Experience: Employment Record
IBM SA (January 1997 - December 1998)
I was employed in their internal application development and maintenance department, on the AS/400 (mid-range computing, now rebadged as the i-Series) platform developing in RPG/400, CL/400 and DB/400. During this time I was involved in development and maintenance of both a Marketing and Sales Management Application (MSM) and a paging system for Certified Engineers (Pagersys).
The main development project I undertook was to migrate the entire MSM application from a South African platform, to a managed multi-country system hosted in Portsmouth, U.K. This development involved translating the entire MSM database into a delimited text file, and then uploaded to the European system. The final program took fourteen hours to run (optimised down from a first version running time of 36 hours). I was solely responsible for the development of this migration program.
As part of my self-tutoring, I participated in developing the first Intranet website prototype for the local Human Resources department, created using HTML 3.2 and Javascript running under Netscape 3, Internet Explorer 4, Netscape 4 on Windows NT and OS/2.
Legal & General: General Insurance (January 1999 - March 2000)
I was employed as a permanent member of staff which resulted in my relocation to the United Kingdom. I participated in the development of two new General Insurance products, plus initiated the development for enhancements to the I/90 system (the Insurance Application running on the AS/400) which allowed clients to specify the day of the month that they would like their payments taken from their accounts.
Legal & General: Web Team (March 2000 - July 2006)
I was offered a move to the Internet Development Team on the basis of some personal websites I developed. I was the developer on the initial MoneyMarket mini-website, which offered the consumer mortgages that matched their search criteria. Also I developed the Networklink website, which is a virtual extranet for Legal & General's communication with their Estate Agency networks, as well as an IFA-focused extranet
I was heavily involved in the redesign of the consumer website, taking a delivered graphical design from a Web Design company and completely rebuilding it so that it worked properly in modern browsers. I took the lead developer role during the implementation of the Stakeholder Pensions, and the re-branding of the online buildings and contents insurance products.
I was involved in training new employees to the e-Commerce field, running both the HTML and Javascript workshops. I've also demonstrated assistive technologies such as screen readers, and continue running workshops about web accessibility and web development best practice. This has included providing feedback and guidance on web-focused legal issues and proposed legislation.
I was involved in steps to make the current website accessible and compliant with both RNIB and W3C accessibility guidelines. Part of my role is to introduce, consult, write, teach and evangelise both web standards and web accessibility.
The end result became a case study for the business benefits of web accessibility at the launch of PAS 78. The sites have achieved Shaw Trust accreditation, and are on the way to RNIB See It Right certification. The business results have been published in Friends of Ed's recently published book "Accessibility: Web standards and regulatory compliance".
Yahoo! Europe: Web Development (August 2006 - present)
I was looking for a new challenge, and Yahoo! Europe looking for enthusiastic web developers.