuery.