Web Development in Hampshire

When I started in web development a few years ago I had to move to Birmingham and London to find work - the local web industry was pretty much DOA. I’m not sure why that was… possibly companies gravitated towards the fibre in Docklands and the financing in the city, or London’s pool of experienced workers was larger. Anyway, technology on the South Coast tended to be focused on defence contracting.

Today there are certainly more developers out there, but they’re not very visible - a Google search for “PHP Developer Portsmouth” throws up pages of job ads, rather than pages of local PHP developers. Other technology- and location-specific searches return similar results.

In an effort to change this, and to make the local development community a bit more “joined-up”, I’ve been collecting local developers’ blogs. I’m hopeful that in the long-term these blogs will form the core of a local web development community, but at the very least, if we talk to each other, if we’re active online and network around subjects of common interest, it will raise everyone’s profile. I know that Adam Wintle wants to do similar things over at Refresh Portsmouth, so anyone who’s keen on real-world meet-ups should talk to him.

If you’re at all interested in web development on the South Coast, please import this handy OPML file into your RSS reader, and check back for updates occasionally. Alternatively, the HTML list is after the break. If you want to be added to the list, or you know someone who should be on there, please just let me know.

OPML Summary

David Cooper

David is a 21-year-old website developer and designer from Hampshire, UK. His blog - dazecoop - includes a portfolio of the best-of images from David along with interests including Minis, Cars,
Motorsport, Photography, PHP Development, Website Design, Google and lots more.

Chris Dean

Chris is both Projects Manager and a PHP web developer for Netbasic Ltd. in Fareham.
His specialities include OOP PHP 5, MySQL DBA, streaming media and wordpress monetization, and due to having a scientific background tends to bring those skills into his development work too. He contributes regularly to the linkedin questions forum on blogging and web development, and runs a number of blogs on a wide range of subjects ranging from household pets to niche scientific topics.
Though a full time employee, he is always on the look out for technically interesting and engaging short term contracts. He posts about LAMP development and technology in general.

Howard Durdle

Howard is a geek, a gamer, a company director and sometime surfer. He watches a lot of American TV. He lives in Winchester, and currently contracts for the largest software company in the world. He’s been involved in all kinds of interesting stuff, from ASP/PHP through to iPhone application development, electronics design and network security for the MOD.

Andy Jarrett

Andy is a Senior ColdFusion developer, located in Portsmouth, UK

Daniel Kendell

Daniel is primarily a PHP developer in Fareham. He loves LEDs, most aspects of technology, philosophy and often gets confused in the middle of his own sentences. Not thick, just a bit dense.

Sven Latham

Sven is a freelance IT and systems consultant, based in Gosport. He’s planning a series of articles based on his experiences setting up his own IT company.

David Otton

David is a web developer, currently working in Portsmouth. He has a love/hate relationship with PHP, and thinks the world could use more giant rabbits.

Daniel Pope

Daniel is a Django developer in Chichester (which is close enough). His blog is pretty active, and he writes posts in some interesting areas, such as Python and SVG.

Paul Graham Raven

By day Paul is a rather shabby library assistant in a local museum, but in the evenings he magically transforms into a freelance writer, publicist, web presence manager and social media consultant, webzine editor, book and music reviewer, poet, guitarist and aspiring science fiction short story author. He manages to fit some sleep in every now and again, too.

Rich Sae Kang

Rich is a Portsmouth-based web developer and IT manager. His posts currently lean towards shell scripting and music.

Jasper Tandy

Jasper is a salaried/freelance web developer in Southampton. He lives with a rabbit and a kitten, which is cool.

James Titcumb

James is a PHP web developer living in Whiteley. He works in Fareham for Netbasic. He’s also a Twitter addict, making his blog one of the most frequently updated on this list.

Dominic Winsor

Dominic is a user-experience consultant in Southampton. He’s an ethical shopper, and web developer, usability expert and interaction designer with experience of working with everything from small businesses and charities through to high-street banks.

Adam Wintle

Adam is a Portsmouth-based developer and designer. He appears to have almost scary levels of motivation.

Eddy Young

Eddy is a Hampshire-based Java/C# programmer. His blog tends towards photography.

OPML Summary