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James Campbell

Personal Statement

For over eight years (nearer 10) I have been working with web technologies, full time & professionally for almost five. From a young student dabbling with HTML to managing & delivering complex content managed sites for clients across London and the world with a leading design agency.

My passion is for software development and digital design. For me, the web is the perfect medium to get low level with powerful languages but keep the artistic & creative drive alive. The fast pace of standards, languages & frameworks creates a stimulating environment to work in, which I strive to follow. Having worked as a sole developer both on a freelance & full-time basis and within a team of developers at a creative agency, I feel I am a valuable asset to any web & online media company.

I AM NOT CURRENTLY LOOKING FOR EMPLOYMENT

Technical Skills

Client Side

(X)HTML, XML, CSS in depth knowledge along with hacks & design patterns, Flash, Actionscript 2/3 complicated class structures & fully code based layouts, Javascript (JSON), XLST & XPath

Traditional development & other languages

C++, Java, Pascal
Visual Basic & Office VBA
Regular expressions, Perl, Bash/Sh
Windowing Toolkits – TCL/TK, GTK (basic using PyGTK & Glade)

OS

Linux Kubuntu, Debian, Slackware; Primary OS at home for several years, very familiar with the system, Windows Server 2003, Vista, XP, 2000; including administration in corporate environments, Solaris Some minor experience with Solaris 7, FreeBSD minor experience

Through my years of study and self learning I have experimented with many other languages and systems. The above represents my primary skill set but I have a solid grounding in programming concepts which allows me to quickly adapt to different environments. I am most comfortable within C-style languages such as PHP, switching between that or Python, but have also experimented with langauges like C#. Wherever possible I aim to script my tasks using Bash and am a firm believer in code reuse and good documentation.

Relevant Work Experience

UDOX LTD  Full Time August 2008 — Current  Mid to senior level Developer / sysadmin

At U Dox I create and maintain websites built on a wide range of technologies. The majority of the code base is PHP & Python based in the backend with heavy usage of Jquery & Actionscript 3 to provide rich interfaces at the frontend. I have converted SpineMagazine.com from an all Flash site to an HTML based layout utilizing JQuery to provide animations similar to the Flash and where replacing Flash was not possible modifying and extracting classes from existing code to create new components. Other clients and sites I have worked on within this role include Crooked Tongues' full web presence.

One of my major jobs was to fully scope out Vans Europe's consolidation of a number of platforms to one system on one server. I was responsible for coding up the majority of the system, creating scripts to import and transform existing data and the setup and deployment of the project over the scope of several months. To achieve this I had to liase closely with members of VFC and management at udox as well as providing detailed and thorough progress reports as the project developed.

Aside from pure development I take part in the design & concept meetings with senior designers to help visualize the creative concept from sketch to code. I also try to work on the business side of things with our in-house brands Spine & Crooked, coming up with new ways of building our users and communitys. For example I created the facebook fan page and coded up some tools for use with twitter.

On top of my development responsiblities I maintain and support the entire IT infrastructure, including the mail and web servers, firewalls and desktop machines. The network itself is based on a number of linux servers, OS-X & Windows desktops and a number of periphial devices such as a 6TB RAID NAS.

NET ROOT LTD  Full Time September 2006 – Current; Consulting from January 2006 – August 2006  Web Developer & Support Engineer

Within Net Root my duties were to take over the role of web developer and also provide assistance to the technical support department as they needed. I created a bespoke ticketing & purchase order system for use by the whole office which tied in to an existing home brew CRM. This enabled engineers and sales staff to keep track of tasks and items in a centralised way rather than relying on email. To support staff during monthly billing runs I also developed scripts to do much of the repetitive work, eliminating chances of error and creating monthly staff reports for management. I focused on using PHP first in an IIS environment but then transferring all internal development applications to an Apache server.

On top of my internal development & business support activities I also fully project managed and coded/designed a number of sites including Net Root's personal homepage, the Nutrition Society, Sprefs & Saltus LLP. Along with maintenance of the existing client code base this involved working with a diverse range of platforms & languages, the majority being PHP based. I also provided one-off consultancy on behalf of the company for clients, tasked with appraisals of existing sites or being present at brainstorming sessions focusing on expanding online strategy. For some work with tight deadlines I acted as lead developer along with junior staff brought in for that particular project.

As one of few people to use Linux in the office, I was also responsible for setting up client firewalls, modifying rules and working with our name & mail servers (running Bind & Exim).

Freelance Work  Since 2001

I have worked on a number of sites in a freelance capacity. I currently provide assistance to JaneAsher.com & GeraldScarfe.com as and when they need it. I have also done contract work for the International Aluminium Institute, developing VBA applications to work with their spreadsheets. The VBA software allows office workers to use complex spreadsheets and view results within a more comfortable & easy to use environment. Along with this I've also created Excel sheets that have a designed look for creating booklets automatically. For Aqua Amore I have designed product brochures as well as a full site built on PHP/Drupal. For friends, I have undertaken pro-bono work, allowing me to have more creative & development freedom. I currently help the Nutrition Society with any issues they have with their PHP/Drupal site which has over 4,000 members.

Bedeezee (Matelsom LTD)  Full Time July 2005 – October 2005  Web Developer

I joined Bedeezee a few months before the site was launched. Matelsom is an online furniture provider that has a large market share in France and Bedeezee was their break into the UK market. I was employed to work on the graphics for the site, such as icons, product images and titles. I also created HTML templates for invoices and layouts for business cards. Before the site launch I had an opportunity to work with the French developers on the sites ASP code in the drive to deliver it on time for an autumn launch.

Education

Degree  BEng Information Systems Engineering (Imperial College London), 2006
Subjects included Software Engineering, Graphics, Advanced Mathematics, Database Systems, Low Level Networks, Communication Systems Theory

A Level's
Computing (AS Level) (A)
Physics (A)
Mathematics (A)
Technology (A)

Associateships  ACGI, City & Guilds Institute, 2006
Accreditations  Gold Crest, British Association for the Advancement of Science, 2000

Interests

For several years I was an active staff member on the computer security site Neworder.box.sk and was involved moderating and adding content along with other members scattered across the world. My spare time is more often than not split between developing on my Linux home system and gaming or reading. I also maintain my own personal site as a side for playing with different ideas and code. I have been using computers since a child with the Commodore 64 and am always looking at new things to do and learn with them.