Please note that I am very happily employed at Yahoo! Europe and not looking for new full-time opportunities at this time. Thank you.

Ben Michael Ward

Telephone
+44 (0) 7515 515 586
Email

Web
http://ben-ward.co.uk

Skills

W3C .

Expert with , , and technologies.

Experienced with with , and the

Experience building and web applications.

Awareness of emerging technologies such as and .

Some, limited knowledge of and .

Comfortable web graphics skills working with and

Good working knowledge of .

Desktop Application Development

Application development using 1.1 and 2.0 in , with (2003 & 2005).

2000 & 2005 database experience.

Comfortable with both back and front-end .

Passion for good and design.

Some experience with and .

Operating Systems & Servers

Regular use of and .

Configuration and maintenance of and web servers & databases.

Configuration and use of , and version control systems.

Experience

Web Developer

As a front-end web developer in the Yahoo! Europe Marketplace team, working on a complete rebuild of the Kelkoo front-end.

  • Redesigned HTML mark-up to be semantic and accessible, integrating the largest deployment of the hListing microformat on any site.

  • Building user-interface components using the .

  • Working with the YUITest Unit Testing framework.

  • Combining Kelkoo development work with my role as an administrator of the microformats development community, developing the hListing specification toward finalisation.

Also, established within the company as an expert resource for microformats implementation; and a regular contributor to other products through bug reports, beta testing and feature mock-ups.

Occasional Freelance Web Developer

Web Application Developer

A lead developer at yobject, building a large .NET-based e-commerce application for mobile software distribution.

The role has featured:

  • Design of a substantial Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database, implementation of an reusable .NET API and building a web standards compliant and accessible web front-end using ASP.NET 2.0

  • Completion & enhancement of visual design mock-ups, creation of standalone XHTML and CSS templates and final implementation in both ASP.NET Master Pages and a Wordpress CMS theme.

  • A thorough deployment of microformats: hCard, hAtom, hReview, hListing, XOXO and XFN.

  • Implementation of a Textile mark-up parser using regular expressions and delegate methods in .NET.

  • Experimented with hAtom & and Atom syndication formats for distributing software updates.

Information Systems Developer

Industrial Experience Placement. Gained experience building and maintaining large-scale Windows applications and ASP.NET 1.1 Web Applications within a small team.

Development roles included:

  • Design and implementation of an enterprise-scale Document Management client and server built on Microsoft SharePoint Services.

    Implemented a bespoke XML data format for caching and client-server communication, using XPath for searching.

  • Maintained a bespoke Content Management System; a back-end Windows application for document and resource management and a browser-based content editing interface.

    Worked to improve cross-browser rendering and application UI of the legacy system, and assisted with research and into a standards-based and accessible replacement.

  • Led re-architecture of a web application using ASP.NET. Designed standards-compliant output, used CSS layout techniques, gracefully degrading JavaScript and met WCAG Priority 2 accessibility guidelines.

Education

Computation with Industrial Experience BSc

Includes the selection of three final year module choices: Project Management, Requirements Engineering and Semantic Web

Includes a final year project to design and build a document management application for Windows using .NET 2.0.

Project priorities were to create a piece of software which was intuitive, built to strong UI design principles and achieve real-world usefulness and functionality through plug-in-based extension.

Awarded a First Class grade for this project.

Also includes a 14-month software development placement with Fujitsu-Siemens Computers (July 2004-September 2005). Awarded a First Class grade for this year.

3 A-Levels

Hills Road Sixth Form College, Cambridge (2000- 2002).

10 GCSEs

Sawston Village College, Cambridgeshire (19952000)

Interests

I swim, play tennis, badminton and football. Artistic hobbies include sketching and graphic design, cooking, playing the guitar and a love of live music.

Member of the WHATWG mailing list, and and administrator and active developer at microformats.org.

Regular attendee at web technology conferences: @media, d.Construct, Future of Web Applications/Design, South by South West and BarCamp events. Active presenter — usually on microformats — at BarCamp, SemanticCamp and internal Yahoo! conferences.

References available upon request.