I began my career in Davis Langdon as a Web programmer. Not the most conventional of starts and not one that most of you would expect of someone in the Davis Langdon world, but nonetheless this is how I began 10 years ago. Quite how I went from web programmer to leading our Design Management and Specification Consultancy business in the Middle East I don’t know.
I have always loved computers, right from the early days of trying to re-program the family computer to make it run faster so that I could play the latest version of Championship Manager.
Through my university years my interest in technology and computers remained and I taught myself how to build basic websites using HTML, and the onto more complex languages such as PHP, JavaScript, C++ and mySQL databases. All of this I learnt through reading books and late nights whilst at the same time going through my final year at University gaining a first class degree in Project Management.
So I went to work at Davis Langdon, originally as a Project Manager but soon moving onto a project building a web-based specification production platform that would support our specification consultancy business, driving efficiencies and consistency through the business. I loved these years of late nights, head scratching, problem solving and building tools through technology that helped people do their jobs better.
Since those days I have been busy developing and building a career in Davis Langdon, but having just gone through the experience of building the #architectmap website from scratch, these great memories came flooding back. Yes, a lot of what I had learnt I had forgotten, but I enjoyed sitting down at a computer and getting stuck into some programming again after so many years.
The website that I built probably reflects my inability to remember much of what I taught myself, but I tried to keep things relatively simple and easy to navigate through. I hope that anyone who has viewed the site likes it and finds it equally easy to navigate, whilst still finding it useful and informative.
I purchased the domain name architectmap.net as the dot com was already taken (but not being used which is a little annoying) so the dot net was the next best thing.
In its first week the website attracted over 500 unique visitors with over 1,000 page views. This has complemented the recent passing of 100,000 views of the Archjtect Map google maps, which is a fantastic milestone to have passed.
Next step? Time to delve into the world of Apps I think and give that a go.
markschuey 