Category: Experiences

General life experiences or thoughts.

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Experiences

Getting ready for 2016

Digital Resolutions.

2016 sees a new direction for me. For the first time since I started programming in 2004, I will be 100% self employed.

This doesn’t mean that I have always been employed by a boss for the last 12 years. There were some attempts at working for myself in the past, but each time it was at the request of someone else. This time it is a decision I have come to after much consideration and planning.

I am quite looking forward to this new direction. It will no doubt come with its struggles, but I get to focus on one of the things I like the most about working in the digital space, namely working with clients and solving their problems via technology.

To prepare myself for this new journey I have made a few digital ‘resolutions’ for 2016.

1. I will not reinvent the wheel.

Open source content management sytems have come a long way since I started custom coding CMS’s in 2004. With the worldwide adoption of WordPress as the CMS of choice and the multitude of top quality free and premium themes and plugins available, there really is no reason to develop a website from scratch any more. More often that not, when discussing various user requirements for a website, a quick Google search will reveal that (to coin the Apple catchphrase) ‘there’s a plugin for that’.

So my plan is simple. Instead of writing all the code myself, I will build on top of the shoulders of giants. Similar to what my colleague Ross has done over at Shopcreatify, I will be offering my services as a website ‘fitter’. A digital foreman if you will. I’ll get my hands dirty every now and then, but first and foremost I will use tried and tested themes, plugins and services, developed by experts in their respective fields, to deliver amazing web and mobile solutions to my clients.

2. Back to school

One of my secondary goals for 2016 is to spend as much of my free time as possible learning new skills. Not specifically development skills (e.g. new languages and/or technologies) but skills that will allow me to bring a more rounded service to my clients. A large part of this will be a focus on digital marketing. This isn’t just to be able to provide basic digital marketing services to my clients, but also to grow my own marketing experience, both for my digital business and the jiu-jitsu school I run.

4. Personal projects

There are a couple of personal software projects that I am keen to build on and grow.

A few years ago I wrote a piece of web based software to help a client (and my jiu-jitsu instructor) manage his students. This has huge potential for all the other martial arts gyms in South Africa and I just haven’t had the time to develop the idea to a point where I can offer it to multiple clients.

I am also part of a family run business with my wife. There is a lot of scope for converting manual processes into digitally driven ones and I am keen to get my hands dirty making our lives easier by improving our processes through automation.

3. Family man

The primary reason I am taking all of the above steps is to be able to spend more time with my family. Over the past four years I have been working on site at a great local development company but time with my family suffered, due to the hours I was busy with the various things I was involved in. Starting off on my own will hopefully give me some flexibility to spend a little bit more quality time with my family.

I’ve never been one for new year resolutions, based purely on the fact that most people never see them through. So I don’t really want to call these resolutions, the are life decisions I have made (for good or for ill) that I plan to live on a day to day basis.

I can’t wait to see how 2016 turns out.

 

 

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Experiences

Digital Marketing Workshop

As an entrepreneur, small business owner or freelancer, one of the most important skills you need to have, after being amazing at what you do, is digital marketing.

The biggest learning curve I had as a developer was when I launched my Jiu Jitsu school. I soon learned that ‘If you build it, they don’t necessarily come‘ and my journey into digital marketing begin. I was truly amazed at a) how much could be accomplished with a good digital marketing strategy and b) how easy it is to do it wrong.

If you are in the same position as I am and you want to leverage technology to promote your business or you want to learn how you market your business better online, I highly recommend the Digital Marketing Workshops hosted by Mashup Marketing. The next one is on the 4th of November.

Whether you are a small to medium business or simply an individual responsible for marketing duties but lack digital experience then this workshop is definitely for you. If you are just passionately learning about digital marketing then feel free to join as well. The digital workshop will help you understand what digital marketing is all about and equips you with the knowledge and tools to help you grow any business online.

 

Categories
Experiences WordPress

Word Camp Cape Town 2015

So this year I was fortunate enough to attend my first Word Camp.

I’ve been meddling (at best) with WordPress for the better part of the last decade, I’ve set up a few blogs and sites and even completed some custom development using WordPress as the base but I’ve never been someone who was ‘focused’ on WordPress or the WordPress community. This year I decided to take a deeper look into what makes the local WordPress community tick. Boy, what a ride it was.

Day one dawned a typically early spring Cape Town day, namely rain. After getting out to the awesome venue that is the River Club, we got to mingle with some of the attendees and pick and choose our selection of ‘swag’. I wasn’t sure what the protocol was, so I just grabbed a few interesting items, my favourite of which was the USB power banks supplied by FNB/Paypal. A spread of coffee/teas and muffins awaited us while we milled around the entrance area, and then onto the workshops we went.

I chose to attend all the developer workshops and I wasn’t disappointed. From Brent’s talk on Varying Vagrant Vagrants to Pippin’s ‘Commitment to Backwards Compatibility’, each speaker was interesting, knowledgeable and insightful. I especially enjoyed Justin’s talk on the WordPress API, mainly because how interesting and funny he was at the same time, even after a 16 odd hour flight.

Day two was more of a typical conference day, with everyone seating in the auditorium, cinema style, listening to the talks of the day. Our’s MC’s were the always funny Derick Watts and the Sunday Blues who had the crowd in stitches in between each talk.

The talks on day two were just as interesting as day one, but the two that stood out for me the most were Drew’s ‘It takes a Village to make Wordpress’ and Bruce’s ‘The Age of the Digital Superhero’. Not that all the other speakers weren’t great (they were) but these two resonated with me on a personal level.

The last talk ended with the words ‘f*cking awesome’ which was apt, as this was the feeling I had when I left WordCamp. I met some amazing people and was inspired as a developer, both and a personal and a technical level. WordPress has come a long way in the past few years and it was really great to see and meet so many people who are developing, using and growing WordPress as a platform.

Special thanks go to Hugh Lashbrooke, who put all this together and was super friendly every time you chatted to him, even though I am sure he was buzzing from the nerves of running such a huge event.

And finally, thanks to all the amazing WordPress users and developers I meet, who made me realised that there is something special about belonging to an open source community.

I’ll definitely be back next year.