Bechtel - Bank of America
- Citi Bank - Seimens - The City of San Francisco - The City of Berkeley & UCSF
Medical Center
Moving to Florida in 1998 I became Vice President of Technology
at a local company where I created web sites for Companies
such as: Lufthansa,
Ford/Jaguar, Konica, Bosch, Sentry Industries, NBC and many others.
Working with others as a team we created
a site with over 250,000 products in the shopping cart, each with attributes
such as size or color, and multilevel pricing structures. We built a the
first program I had ever seen that allowed people to construct their own
websites, choose a visual layout etc., and had over 1600 of them in operation.
John Menken took care of queries and Cold Fusion administration functions
while I worked with graphics, animation, general site code and managing
the project.
A few weeks after 911, I joined the 60% of the people in
my industry as a member of the unemployed. I met with a High-tech headhunter
who said "That's the best resume I have seen in years", "but
you will never even get an interview." Why? Because I was at that
time over 50, which in the High Tech World was "Uncool". He
quickly added that "the big companies would be more than happy to
contract me however, because you can't replace years of experience with
quickie courses for tech certificates, nor do management skills, work
ethic and project planning skills pop out of thin air." His real
advice was to go into business for myself, and I did exactly that.
All together I have done web site design and development
for over 2,400 clients at this time. It is something I take seriously,
always doing all I can to advise clients well, and help lead them towards
success. There is a lot to know about web design, and I stay on top of
all of the latest developments such as client administration tools and
RSS feeds. Streaming video is something that will be a larger and larger
part of websites in the near future, and we have full production capabilities.
I know from long experience that "Your Success is
My Success" and that is always my goal. After all, in the long run,
even though we mostly deal with the Internet, word of mouth is the thing
that will always keep a business going.
There is probably no more vague a term than website design
or development. I say that because if you have 10 people in a room who
are "web developers" or "Web Site Designers" they
are likely to have 10 different skill sets.
Some will write in PHP, or Cold Fusion, or ASP.net. Some
will know their way around a database, some won't. Some will be great
with graphics, others will hurt your eyes. Most will not really know much
about driving traffic to a website, and all will share one thing in common:
A willingness to be seen as a "Web Guru" whether or not they
qualify for the term. All are experts on some things, but not necessarily
the same thing.
So how do you choose the right web developer for you? Talk
to thier clients. If they are happy with the result, they won't mind the
call. |