In 2009, I was also fortunate to be nominated for the same award and although I did not win, I did have a great time at the ceremony. In 2010 and 2011, I was lucky enough to be involved in projects that won – notably forcing my way onto the stage with Cahoona in 2010 and mediaburst in 2011.

It’s all very exciting and it gives me the opportunity to buy a new suit and, wait for it, new shoes too.

So far the plan is to share a table with the other nominees – so I guess we’d better get practicing our gracious-in-defeat faces hadn’t we?

The new office is at 23 New Mount Street

The reason for the move was that the old office based in Ardwick, Manchester (near the Apollo) was just a little bit too far away from the Manchester city centre and personally I felt I was missing out on the buzz of the city by not being that close to it. With this new office I am only a 5 minute walk from the centre and 5 minutes from the Northern Quarter where a lot of digital agencies (my clients) are based. The old office was 10 minute walk to Piccadily train station but that walk heavily featured the unsavoury sights of Manchester’s red light district and was not very pleasant at all.

It’s almost exactly a year since I decided to get office space and I’m very happy with the results and while this new office is a little smaller than the previous one and missing some of its luxuries (like a kitchen and a water cooler) – the location more than makes up for it.

Team Mediaburst receiving the Best Public Sector project award at the 2011 Big Chips

Fortunately, because I was involved in an aspect of the project (designing the web UI), Mediaburst invited me along and I managed to get myself up on stage for the 2nd year running.

This is the third year I’ve attended the Big Chip Awards and, as I mentioned above, this was my 2nd time on stage. It’s a great feeling to go to an awards ceremony and be part of a team that wins so I’m very grateful to Mediaburst for inviting me along and, more importantly, for choosing me to work on such a great project in the first place.

Further reading

My case study on Florence

Full list of winners for 2011 Big Chip Awards

Job advert for a 3 month unpaid internship

This post was for a 3 month unpaid internship and a few points really stood out from the job description including the use of the word proficient in this requirement:

‘You’ll need to be proficient in turning Photoshop design files into functioning web pages using HTML/CSS and be aware of cross browser compatibility.’

That, to me, sounds like a key requirement for a junior front-end developer not an unpaid intern. If a candidate is proficient in those particular skills then they should be good enough to make a reasonable contribution, that is to say they should be able to make the agency money by working on billable jobs.

Something else stood out too:

‘We’re offering this as an unpaid internship, but travel expenses may be considered depending on your circumstances.’

So for this employer, paying expenses for their interns isn’t even a given.

After seeing this advert, I tweeted about it, using, the adjective bullshit and received this response from the agency owner.

‘Everybody that has worked with us on an internship basis has gone on to get work – either here or elsewhere.’

The fact that all their interns have gone onto get jobs doesn’t surprise me one bit; If the job description is anything to go by, this agency is hiring people who have the necessary skills to get a paid job at an agency without the need for a 3 month internship.

Internships/placements do have their positives

No, I’m not opposed to internships per se; I’ve worked at many agencies that take on recent graduates and/or current students for 1-2 weeks and get them to work on billable work. These students gain valuable experience that they wouldn’t get otherwise and it does make them more employable.

In these cases yes, the agencies are exploiting their position a little but the students do learn a hell of a lot in those 1-2 weeks. However, that’s just 1-2 weeks and although it’s not easy to get by unpaid for a fortnight it is damn near impossible to work a full-time job for three months without getting paid and, frankly, I don’t think that’s fair.

So why do employers offer internships?

As far as I can tell companies take on unpaid interns for two reasons:

1. Because they have an overflow of work and they can’t afford for a freelancer or to hire an employee to do it
2. Because they have an overflow of work and they don’t want to pay a freelancer or to hire an employee as that would decrease their own pay packet

If you have an so much work on that you need an extra pair of hands to do the work but can’t afford to pay them then you’re doing it wrong; you need to up your prices and if you can afford to pay an intern but don’t want to then honestly what does that say about you as a person?

So what’s the solution?

These unpaid internships are pretty much standard in other industries like fashion, PR and film/television especially in that there London, but I’d hate to see them become a standard in the digital industry. After all, despite the rest of the economy digital is still growing and crying out for more skilled employees.

Some people also responded to my tweet to say they’d previously been an unpaid intern and they’d done quite well out of it and while I don’t doubt that the intern does get some good experience, I simply think they should be paid if they are contributing to the employer’s salary. My solution would be for these employers to pay their interns a small wage – doesn’t have to be megabucks – just something that helps them pay their bills and makes them feel like a professional. Not paying anything at all seems just mean spirited.

Whilst writing this article, I discovered a job advert that I did like. It was from a design agency based in South Wales, Mark Boulton Design. The job in question is for a Web Design Apprentice and it looks very much like a traditional apprenticeship scheme whereby enthusiasm and a relevant A-level (or equivalent) are the only qualifications for this paid role which promises to teach a novice a lot about the industry. I wish more agencies would take this approach.

Your thoughts

What do you make of unpaid internships? Are they an unnecessary evil or a poor way to treat young people? I’d particularly like to hear from employers who take on interns in this way and why they feel it’s a good idea or perhaps some former interns and their experiences.

After nearly 3 years working from home (off and on) I’ve decided that despite how much more productive it made me it also made me a much duller person. The less I worked from home and the more I worked in client offices the more I began to feel depressed at the prospect of working from home when I had to and not seeing or talking to anyone all day. This comic from the Oatmeal fully sums up exactly what it’s like to work from home: both liberating and frightfully dull at the same time.

My new desk space

I’ve put off getting any office/desk space for ages as I’m often only working from home once every couple of months or so and for only 1-2 weeks blocks at a time but for this current project I don’t need to be in the agency’s offices at all for the project duration (8 weeks) so I thought I’d take the plunge.

Advantages

So far I’m absolutely loving it; the office gives me the discipline to start and finish work within normal work hours and not bunk off after lunch and watch too much Come Dine with Me on telly when I fall into a gumption trap.

I’m sharing with other freelance web developers so it means if I’m stuck on a coding problem or a business question I can get their advice and that is really useful.

I can come and go as I please – there’s no expectations for me to sit at the desk during slow times and if I need to take a walk to think about a programming problem I can without a boss thinking I’m a slacker. Essentially, it’s all the advantages of working from home but without any of the crippling loneliness.

Disadvantages

It does have disadvantages too, it costs money (not a lot mind, £10 a day) then I have to think about either making a packed lunch* or buying it from the local shop near the office (again more money). There’s also transport to and from the office – if I can cycle (nice weather permitting) then it’s free otherwise it’s petrol costs/bus tickets which is another few quid a day – basically having this desk space adds £10-£15 to my daily overheads.

But right now, I believe the advantages far outweigh those costs.

Going forwards

Most of my work requires me to work in the offices of digital agencies and it remains to be seen if there will be more lee way from them letting me work from this office as opposed to in in their offices – I guess I’ll jump off that bridge when I come to it.

* To be fair, someone else often makes my packed lunch and for this I am eternally grateful.

(Part of) The listings page

A little background

The Drum is a leading industry magazine and all the agencies that I’ve worked for subscribe to it – if anything just to see which agencies beat them to a particular pitch. The Drum emailed me a few months ago to say I would be featured but, unfortunately, the publication date kept getting pushed back. Thankfully, last week at long last, the guide came out with the 23rd July issue.

It feels great to be in a guide like this alongside fellow Northern Digitals: Stewart Hamilton-Arrandale, Matt Booth, Ian Hogg and Andy White.

Questions

Along with the listing, the guide featured some of the freelancers answering questions about freelancing. The answers were really interesting and I got a lot out of reading the responses of fellow freelancers to the same questions I had been asked.

(Part of) one of the question pages

Summary

It’s also important not to let things like this go to my head. There are lots of talented freelancers, who aren’t featured in this guide and I can’t honestly say this guide is the most accurate listing if I’ve been featured and they haven’t.

Having said that, it is always nice when a bit of recognition is thrown your way – whether you feel worthy of it or not.

From left to right: Shaun Fensom (MDDA), Malcolm and Gavin from Band on the Wall, Ben and Jon from Cahoona and me

It was great feeling hearing Band on the Wall announced as the winner and a surreal experience getting up on the stage and shaking hands with the presenter Terry Christian. This website was the product of a lot of hard work not just on my part but also from the guys at Cahoona *, everyone involved at Band on the Wall and winning the award feels like recognition that that effort was well spent.

* Big thanks also to Tim Fletcher, the front-end freelancer who came to the rescue towards the end of the project to make sure it got finished!

Everyone on stage - with presenter Terry Christian

This was my second attendance at an awards ceremony (Big Chips 2009 was my first) and I had a great time: ate some truly wonderful food and drank some fabulously free wine (thanks Jon and Ben). If I’m completely honest, winning a Big Chip was something I’ve always coveted since before I was a professional; I saw the awards from afar as a student and always felt that the day I’d won one would be the day I’d finally become a proper web developer.

Cahoona

It’s been a very interesting journey watching Cahoona go from a small agency which very few people had heard of this time last year to one that everyone has heard of now. I think the work they’re producing is of a very high quality and I was glad to see them pick up another award, the Tasty Website award for their own website cahoona.co.uk.

My expectations for the course

I certainly was not expecting to become a master iPhone developer after three days but I was hoping to get a good insight into what it would take to build an app. Furthermore, I was looking forward to meeting a few other like-minded and self-motivated web developers and subsequently learning some things from them.

My last experience of being taught programming was eight years ago in a beginners Java course at university where I struggled – to put it mildly – to grasp what the teacher was trying to teach me. Therefore, I was a little apprehensive about going somewhere and being taught programming again:

• would I struggle to understand like I did 8 years ago?
• would the class be full of more advanced programmers?

The answers to both those questions were yes, but in reality it was still a much better experience than that Java class all those years ago. I didn’t feel pressured to prove my programming credentials amongst the other attendees and although I struggled to ‘get’ it all at first – so did a lot of people and I certainly didn’t feel isolated.

What we learnt

We were shown the very basics of how an iPhone app is constructed in Xcode using the programming language Objective-C.

• On day one we were walked through some very basic concepts of app develoment by the tutor
• On day two we were put into small teams and we attempted to see how far we could get bulding our own apps
• On day three we demoed what we had (or more truthfully, hadn’t) built so far then we proceeded to be shown how to use some more of the iPhone’s core API kits

It turns out that iPhone app development isn’t easy at all and day two allowed us to see what problems everyone was facing when trying to build an app with little experience of the Objective-C language and all the different iPhone API kits (like maps).

By mid-morning on day three I was finally starting to get some of the concepts and remember some the nuances of Objective-C.

Course details

The course, ran by Guerilla Training (and taught by Sam Easterby-Smith) spanned three days (9:30am-5pm each day) and was a mixture of hands-on learning and seminar-style teaching. It was based at madlab in Manchester’s trendy Northern Quarter.

The cost of the course was £489 (plus booking fee) which for this type of training is very inexpensive and in fact, Northwest Vision & Media, a government funded organisation was able to provide a substantial rebate for this course to North West freelancers/small company owners.

Would I recommend it?

Yes – definitely. I got exactly what I wanted from this course – it met my expectations and I’d certainly be interested in attending similar events in the future.

A good reputation takes a long time to build and during this process I do not advocate bypassing other marketing methods; in fact, blogging and twittering can actually be a big help in building your credibility.

Reputation through reliability

As a freelancer, the biggest thing I can offer the web agencies I work for is peace of mind. They’ll often contact a freelancer when they’re understaffed and need a piece of work doing quickly. People who are efficient, friendly and professional will keep getting the work because agencies are terrified of handing over a job and not getting the results back.

The best way you can offer that peace of mind is to:

• Quote realistic timeframes and deliver on time
• Communicate your progress effectively
• Alert them to any issues you’ve found

That last one is important. You have to make sure if you run into anything e.g. an unsecure application, an inaccessible interface or a HTML email that looks pants in Outlook 2007, that you let your client know. They may be aware and not care but if they are not aware you may save them hassle later (whilst covering your own behind). If your client hands you a design featuring 9px red on black Comic Sans for the body copy — it’s your duty to let them know why in your professional opinion that it’s a bad idea.

The more reliable you are to perceived to be, the more your reputation swells; supplement your engorged rep that with a dash of networking and you’ll soon find not just more work but you’ll actually start to see the work come to you instead of you seeking it out.

Reputation via your client list/portfolio

Another way to build your reputation is to work for big name clients. If you find yourself freelancing at one of London’s most well known agencies don’t be surprised to find the other big agencies becoming a lot more interested in your services. The same is true for the actual pieces of work you do — if you find yourself working on a project for a large commercial client that will always stand out far more than doing work for a local ecommerce business.

Let’s put it this way, if you were interviewing candidates for a new web developer role and one of the applicants had a 2 year stint at digg or facebook on their CV I would think the vast majority of employers would be very impressed by that. Does it mean the applicant is any better as a programmer? Yes, it’s possible but it’s not a given.

Damage limitation

It’s very important to be seen not to be making a mess. If you work for a company who are continually delivering poor quality to clients you need to get out of there. This is not the same as abandoning ship on the way down — far from it. In fact, if you’re building your reputation up it’d be a good idea to stick around for a bit and gets yourself a reputation as a web firefighter rescuing cursed projects.

In my career to date I’ve worked for a couple of companies who were consistently botching projects and I left. Imagine how all those banking executives from banks like RBS are now fairing in the jobs market. Even if they did sterling work I wonder whether the mistakes of their superiors are now counting against them in interviews.

It’s a strange scenario having a day or two off in the middle of the week but it very often happens. Usually I spend this down–time worrying that I’m being lazy or that I don’t have enough work on in spite of the fact that I do. The very fact of the matter is that with freelancing you have to set your prices to cater for the fact that half the time you aren’t doing billable work therefore I’ve catered for slow periods financially but my brain can’t quite appreciate that.

This month I’ve been working two days a week on site for a client and supplementing that time with a further day of work for other clients and probably a few hours of business housekeeping (blogging, client contact, accounting, etc). This workload is more than enough to ensure that I have decent month financially yet I haven’t managed to stop fidgeting on those days where I’m not had work in.

But from now on if I find myself with a day off, like today — I’m going to enjoy it. I’m going to take a walk or watch a DVD — of course, I won’t be able to switch off completely but I won’t feel guilty if I only spend one–two hours doing web related work. Frankly, I think the time spent not working will actually make me feel a bit better when I actually do work and give my brain the freedom to think up new ideas.

Are you a freelancer? What do you do in the days you’ve not got work booked-in? How do you stave off the guilt that you should always be doing something productive with your time?