dang
ovan
.com

Introduction It's the blurb!

Though a student of Mechanical Engineering at the time I found scripting and web development to be a much more immediate and rewarding medium of problem solving, and after fiddling with Frontpage in 2002 I've never looked back (or touched FrontPage again!). From this first introduction I loved UIs, web design and the internet as a whole, and though it took a lot of experimenting, self-teaching and developing a knack for googling, I was privileged enough to be able to turn my hobby into my profession.

Since early 2006 I've worked in the largest office of a multi-national agency, working with large well-known brands on projects ranging from client-facing to B2B, brochure-ware to infrastructure and short-lived campaigns to long term web-presence.

My role throughout has always focused on front-end development, with occasional forays into design and back-end work. It's also been extremely rewarding to be able to push standards-based best practices and improved communication within the company, and I've also done more than my share to define the emerging ethos of our 300-strong team.

Technical skills From expert to dabbler.

Expert in Called in for best-practice markup and to solve bugs others just can't squash
HTML, CSS and Googling (an underrated skill!)
Keen Parts of work that I like to take home.
The above plus Photoshop tinkering and jQuery/JS nift.
Proficient The day to day work.
Accessibility, SEO, XML, XSLT, HMTL emails, dotNet skinning
Editors: Notepad++, Visual Studio.
Office apps: Word, Excel, Powerpoint.
Source Control apps: TFS, VSS and SubVersion, and TFS and IIS for local development, Jira for bug management.
Dabbler Used on occasion but don't much opportunity to practice.
PHP, Fireworks, Illustrator and web design

Experience Roles performed and ground broken.

'07- nowMRM London: Front-end Developer
  • Front-end lead in an agency web/technical team working with many large international companies.
  • Specialised in creating cross platform, cross browser CSS layouts with clean, efficient, robust mark-up and styling for extensive localisation
  • Part of a team formed to define the Values and Vision of the company.
  • Often had to draw together and reconcile the contributions of back-end developers, designers and copy editors.
  • Back-end integration: Dot Net skinning, working with on the fringes of Ektron, etc.
  • Rote work included HTML emails, XSLT/XML templating and localisation, and CSS consultancy.
'06-'07 MRM Worldwide: Associate Client-side Developer
  • Client-side role in an agency technical team.
  • Implementing designs in HTML/CSS then templating with in XSLT/XML across large multilingual websites for extensibility and ease of maintenance.
  • Championed the advance of standards-based and CSS2 methods as well as accessible and SEO-sensitive XHTML.
  • Also worked on HTML emails, site maintenance and updating web content
  • Presented on best practice and improving communication between the design and the development departments. Set an oft-cited precedent for similar knowledge-sharing in the company.
'04-'06 Freelance Web Developer
  • Brochure-wear and web presence sites for small businesses and interest groups, e.g. Armchair Books, Saxcollective, The Main House.
'04-'06 ProspectUs LTD: Not-for-profit sector temp work in London
  • A range of administrative and client-facing roles in educational organisations including first-line tech support and limited web-work at institutions such as Imperial College London, City Lit and The Royal College of Psychiatrists.
'02-'04 Warwick Pride: Publicity officer
  • Responsible for the design and distribution of all publicity for the events and socials of a Student Union Welfare Society at Warwick University, including two annual balls. Increased membership by 25%
  • Designed, developed, edited and led a team to write the copy for two high profile 60-page annual welcome / reference booklets
  • Webmaster: developed, built and maintained a 40-page website, organised and led social events and welfare workshops; ran a web-based counselling service.

Education From highschool to conferences.

'06-'10 Professional training
  • Carsonified's "Future of Web Design" - '07, '08 and '10
  • QA-IQ's "Web Programming with JavaScript" - '09
  • ClearLeft's "Dconstruct" - '07
  • Eric Meyer's "In Depth CSS XHTML Techniques" - '06
00-'04 University of Warwick
  • Class 2:2 Bachelors Mechanical Engineering
  • Final-year project (Class 1), involved learning a Pascal-based macro language and various graphics processing packages.
  • Group projects in Design Technology, Professional Studies and Mechanical Design, other courses included Computing Technology and Design Techniques & Management.
'93-'00 Merchiston Castle School, Edinburgh
  • A-level: Physics (A) Maths (A) Further Maths (C)
  • AS-level: Electronics (B)
  • GCSE: 6 A*, 4 A including Maths and English