Adam Hill

Web Developer

AdamHill

Launceston, Tasmania

I'm a Ruby on Rails specialist, Cloud Computing connoisseur, jQuery guru, CoffeeScript master, SASS fanatic; I love convention over configuration and web standards.

I have provided services including web design, software development, website and DNS hosting, consultation, Search Engine Optimisation and online marketing to clients such as Brands for the People, BioClinical Services, Launceston Church Grammar School, Forestry Tasmania, CubeSMS and the University of Tasmania.


+61 419 236 439 mobile

Experience

  • Director
    Launceston, Tasmania
    Feb 2004 - Present
    Advanced Design Online

    I started picking up small freelancing web development jobs in 2002 while I was still studying at UTas (Bachelor of Computing, graduated 2003). I kept running this side business whilst both working and studying from 2004 to 2006. Since graduating in mid-2006 with Masters in Computing onwards I have been effectively working ADO full-time as a premium provider of custom Content Management Systems written in Ruby on Rails.

    I have never advertised, and I have always received jobs through word of mouth. This has been enough over the years to employ several people when the workload has been more than I can handle. Nowadays I am a sole trader and work very closely with and subcontract to designers James and Tom and systems administrator Aaron.

  • Team Member
    Launceston, TAS
    Jun 2010 - Present
    Mastodon

    I have recently formed a small freelance team with graphic designers James and Tom: "Mastodon". This is not a business as such, merely a team: whoever gets the contract can subcontract to the other team members if and when they need. This means that clients get the best possible products delivered from us combining all of our strengths.

    We have been working really well together - check out the new Fahan school website (www.fahan.tas.edu.au) and the Tasmanian Principals Association website (www.tpa.org.au).

  • Web Developer
    Launceston, TAS
    Jan 2005 - Present
    University of Tasmania

    I took over as the web guy at the University of Tasmania's School of Nursing and Midwifery (http://www.snm.utas.edu.au/) at the beginning of 2005. I helped upgrade them to the new design at the time and wrote several dynamic areas.

    I also started working at the University Department of Rural health (http://www.ruralhealth.utas.edu.au/) in April of 2006 to work on the UDRH external website, newsletter and start working on an internal UTas Ruby on Rails system: the Patient Partner Program (http://www.patientpartnerprogram.com.au/). The PPP is a program run by the Launceston Clinical School (http://www.medicine.utas.edu.au/schools/lcs/) and manages bookings of student doctors, doctor tutors and chronically ill patients in the community to help dramatically increase the amount of cases students get to see hence becoming more experienced.

Highlight Projects


  • Brands for the People

    Contracted by Andrea at Brands for the People to take the Balsamiq Mockups she had done and the PDF web designs from Christina Lauer to turn into a full working product.

    Brands for the People has a curated community of the best designers and connects them with startup companies in need of full branding packages. BFTP also cuts back on the speculative nature of online design by restricting the number of designers pitching per project to an absolute maximum of five.

    The system I created consists of four main areas; public area, administration, clients and designers areas.

    Public area: sales funnel, detail pages, blog.

    Client area: create projects and fill in your branding strategy, follow-up with a free consultation to analyse your project and the BFTP brand strategists will suggest designers and find any extras beyond the scope of the standard branding package. The client then chooses up to 5 designers to invite to pitch for the project. Designers then upload concepts and clients can discuss those concepts with the designers. Once the pitch process is over, a single designer is chosen and then they deliver the full package.

    Designer area: update your profile, view project invitations, upload concepts and participate in project discussions about your concepts.

    Administration: page & menu management, article & category management, user management, project management.


  • Fahan School

    Complete website redesign, redevelopment backed by a custom Ruby on Rails 3.0 CMS to handle pages, images, files and videos, events, RSVPs, donations, news articles, multiple email newsletters, site-wide search.

    Under active development under the lead of their excellent communications department continually planning new features and brainstorming ideas.


  • Where My Friends At?!

    A Ruby on Rails side project I helped develop to show a map of all your friends recent check-ins across different social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Gowalla. This project was helped by my experience in cloud computing and caching and helped me gain experience with the Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla and Google maps APIs.

    Design by James and marketing by Tom.


  • Workrz - Online rostering

    Winner of the "Most Potential to Monetize" category of the 2010 Rails Rumble (www.railsrumble.com), we won a year of premium Chargify services. Great to see that Chargify believe in our system as much as we do!

    Workrz puts an interesting spin on rostering, especially for casual staff - you can either assign or invite them to shifts - all in one hit online. No more wasting hours every week making phone calls.

    This project is under heavy development and is due for major updates coming around the end of April!


  • MIP e-referrals

    Ruby on Rails CMS to handle radiologist referrals and bookings with information flow between four different secure-login user types.


  • BioClinical Services

    Full business branding including logo design, print work, business website design & development;

    Clinical Equipment User Manual Library web application design & development. This provides secured admin access for management of brands, devices, documents using Amazon S3 for file storage due to 40Gb of current manuals, aiming for 100Gb by end of 2012. It also has a secured normal user area for document access – uses one-time Amazon secured URLs for manuals


  • Caliber HTML5 Touchscreen Bookings

    I worked with James on replacing Caliber's Flex-based bookings front-end with an HTML5 version so it's compatible with iPads, iPhones etc. My experience with Ruby on Rails made working with their existing RoR backend a breeze and is a good example of my unobstrusive javascript style and jQuery strengths.


  • CubeSMS

    Subdomain for each account with multiple users per account;

    Grouped/tagged phonebook contacts;

    Send SMS via web interface, email or API (for MS Office plugin etc);

    Delayed job engine for message scheduling to avoid overload.


  • Survey Application

    Ruby on Rails web application. Designed for either having users fill in answers online, or provide an interface for inputting answers from results on paper/email etc;

    It's used by Launceston Church Grammar School http://survey.lcgs.tas.edu.au/ and Meander Valley Council http://survey.meander.tas.gov.au/

    Survey management complete with multiple pages per survey, multiple questions per page, questions can be of many different types. Admin interface includes lots of AJAX with drag and drop, inline editing etc. Lots of reporting functionality including demographic builder


  • Forestry Tasmania

    Page tree, news article management, file and image management within CMS (plus ~50Gb subversion library) plus full site search;

    Multiple online shops within the one CMS (was based on a system I started to rival Shopify) with a full category tree, having products in multiple categories. Products can have normal & electronic product variants;

    Dynamic-Flash map of Tasmania - the CMS manages regions, destinations, features at each destination and then passes that live info to the Flash map (developed by Jaffa) via XML;

    Lots of Ruby scripting for bulk updates to CMS content, reports etc.


  • Launceston Church Grammar School

    I took over existing PHP system in November 2005, supported until April 2006 when we started the new Rails CMS with page tree, asset management, event management and RSVPs, donations online, six different newsletter types (with online and email versions) each with multiple editions and multiple articles per edition. Also includes full auctions system, secured parent areas.


  • Video Assessments

    Ruby on Rails 3.0 CMS for secured access for doctors to watch videos of student consultations and assess them online through the Launceston Clinical School.


  • Patient Partner Program

    Ruby on Rails web application started in April 2006, infrequent minor new features since. Interface for the management of contact details for students, patients, doctors and users (secured access for admins and tutors). Group consultations and assessments available for each student with lots of different reports available to admins and tutors.


  • Tasmanian Principals' Association

    Project management, server, database, email and DNS setup and hosting. Rebranding and most design by James, development and design by Tom.


  • Kreglinger Wine Estates

    Uses a custom PHP CMS I wrote to pass XML back and forth from Flash front-end (which I worked on with Jaffa). This type of system is more common now, but at it's time (2004) was amazing and one of the first of its kind, and it's still running 6 years later. It has multiple gateway implementations: Eway for Australian orders and Ogone for Euro orders.

Education

  • Master of Computing
    Launceston, Tasmania
    Feb 2001 - Jun 2006
    University of Tasmania

    In 2001, I was awarded a University of Tasmania National Undergraduate Scholarship in Computing for four full-time years of study where I commenced the Bachelor of Computing degree. I gained a broad understanding of many areas of computing including programming, project management, game design, networking and exposure to many software environments.

    During the three year undergraduate course, I received a total of 17 High Distinctions, 6 Distinctions and 1 Credit and was placed on the Dean's Roll of Excellence for each year. My team came third in the Pacific region of the world-renowned ACM ICPC programming competition.

    I went straight into a Bachelor of Computing with Honours degree, which I later changed to a Masters in Computing where I researched and studied robotics, functional programming, mobile and ubiquitous computing. I finished my Masters while simultaneously working six part-time jobs.

  • Grade 6-12
    Launceston, Tasmania
    Feb 1994 - Dec 2000
    Scotch Oakburn College

    I attended SOC on scholarship from 1994 to 2000. In years 11 and 12 I studied computing, as many mathematics subjects as I possibly could, physics, chemistry and japanese. I was equal dux of the college having received a perfect TCE score of 100.0 and received the equal highest Interstate Tertiary Index score in Australia with the maximum of 99.95.

Things I am interested in (other than working my butt off for you)


  • Interests

    Anything tech;

    Motorbike riding;

    Social basketball;

    Rock climbing;

    Xbox 360 gaming;

    Bush walking;

    Developing side projects!

References