My friend Claudio gave me a nudge by sharing his own, event-specific “about me” blog post and because I’ve put project work aside for this week, I decided that I’d write my own. (I’m attending the major WordPress event WordCamp Europe in Turin, so any web stuff I get to do will probably be socialising or networking.)
(Yes, I write long.)
I’m a British photographer, designer and programmer and I live on the shores of Lake Thun in Switzerland with my wife Jo. We’ve been here for a long time, now; I arrived twenty-three years ago and Jo came to live with me later, in 2006, after we met online before it was cool. We’ve lived in this region the whole time we’ve been in Switzerland and have no real interest in moving away. Why would we, when the views are this good?
In my spare time, I like hiking and photography; the day job has been working with WordPress since 2003. I’m co-owner of Say Hello, a small agency here in Spiez, and spend most of my time designing, building and maintaining websites for clients across the country. Before coming to Say Hello in 2019, I led a team of developers at a large WordPress agency in Bern, where I really got to know the ins-and-outs of managing small, medium and large projects.
Thanks to the principle of location-independent working—a.k.a. remote working—since the agency was founded in 2016, we got through the pandemic unscathed, although our clients usually prefer to arrange meetings online these days. That being said, I love going out to spend time in their offices when I get the chance.
On a technical level, I’d say that my preferred aspect of the day job is typography, CSS and responsivity. I love a good font combination, scalar font sizing, and CSS grid. I could spend hours tweaking and adjusting spacing, fonts and colours, but I get to do a lot more than that these days. I also like building interactive interfaces and have been getting better and better at React after more than twenty years coding with vanilla Javascript.
Because I’ve been working in the web for so many years—since 1996, to be precise—I have a fair aptitude in backend coding with PHP. This is usually extending WordPress and its APIs alongside my preference for frontend work. I learned a lot about PHP when getting into Object Oriented Programming as part of a job working for a TYPO3 agency a few years back.
Part of my commitment to WordPress through my job is to be an active part of the community, so I spend a few hours each week working on open-source tech., contributing to the WordPress Outreach channel from time to time, and attending WordPress Meetups locally and online. I’ve been co-organiser for a few WordCamps here in Switzerland, and have gained a lot of friends through my participation in the international community over the last fifteen years.
Next stop: Turin, where I’ll be meeting up with friends, both old and new. Hope to see you there!
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