don-benjamin.co.uk

I’m a freelance web developer based in Brighton, UK. I specialise mainly in development of functionality for dynamic database driven web sites.

I’ve created this site as an advert for myself and my services and a place to manage my portfolio. Hopefully I will find something useful to say and hopefully this site will demonstrate my skills.

I originate from Bristol where I got my first web development job during university holidays building a site for the Government Office for the South West to publicise the work of their Neighbourhood Renewal team.

I moved to Brighton to study Computer Science at the University of Sussex and apart from a brief period in sunnier climes have been here ever since. While in Brighton I got my first work as a database administrator building a tool for a Lewes based publishing company to catalogue their content.

In 2003/4 I lived in Lagos, Nigeria where I co-founded Darwin Technologies Ltd, a Lagos based web and IT consultancy. One of the goals of the company was to promote the use of open source software as a cheap and legal alternative to the black market in pirated software so I taught myself to use the Linux platform both as a server tool and desktop development platform.

In 2004 I moved back to Brighton and back to the University of Sussex to take an MSc in Evolutionary and Adaptive systems.

After the course I got back into web development and am now working freelance with various companies including Darwin Technologies Nigeria Ltd., BozBoz UK Ltd. and 3rd Eye Vision .  The projects I’m working on are mostly content managed, data driven sites based on customisation of existing open source resources. I’ll try to document some of these technologies in the tools section of the site over the coming weeks.

Work I’m looking for would be in extending existing open source software, mainly in the web sphere as this where my expertise currently lies but any projects will be considered.  Particularly I am hoping in the not too distant future to find time to branch out into working with audio production technologies.