Over my years of experience in all things technical, I’ve gathered skills in two main areas.

Programming

I came to programming initially through web-page design at an early age, starting off with simple static pages on borrowed server-space, and eventually moving on to designing, building and hosting my own dynamic websites on a variety of different themes. During my time at Poynton High School I took an interest in offline programming, and started using languages such as Pascal to gain knowledge of ‘pure’ programming as opposed to website design! I progressed on to using a variety of .NET languages (VB.NET, ASP.NET etc) during my A-level Computing course, and then on to Java and C whilst at University.

More recently, I learned Java as part of my Software Engineering course at Durham University (some of my work is hosted here). I continued programming in Java during my time as a Technical Account Manager at OpenMarket, where I used a wide variety of technologies, including Hibernate, Wicket and JSP.

Through all of this, I have picked up an excellent grounding in many different aspects of programming, from low-level to high-level languages over a variety of platforms, as well as a theoretical approach as taught as part of my University course.

Performance Technology

Throughout my time at Poynton High School, I was heavily involved in many different aspects of technical work surrounding performances, including sound, recording and lighting engineering. I started to formalise this hobby with an A-level course in Music Technology, and have continued to build on this knowledge during my time at University, where I have joined (and subsequently become head of) my colleges PA Committee, which are responsible for all aspects of technical work surrounding JCR events. The highlight of this work was undoubtedly working at the annual Summer Ball, where over half a million pounds worth of technical equipment was brought into the college under our supervision to form what was arguably one of the most technical balls ever attempted in Durham, which was pulled off to amazing success. In addition to this, I have been involved in being technical director for numerous events around the college, varying from Freshers Week to the annual Cabaret performance.