At LPCS Websites We’re Not Just A Web Designer

18 Jan At LPCS Websites We’re Not Just A Web Designer

I was cleaning the basement this weekend and stumbled upon a 3-ring binder that I had created – over 30 years ago – of some projects I had worked on at my very first IT job.

I was incredibly lucky.  As a 21-year old, you could not have even remotely gotten this kind of IT training in college – IT wasn’t even on the menu back then.  But through some connections I was able to land my first “real” job in a small company nearby.  It had no technology.  There were no LANs back then, no connection to the internet, they weren’t even running stand-alone programs to run  day-to-day operations.  The accountant was doing everything by hand….  A young person reading this will struggle to understand how on earth this could even be a thing.

But a thing it was.  And my job was to help automate this company on a very limited budget.  There was no budget for classes, so I had to teach myself as I went.  And what an education I got.

I was given the opportunity to sit with every department to learn what and how they did what they did, and what each might need from other departments in the company.  From shipping and receiving to marketing, I got to experience it all first hand.  I learned how information flows within the organization, which allowed me to start mapping out a customized piece of software that would run every department and pass information back and forth as needed.  I investigated the products of the day, and started the process of designing my very first software package.  I must have been pretty proud of it, as I kept a comprehensive notebook of all the programming behind the scenes, and the front-end screens I designed for the end-users:

It didn’t take me very long to design, but we needed a solution for deployment – how are all of these users going to access this software?  Not every user had a computer back then, and if they did, it was stand-alone.

And that’s when I learned about LANs, cabling, electricity, servers, server operating systems, storage, backup strategies – things that are just commonplace today.

Yeah, drawn by hand, but good enough for the times.

I can’t believe that I saved all this stuff, but to this day, I still have almost every notebook from every project/job I worked on.  I am not sure why I do – but I’m glad I found this one.

I guess the greater point here is that I have been in IT for a long time, and every single implementation, whether it’s been a trading floor in London, or a website for a small business, requires not just technology – but a process to implement, upkeep and use that technology efficiently to get the most out of the investment.

I daresay not many “web developers” bring this kind of experience to the table.  We understand business, process and technology and hope we can help take your business to the next level.