| | Start date: June 2001 | End date: October 2007 | shots.net
The major focus of my employment at Emap has been the shots project. shots is a product which showcases cutting edge or brilliantly designed TV adverts, music videos and short films. It is very widely and well regarded as the leader in its field. The website is a vital part of the delivery of the shots product.
I began work on the launch of the shots website back in 2002. I have therefore been involved with every aspect and stage of the site development.
The site launched 8 months after the initial development started and has been growing subscribers and registered users ever since. The site has over 12,000 registrants for its weekly newsletter and approximately 1 thousand video clips are viewed daily from the site.
shots.net is developed entirely in standard ASP using SQL Server 2000 as its back end.
Content Managament System (CMS)
The original CMS for the shots site was based online however as the product grew, it became clear that a far more efficient way for the content to be managed would be via a PC based application. Therefore I developed the shots CMS using Visual Basic. It not only handles the site content but also all of the management of the other shots entities (companies, people, video clips etc). It is a vital piece of software for the employees of shots and has significantly increased their productivity.
Online Updating
A part of the shots product is a directory of companies and people involved in the production of TV adverts and film. The directory is published annually and I have written the routines to extract the required information from the database (via the CMS) and output files that are ready to be imported into Quark for print production. This process originally was accomplished by a team of researchers contacting each company and person in the directory by phone or fax and updating their records accordingly. To reduce the workload of the research teams, I designed and developed a system that would enable the people listed in the directory to go to the website and manually and securely update their own information. This not only put the emphasis for accurate data on them but it also greatly reduced the workload of the research teams. It has been a great success and currently more than 40% of the directory is updated in this way.
Award
A year after the shots website was put live, I won an award at the annual Emap awards for the development of the site and database.
BAFTA
I was the technical lead on joint Emap/BAFTA project which asked for delegates of a BAFTA conference to vote for their favourite short film. The project was done on a very short timescale and the voting process was only available to the delegates for 40 minutes. They could vote via the internet or their mobile phones and the results were displayed in real time at the conference on a screen behind the speaker.
At the end of the conference, the voting was disbled and the winner announced. The project ran very smoothly and BAFTA have been in talks with Emap to run a similar conference.
Production Guide Award
The shots data is also shared with another Emap product, the Production Guide. It is also a website and print directory. The CMS developed for shots is also used to administer the Production Guide data.
The Production Guide won the 'Best Directory' award at the 2005 DPA awards evening.
Extreme Music
I was asked by shots to develop a website in conjunction with Extreme Music where people could go and vote for their favourite music videos. They were also able to watch them on the site.
This was the first voting site I was involved with and the project turned out to be very succesful. The site attracted many hundreds of voters and the results were published in both the shots and Extreme Music magazines.
The voting engine and template developed by me has since been used for other voting sites, namely the BBC wildlife and comedy characters voting sites for Broadcast magazine. |
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Work Examples
- www.shots.net
- www.theproductionguide.co.uk
- www.screendaily.com
- www.broadcastnow.co.uk
Skills
- ASP
- ASP.net
- VB
- VB.net
- SQL Server
- Source Safe
- Internet Information Server (IIS)
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| | Start date: June 1999 | End date: May 2001 | Acclaim
Sanguin Acclaim is an application that interprets blood samples previously taken. It it used to manage the lifecycle of tested samples and to warn when the samples may be out of date. Acclaim can take information about the samples either directly via manual input, via an intermediary database or via barcodes on the blood bags.
The users of the application has the choice of either an Access or SQL Server database depending on their workloads. I developed the application with a 3-tier logical model so that the data layer was seperate from the business and interface layers. This enabled me to quickly and simply add data connectivity as necessary (ie. SQL Server and Oracle). It is used in a number of large plasma testing centres in the US and Europe. Some of these centres can handle thousands of samples per day so the application had to be robust, reliable and scalable.
CD Business Cards
I was asked to put together a CD business card which the sales and management staff could take with them on client visits. The cards took 3 months to design and develop and were a huge success at a time when such things were quite rare.
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- Sangiun Acclaim. A plasma testing interpritation application
- CD business cards.
Skills
- VB
- SQL Server
- Access
- Source Safe
- Flash
- Director
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| | Start date: August 1997 | End date: August 1998 | USAS and DUSAS
I worked for the 2nd line support team of the USAS wing of RAF Stanbridge as my sandwich year placement. During this time I was put through 4 courses (2 in USAS and DUSAS systems and 2 in Visual Basic).
I was given the task of updating the supply software on many of the USAS units, which meant that I travelled a number of times to RAF stations throughout the country. The deployable systems (DUSAS) were returned to us for upgrading, something which I also did.
This gave me a good understanding of UNIX based systems.
USAS Inventory
The USAS department had overall control of the USAS and DUSAS systems and as such had to keep an accurate record of where each piece of hardware was. I was asked to develop an application which would enable the members of the USAS team to 'check in' and 'check out' each piece of hardware as well as run reports showing where each system was and when it should be returned to the unit.
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- USAS (Unit Supply and Support). This system enabled RAF stations to order whatever items they needed from the RAF inventory. This could be part of an aircraft or pieces of uniform.
- DUSAS (Deployable Unit Supply and Support). This system enabled RAF units that were deployed to other parts of the world to have the same supply capability as the home based units.
- USAS Inventory system. A piece of software which was used internally to manage the inventory of the USAS and DUSAS systems.
Skills
- Visual Basic
- Access
- UNIX
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