W is for WWWeb

The internet turned 25 today. I’ve only been online for 19 years myself.

In 1983, I had my first “Computer Studies” class. I had a terrific time in the school computer club and although my exam results in 1988 and 1990 weren’t brilliant, my time learning about computers paved the way for what would become a passion.

In 1995, I started playing with computers and the internet in an absent colleague’s office whilst skiving from the work I was supposed to be doing.

In 1996, I was assigned the task (by the head of marketing) of finding out more about “the web” and how it could benefit the company.

In 1997, I took over responsibility for customer support in the data services department of Cable & Wireless and wrote a handbook for the rest of the support division.

Fixing layout bugs in Netscape

Between 1997 and 1999, I and a friend started making little websites together. I wanted to have a way of showing my photos to a wider audience, which remains my biggest personal, non-financial web development drive.

Around this time, I spent many a long night sitting square-eyed in front of the computer, chatting to other members of R.E.M. fan club chat boards whilst trying to fix HTML layouts in Netscape and IE.

In 1999, I started using Blogger to produce my first “CMS”-generated blog.

In 2000, I started my first full-time “web designer” job at a small agency in Surrey, learning PHP and MySQL whilst improving on my CSS abilities.

In 2001, I moved to Switzerland and started afresh: not just learning German, but also the Mac OS 9 operating system. Once you go Mac, you never go back.

Once you go Mac, you never go back

That year, I learned CSS and converted an entire Content Management System from HTML table-based layouts to CSS-based layouts. Since then, I have never worked on Windows computer for anything more than website testing.

In 2002, I started using the open-source blogging system b2 and (amongst many others) helped the developer to test and implement it on a few small websites. This system was subsequently taken over by other developers and became WordPress: currently in use by over 60 million websites.

Between 2001 and 2008, I worked continually on websites and completed around 100 individual projects, as well as continually co-developing a local newspaper system, which evolved to have 40,000 online readers per issue by the time I left the company.

In 2003, I learned a huge amount about raw cross-browser JavaScript (almost from scratch) whilst programming an interactive, web-based calendar application akin to Apple’s iCal.

A woman called Jo found my blog

In December 2003, a woman called Jo found my blog and we started exchanging emails. We married four years later and celebrate the tenth anniversary of our relationship this year.

In 2005, I joined Flickr and made many friendships across Switzerland and the world. Without being able to make these friends and making so many social connections, I doubt that I would’ve remained in Switzerland.

My whole life was a holiday

In 2006, I purchased the Swiss domain name permanenttourist.ch to use for my website, after my boss told me that my whole life was a holiday. The name stuck and since then, most photographers I have met at meet-ups and workshops in Switzerland have heard of it.

In 2007, I joined Facebook and have never looked back. (For reasons of personal sanity.)

In 2008, I joined Twitter and started to get to know a wider range of non-photographic people. Since then, I’ve waffled nearly 20,000 times on the service.

Digital Developer

In 2008, I moved to a job as Digital Developer at Burson-Marsteller, leaving the security of the job which had been my mainstay in Switzerland for over seven years to start afresh in an international agency. This gave me the confidence to move on in my career and I started my current job as Technical Manager at !frappant, a Bern-based web agency, in 2011.

Also in 2008, one of the websites I conceived and designed won an award as one of the top 20 Swiss websites of the year.

In 2012, I joined GitHub and changed the way I maintain and manage code as part of a team forever.

The web at 25

Meanwhile, on 12th March 1989, Tim Berners-Lee filed the proposal for what turned into the World Wide Web and started what is probably the biggest and most astounding feat of technology ever invented by man.

Happy birthday, Web. Don’t know where I’d be without you.

http://www.webat25.org/
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