Here’s a question I’ve been asked a few times in the past month or two (mainly in interviews), but its actually got me thinking about where I want to be/what I want to be doing in 5 years or so.

I’m the kind of person who likes to plan ahead, but not that far ahead. Right now 5 years seems like an eternity away, but I know it isn’t.

Originally

The original (pretty open ended) plan after coming out of school was:

• Finish uni
• Get a job in a web design/development company
• Work there for a good number of years gaining a good amount of experience
• Possibly start my own web development company with a few others after that

But now? I’m not so sure about that last one, and have a few other things I’d like to do somewhere down the line in my career. I’m not so sure I would be good at owning my own business, even if I were good at the practical side of things, there’s a lot more to owning a business than that.

A few things I would like to do

Now, the plan is pretty similar up until working in a web design company for a good number of years. I still want to work in a web design company (and I do right now), but I’m not sure if that’s where I want my career to end. Obviously I wouldn’t want to stay a junior developer for the rest of my life, I’d like to become a senior developer at some point, if not a lead developer somewhere.

Web Conferences

One thing I really want to start doing is going to a number of web conferences, meeting like-minded people in the industry, making contacts, and of course learning more about current and new technologies related to web design.

(Co) Write a Book

Another thing I would be interested in doing is either writing or co-writing a book about some kind of technology in web design. Even being able to contribute a section or two to a book (again) would be great, but I think co-writing one with someone would be my ideal situation (if I were ever to do it).

Write my own custom CMS

This one will likely happen at some point in the future, but whether it will be any good or not is the real question. I need to learn a lot about current CMS’ to even start this one, but it shouldn’t be that much of a mammoth task.

I just want to be able to have one that I know inside out and can easily apply to websites I create. It’s not like I want to make the next WordPress or anything like that (although that would be nice…realistically its probably not going to happen).

Web Standards Project

I’m all for my web standards, and I would at some point like to work alongside people promoting web standards. Maybe Opera, maybe somewhere else, who knows?

Overall

Overall I’m sure that I want to be a part of the web design and development industry, but I’m not certain where within that I want to be. Hopefully over the next few years I will be able to figure that out and start getting closer to doing some of the things I have mentioned above!

This month I’ve done fairly little web design work for myself – but with good reason; I had a fair bit to finish off for university, and have just started at a full time job.

Freelance Work

MobJack Music – http://www.mobjackmusic.com/

This one I completed at the end of last month, but it didn’t go live until early this month (and so I didn’t bother mentioning it in last months post).

It was a job I received off the back of the Jed Davis WordPress theme I made a few months ago. Someone noticed I had made the theme for Jed, and asked me to do the same for them. They were using the same software as Jed was for their music site – BandCamp – and just wanted me to turn the layout they had there into a WordPress theme so they could add a blog to their current site.

As with Jed’s site it was easier for me to just re-code the HTML/CSS of their site into something I could easily turn into a WordPress theme, so they ended up just giving me the design and I worked from that to create the whole thing.

Other Work

University

Well, university is now over; my dissertation has been handed in, all my other coursework has been handed in, and my showcase has been done (although it was fairly poor). All that’s left now is my graduation in July.

By the looks of things I will be receiving a 2:1 for my honours degree – I only need 2 B’s (out of 4 modules I still need to get back), and that is fairly likely considering the amount of work I’ve put into my dissertation and project. I could get a 1:1, but that would need an A for each of the modules I still have to get marks back from, which is very unlikely.

The New Job

Well, as pretty much anyone who has spoken to me in the past few days will know, I have a job! I am now a “Junior Web Developer” for MTC Media – a web design company here in Dundee.

So far the projects that have been given to me have been mostly small additions/edits to existing PHP based websites. Really, most of my time has been taken up with trying to figure out some of the websites structures so I know which file I need to edit – especially on one of the sites I’ve been given to work on (I’m sure if anyone from MTC reads this they will know which one I mean). But I’m assured that it’s not always like this, and that most of their sites use the same structure (which makes sense), but there are some sites they have acquired from elsewhere, which because they were not originally made by MTC do not follow the same structure (and some have quite obviously been made using some sort of WYSIWYG program – Dreamweaver perhaps). This may sound like a rant, but I actually find it a bit amusing having to work on sites with bad code like that – it reminds me of my Myspace customisation days and the endless frustration that came with the coding nature (although I’m sure that amusement will go away after working on them for a while).
I think once I get used to their main coding structure it’ll be fine, and I will be able to make changes much faster (or at least with less agony). One thing I really need to do is brush up on my OOP in PHP, but that shouldn’t be too hard.

Okay, so I’ve only been there for 4 days now, but so far it’s been pretty good, and everyone there has been welcoming to me and the other new start Graeme. I’m sure I will enjoy it!

It’s definitely what I want to do (web development in a web design company) – so that’s a major plus.

Next Month

Now that I have a job I’m pretty certain I won’t be taking on any larger projects. I will probably still do small edits here and there for those long term clients I have, but other than that I don’t plan on doing much freelance work – maybe if any of my friends ask me to do sites for them, but even then it’ll depend.

I did plan on taking it easy next month (between the end of uni and graduation), but it looks like I will be getting into a new routine with this new job, so ah well. I also need to be looking for somewhere to stay after moving out of here (just after graduation) – so anyone who knows of anywhere/is up for getting a flat with me just give me a shout.

I also need to get round to adding some of the recent projects I’ve done to this portfolio.