Introducing the New Zealand FullCodePress team
Alison Green - Captain’s choice
Ali Green has been designing and building websites for the past 11 years, and still loves her job as much today as she did when she started. She’s worked on over 120 websites - covering all aspects of the web design process, including design, information architecture, scoping, HTML development, image creation and manipulation, client liaison and project management.
These days she works at Shift in Wellington and specialises in building pure CSS websites that are usable, accessible and e-government compliant (even those that aren’t e-govt sites!). She’s a bit of a perfectionist, never assumes anything, and always checks everything at least twice.
In her spare time she plays on her computer, does a bit of blogging, reads a lot, hangs out with her friends and discusses politics with anyone who will listen. In a past life she was one of the organisers of New Zealand’s biggest and best annual dance party - The Gathering.
Jeffrey Wegesin - HTML/CSS
Jeffrey began his career in Chicago working as a designer for a data-mining corporation. Misled into believing he would receive a yellow helmet to protect his noggin, he departed, digging a hole through the Earth, and finding his way to Xero where he works as a production designer.
At Xero Jeffrey cuts the fat from markup while he endeavours to make everything look and work the same in every browser imaginable. He also has experience building accessible and usable websites for other businesses and government agencies in New Zealand and in the U.S.
Jeffrey enjoys feeding his Xero colleagues cakes, learning New Zealand colloquialisms like “bikkie,” and exploiting his American accent. In his spare time he plays with cameras, stares at fonts, and reads deep and introspective books about peanut butter. He also writes poetry. His latest poem is about his toe:
I’m missing a toe, you know, you know,
You know I’m missing a toe, a toe,
So why laugh at me, I just want to know,
Why laugh at my missing toe?
Peter Johnston - Writer
I’ve been working with web content for ten years now, and been working with words for over 20 years - in advertising, communications and web development roles.
More recently I worked as a freelance web content specialist from 2003-2006, before taking up my current role as Editor for the Retirement Commission on the award-winning Sorted website and other online/offline projects.
Other organisations I have worked for in the web space include Helios Communications, Wellington City Council and The Web Limited.
My mantra for developing good web content (and indeed any content!) is that it should be compelling, concise, consistent, current, correct and credible. Outside work my biggest passions are music - particularly from the post-punk era - and my two sons (10 and 13 years old). I also love eating chocolate, drinking coffee and watching cricket, though rarely all at the same time…
Mark Rickerby - Programmer
From more than eight years working in Wellington’s entertainment and design industries, Mark has subsumed more web project chaos than most people have had hot dinners. After chasing the English language all the way from the heights of poetry to the depths of relational databases, he should have been looking where he was going when he ran straight smack into the wall of computer science. After a crash course in programming language analysis for the infamous Lego Hypothesis (published at OOPSLA 2006), he came to the shocking conclusion that there was more to coding than getting Javascript to play nicely with browsers, yet for some reason he promptly returned to the web industry.
Mark is currently writing and directing an online adventure game and contributing to several open source PHP projects.
Website: http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz
Steve Dennis - Designer
Since almost the dawn of time (2001) Steve has worked at Enlighten Designs in Hamilton. Steve enjoys the mega important title of ‘Lead Designer’ though the complete lack of business cards means everyone just has to take his word for it. His strengths lie in clean effective design, elegant and reusable markup, and an almost silly attention to detail.
When he’s not working, designing things, rock climbing, or playing guitar, or he can usually be found eating, or much more likely, sleeping.
Zef Fugaz - UX/IA
Being an introvert with two layers of speech impediments, Zef was perhaps destined to dedicate his career to anything that avoided verbal communication.
His career was launched at Tearaway Magazine in `88 as Music Editor. He then moved to television production in `92 and broke new ground by producing New Zealand’s first TVC fully-animated in 3D (featuring a toilet-roll rock-band).
Then back when ‘gopher’ was not a squirrel-like creature and ‘mosaic’ not something you glue to crockery, Zef discovered The Web. He dived in and has been working there ever since.
In 1994 he launched ‘Global Groove - the Website’ - featuring music articles, record reviews, animation and snippets of original music downloads. This has since evolved into zef[a]media - a blog which focuses on ‘The User Experience in New Zealand’.
Somewhere in between all this he produced a radio show, made an award winning documentary, raised two children and been strapped to the side of a helicopter.
At FullCodePress Zef is looking forward to an intense time collaborating with some of New Zealand’s top web talent and consuming vast amounts of dark chocolate and fresh coffee.
Thomas Scovell - Project Manager
Thomas has spent 14 years “working the web”, for the past several years as a project manager. He currently works for Webby award winning agency Shift in Wellington, New Zealand as senior project and account manager for international and national brands and government sector clients. Thomas’ formal qualifications are in psychology and philosophy - enabling him to bring a rigorous understanding of human drives, tempered with an analytical process, to the process of website creation - as well as fueling his passion in project management methodologies, web standards and the semantic web. When not online - Thomas can be found indulging in a little whiskey, a lot of music, quite a bit of film, some photography and as much vegan cuisine as he possibly can.