During my Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science at City University London, I spent a year working as part of an industrial placement for PSI2000, a leading provider of Risk Management solutions in the UK. My main role while at PSI2000 was Support & Software Testing Apprentice, which meant I mostly communicated with the company’s clients but I also got involved in a few exciting projects such as a Data Transfer Project for Leeds City Council and a Support Call Improvement Project where I created a number of email based workflows which radically improved the efficiency of creating and resolving cases and responding to the clients’ requests within Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

However, while at PSI2000, I also had the opportunity to work within the Marketing Department. During my work as a Marketing Assistant Apprentice, I conducted a full re-design of the PSI2000’s Public Website as well as created numerous graphic design pieces and 6 animated videos for it. This project concentrates on the PSI2000 Public Website Re-design Project.

Both the old website and the new website are built using the Microsoft SharePoint CMS (Content Management System). In comparison to the old website, the new website consists of the pages that were already available with a new design plus a number of new exciting additions. One of the additions is the chat function. I implemented PureChat in order to provide the clients visiting the website the ability to send us a message and receive a reply swiftly and directly. The administrator has the ability to turn the chat off or on, therefore it’s just like office hours, but online! When the chat is turned off, the client is still able to send us a message through email. Another exciting addition was the Testimonials page which consists of a vast amount of videos which I collected and uploaded to Vimeo, and then embedded onto the webpage. In addition to that, other additions include: the Careers page where visitors can apply for jobs at PSI2000, the Download page which allows visitors to download one of the PSI2000 products (license required) and the Support page which allows the PSI2000 Support Team to connect to a user’s computer remotely in order to discuss and assess issues further.

In order to get a visual representation of the project, feel free to have a look at the images provided above and below.

In most university degrees, the final year of the degree consists of the same amount of modules as the previous years with the exception of an individual project, also known as a dissertation. The Individual Project module runs through the whole of the final year of university and involves substantial amounts of work and numerous meetings with a supervisor which at the end of the academic year marks the dissertation alongside a second marker.

The idea behind my individual project was to create an app or website which would allow students and the academic staff of a university to access university-related resources. In the end, I made the decision to develop a website. I started the project in November 2014 and completed it in April 2015. Throughout the project, I conducted extended research and learning phases in order to cover the missing knowledge I had in terms of specific tools, programming languages or syntaxes. The main programming language used throughout the project is PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor). The relational database management system (RDBMS) used is MySQL. The project was built to be integrations heavy with some of the most important third-party integrations being: PayPal PHP Class, TFL (Transport for London) API, Google Maps API and Bootstrap. It also included other smaller components such as the DataTables table plugin and the select2 select box plugin.

Overall, this was the project I enjoyed the most which is probably due to amount of control I had over its direction, due to its stressful and challenging progress which always kept me in motion and gave me the hunger to try and achieve my best. Once it was complete, the feeling of accomplishment made me realise that I achieved something special which won’t have been possible without the hard work and dedication that I put into the project. The project was worth 4 standard university modules and was awarded 69%.

In order to get a visual representation of the project, feel free to have a look at the images provided above and below.

During my Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science at City University London, I spent a year working as part of an industrial placement for PSI2000, a leading provider of Risk Management solutions in the UK. My main role while at PSI2000 was Support & Software Testing Apprentice, which meant I mostly communicated with the company’s clients but I also got involved in a few exciting projects such as a Data Transfer Project for Leeds City Council and a Support Call Improvement Project where I created a number of email based workflows which radically improved the efficiency of creating and resolving cases and responding to the clients’ requests within Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

However, while at PSI2000, I also had the opportunity to work within the Marketing Department. During my work as a Marketing Assistant Apprentice, I conducted a full re-design of the PSI2000’s Public Website as well as created numerous graphic design pieces and 6 animated videos for it. This project concentrates on the PSI2000 Marketing Videos Project.

In November 2013, PSI2000 held their annual User Group Meeting, which invites the current clients of the company to a meeting where they can find out about specific new feature and products as well as express and discuss issues experience by them and how they could be dealt with. A lot of work and preparation goes into the User Group Meeting each year. One of the tasks that the Managing Director of the company lined up was a video showcasing the company’s clients over their 17 year history. I put myself forward to create this video, which was created the day before the meeting, so slightly under pressure. The video had an excellent response at the meeting, and the current clients of PSI2000 were amazed of how many clients the company had over the years and that some of the clients included the likes of BBC, Royal Borough of Greenwich, AWE, National Grid and Leeds City Council.

During the PSI2000 Public Website Project, I had a discussion with the managing director of the company and came to the conclusion that we need more marketing material to be featured on the website, perhaps video based. We came up with the idea of a series of video which introduce the company to the visitors which aren’t familiar with it, but it may also provide extra information to previous visitors which they were previously unaware of. I created three videos, titled in order, “Who We Are”, “What We Do” and “How We Do It“. The videos went on to be featured on the home page of the public website. Following these videos we had another meeting, and decided to follow the same introduction path but this time for the products that PSI2000 offers. I went on and created a video which focused on the introduction of the “Asbestos Web Tracker” product and was featured on the public website’s products page. After this video, my industrial placement at PSI2000 ended, and I started to work part-time during my final year at University, which meant time was more limited while priorities shifted, therefore I did not contribute further to this project.

In order to get a visual representation of the project, feel free to have a look at the videos provided above and below.

During the summer of 2015, I decided to create an account on fivesquid.com (freelance marketplace website where people can trade skills and services). The first service I created, was a Video Animation, as I felt that it was the category where I had the biggest chance of achieving instant orders due to the fact that I could post the videos that I already made on the service page, the largest portfolio in one specific category I have to date. In the future, I do plan to create a Web Development/Design service where I will development and design website and a Brand Identity service where I will design logos and any other marketing materials.

Fayon Cottrell from Coach Me! was the first person to contact me as she requested a video for Amazing Me! Workshop, which is session run by her for Year 6 students who are about to take the very important leap to secondary education. The video was to be addressed to the teachers of the Year 6 students. By using the Microsoft Word-based of what the video should consist of provided by Fayon, I created the first draft of the video. Following further, Fayon had a few more amendments to make to the draft video and we went back and forth until the video was exactly as she wanted it to be. I really enjoyed being part of this project as it really showed me how amazing freelancing can be, especially helping people and them helping you back, while they also become my contact which I may work with again in the future. I believe that Fayon is really pleased with the outcome of the video as you can see from the testimonial and Twitter post provided above.

You can watch the video that I created for Fayon and the Amazing Me! Workshop above.

Around 2012, I installed Adobe Photoshop and became passionate about graphic design. I started to “play around” in Photoshop, by creating logos, adverts or wallpapers. I was proud of some of the designs that I created, and thought I would compile them into a portfolio. I am looking to create designs for individuals and companies but, so far, I haven’t taken part in any such work, although I haven’t advertised this as a service I can do either. I plan to create a Graphic Design service on fivesquid.com (freelance marketplace website where people can trade skills and services) in the near future.

You can view the designs that form the Graphic Design Portfolio below.

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During the second year of my University degree, I decided that I wanted to do some volunteering, so I started to look for website that offered volunteering jobs and I found City Volunteering which is run by the university which I attended, City University London. After spending some time searching through the website, I found a Photographer Volunteer position at Interact Magazine, so I went on and applied for the opportunity. Further on, a few days after applying I received a successful reply and I was invited to their office in Kentish Town, for the first meeting.

I was to work on the Spring 2012 issue of the magazine, and with the Olympics being held in London that summer, they were planning to have an article focus on the Olympic Games 2012. All the other writers were busy with other articles, so the magazine asked if anyone was interesting in writing the Olympics article, to which I replied by putting myself forward for it. Initially, I was only going to be taking photographs for a few specific articles, but with this new opportunity arising, I became the person in charge of one of the most important articles of the issue. I went on to write a draft of the article, and then went back and forth with one of the editors of the magazine, until we were both happy with the outcome. In addition to writing the article, I was also paired up with another team member to manage the photography part, which we did by visiting the Olympic Park prior to the Olympics 2012 and took representative photos for the article.

You can view the article that I wrote for Interact Magazine above.

Ever since I started travelling, I started taking photographs. I am proud of some of the photographs that I took, so I decided to compile all of the photographs into a Photography Portfolio. The portfolio mostly includes photos from my summer and winter holidays and all the photos were taken with either a basic Kodak camera, iPhone 4s or iPhone 5s and not a professional camera. Locations of the photos include: Greece, France, London, Spain, and Italy.

You can view the photos that form the Photography Portfolio below.