Hugh Lashbrooke
Web Developer at Quickonline
Born
in Cape Town
South Africa
Web developer working in Cape Town doing some sweet stuff with PHP, HTML and CSS. Some of that stuff is in Wordpress, but there's a fair amount of custom stuff too. True story.
Business Address
Hugh Lashbrooke's Professional details
Current Position(s)
Previous Position(s)
Developer | Naspers Labs | Naspers Limited
Cape Town, South Africa | 2010 - 2011
Online Media, Internet and E-Commerce
I worked as part of a Scrum team working on public-facing internal projects working primarily in CMS systems such as Wordpress, Drupal and MediaWiki. We worked on new projects and acted as a centre for R&D within the company. A large part of my work was focussed on building advanced search applications using Solr as an indexing tool.
Web Developer | Product Team | White Wall Web
Cape Town, South Africa | 2008 - 2010
Online Media, Internet and E-Commerce
In my first corporate job as a web developer, I worked on the Product Team and as such I did continued support and development on a lot of different projects using varying frameworks. I worked mainly in PHP and MySQL databases and focus heavily on standards-compliant XHTML and CSS with an emphasis on usability and SEO. I would occasionally work in CMS sytems such as Wordpress, Joomla and MediaWiki. All our work was managed using Agile methodologies.
Custom Web Application Developer | Freelance
Cape Town, South Africa | 2006 - 2009
Online Media, Internet and E-Commerce
My freelance work was born out of my passion for coding and working on my own projects in my spare time. Initially I was working on static HTML websites that had a large focus on design and usability, but I later progressed into building robust PHP-based systems that catered for the varied needs of my clients (as well as a brief outing into Flash, but that's best not spoken about). See my portfolio for examples of my most recent work. I have left older projects out of that portfolio as they are no longer relevant and do not accurately reflect the work that I do.
Educational history
Secondary
Wynberg Boys High School, Cape Town, South Africa (2003)
Tertiary
Cape Town, South Africa | 2004 - 2007
BA Theology - Systematic Theology, Practical Theology, Leadership
Degree was studied off-campus at Cornerstone Christian College as a part of the Stellenbosch University theology faculty. The college is now independent and known as Cornerstone Institute.
Achievements
Awards
I came 9th (out of about 500 entries) in the MiWay bounty on IdeaBounty.
Internal company award for passion as well as dedication to my job and furthering my skills.
media exposure
I was editor for my college's student magazine after having been a writer for the two years prior.
I am an article reviewer on the Smashing Magazine Experts Panel for articles relevant to my field.
The website I created for the band The Brothers Streep (see Portfolio) was featured on The Graham Norton Show in Episode 2 of Series 6. Watch the clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvJAoLgqE3U
Activities
Memberships
Member, 2010 - present
The Silicon Cape Initiative is a network of professionals in the IT industry in Cape Town.
Member, 2010 - present
The Scrum User Group of South Africa (SUGSA) is a network of individuals involved in software development using Agile/Scrum project management methodologies.
community
St. Martin's Anglican Church
Youth leader, 1999 - 2006
I helped out as a youth leader for the young people of St. Martin's Anglican Church. Their ages ranged from 6 - 18 and everywhere in between.
Team member, 2004 - 2004
The Foxfire Youth Team that I was a part of was a year long programme that involved initial training and subsequent work in evangelism and community development. We were trained in leadership, public speaking, counselling and many other practical skills.
Testimonials
"Coming in somewhat inexperienced Hugh interacted very well with the whole team at White Wall Web, delivered quick turn around time on request and has developed a solid passion for what he does." - 2010
"My time working with Hugh was a pleasure. Whenever there was a problem to be sorted, Hugh would also present a possible solution to the problem that was reported. All tasks assigned to Hugh was always resolved speedily and with satisfaction. Hugh also went the extra mile to ensure the results of his work would be more than satisfactory to both the business and the client. Would recommend Hugh any day." - 2010
"Hugh is one exceptional website developer, displaying an outstanding ability to execute ANY requirement that a client might have or at least offer a superior execution that initially intended. His design sensibility is abnormally strong and as a result, behaves as a one-man stop.
I was bowled over by the final product and it exceeded my wildest imaginations, all due to Hugh's amazing insight, keen eye for design, ability to work well, communicate with my team and deliver the product swiftly. He's my go-to developer for anything web related." - 2010
