When Two CodeClan Graduates Crossed Paths in Civic Tech

Looking back now, this post captures one of my first real introductions to civic technology platforms, digital services, and the wider public sector tech world. At the time it just felt like another training course. In hindsight, it became the beginning of a much larger journey into forms, workflows, automation, and digital transformation.

Training Felt Different After CodeClan

So this week I was in training for a couple of days. In the old days, this would have been a game of listening and trying to stay awake. However after 16 weeks of intensive teaching at CodeClan a couple of days was a breeze.

Discovering Firmstep and Digital Services

The training was in the customer experience platform CEP of a product by a company called FirmStep. It goes hand in hand with their Content Management System CMS. You can think of CMS as the website and CEP as the application for forms, processes, and workflows for customers visiting the website.

The guy training (Mathew) had travelled up from Edinburgh for a couple of days. The training was very hands-on and we were quickly creating processes, designing forms, making data, and integrations.

When Two Cohorts Collided

Mathew spotted my cohort 7 sticker proudly displayed on my laptop and queried what it was from. It's the class sticker for my cohort when I studied at CodeClan. It turns out that Mathew is also a CodeClan graduate from cohort 3. He graduated in April 2016 and joined FirmStep.

Looking back now, this post captures one of my first real introductions to civic technology platforms, digital services, and the wider public sector tech world.

At the time it just felt like another training course. In hindsight, it became the beginning of a much larger journey into forms, workflows, automation, and digital transformation.

The Small World of Tech

Small world, or is it a small tech industry? It was really good to chat about our time at CodeClan and how we found the whole experience. I had done a week of Ruby on Rails but Mathew had not. The course must have evolved between Cohort 3 and Cohort 7. It's cool to think that two completely different businesses or workplaces that have employees that came from the same coding school can help each other out.

Later in the week, I had another short overview of the CMS platform via video call with a guy based in Canada. It all looks very straightforward and not unlike the Jimdo product I use to do my own websites and this blog. The CMS is very much fill in the blanks with your content and the product takes care of all the code and configuration. I guess this is a good thing in terms of speed and reliability. Probably not so good if you like to code.

Early Thoughts on Civic Technology

In other news, the CivTech challenges were published this week. Seven in total (I thought there was to be 8).

There is quite a range in there. Quite a few if not all could be solved by tech and software. I have been mulling them over this week thinking of possible solutions. I will need to see if Udny Solutions can come up with a viable entry. Who knows. It's worth a try. Watch this space...

Oh and news from cohort 7. There have been 2 more of us who have secured jobs (edited actually 3) this week. Both on the same day. That must be the majority of us are now gainfully employed in the tech industry. Well done guys! Hopefully, our paths may cross in the future.

Looking Back at Where It Led

I have been asked by CodeClan to do a blog post for them on my journey over the past year. I will either post it here or provide a link. Depends on what exciting things happen next week.

It’s strange looking back at this now because so much of my later career ended up revolving around exactly these kinds of systems.

Forms, workflows, automation, accessibility, digital services, integrations, and civic technology all gradually became a major part of the work I would go on to do.

At the time though, this just felt like another interesting week of learning something new.

Oh and below is why I'm not a happy Windows user. My laptop did this yesterday, and this morning it took it upon itself to perform an update without asking me!!!

This all happened shortly after my decision to retrain and attend CodeClan and change career at 46.

Looking back, many of the same themes around workflows, automation, governance, and digital systems still appear in a lot of the technology reflections I write about today.

A lot of this also connects closely to my fascination with understanding and improving systems in posts like why I like fixing things.

Looking back, this was one of my first real steps into the world of digital services, workflows, and civic technology.

A lot of the same curiosity around systems, automation, accessibility, and user experience still shapes the technical work I enjoy today.

You can find out more here.

Why It Felt So Good to Be Hands-On Again

Looking back now, I think this was the point where I rediscovered how important meaningful hands-on work was to me. For years I had gradually drifted further away from engineering and closer towards meetings, management, process, and office politics. This role felt like reconnecting with the part of work I actually enjoyed.

So I get to be hands-on again.

Drifting Away From Engineering

I spent years in my last job working my way up the ranks from junior software engineer to engineer, senior, lead, and then principal. I picked up a growing team peaking at about 10 folks. It became inversely proportional to the number of hands-on meaningful work I actually did. It was more about meetings, plans, and justifying what you needed to do.

I have always thought when a company employs you as an engineer they want you for your brilliant engineering skills, Then you do a good job and they promote you... you then do less engineering, and they want you to deal with Faff (office politics, office politics, failings of others). You are not trained in Faff and you are not good at it but you manage. So they promote you again and you do even less engineering and have to deal with more Faff (runny noses, timesheets, holiday forms). Before you know it you are promoted again and you find yourself as an engineering manager (a job you are not trained for) and you no longer do any engineering whatsoever. So you are now doing a job you are not very good at and don't do any work that you are good at...

Getting Back to Meaningful Work

Now I am at ACC I'm back in the role where I am employed for something I am good at, I have no Faff to deal with, I get to do hands-on, meaningful work and I'm loving it.

I am in a small team involved with updating and creating a new website. My role is to create processes in the website's customer experience platform (CEP).

Learning Civic Technology Platforms

It's all part of a content management system (CMS) which seems like a whizzy bit of software. I have read somewhere that it is used by quite a few councils in the UK so it's well used and there are support services and forums for help if needed.

Why Hands-On Work Matters

It doesn't take away from the hands-on-ness (couldn't think of a word) because it may be super whizzy but it is just a bunch of clever nuts and bolts and it is up to you to engineer solutions for the CEP processes.

So far I have been tasked with the process and workflows for the waste and recycling services. Basically is a customer accessing the website giving their details making a request and behind the scenes, the CEP process I program will automate the output of the requests.

I have had a play with it this week and have processes working from end to end, generating tasks, emails, and responses. There is some HTML and CSS involved and also some data structures to name and format.

Next week I have a couple of days of formal training to attend on the CEP and also one on the CMS. The CMS is the front-facing website part.

It's the end of week 3 as a web developer and I couldn't be happier. In fact, all the people I am now working with seem happy. Perhaps it's contagious?

A Different Kind of Commute

I'm even happy with my commute even though it's part car and part bus and involves some walking. I drive for 15 minutes without getting stuck in traffic. I hop on a bus and have another 15 into town. This morning's journey was a hydrogen bus, so calm and almost silent (Sitting on the bus I check my emails, plan for the day and write my blog). I then walk for 5 minutes.

This week for Udny Solutions I did a training evening with a client to show them how to manage and update their website themselves. They were amazed at how easy it is compared to their old flat HTML one. This was key for them wanting to make news updates and add new pictures themselves. It went well and I am super happy to hand over what I created. Roll on more opportunities like that. There is one more hopefully in the pipeline.

Looking Back at the Transition

It’s strange looking back now and realising how much this period shaped the direction of my later career.

At the time I was simply happy to be building things again, learning new systems, and solving practical problems.

What I didn’t realise was that this would gradually lead into years of work around digital services, workflows, automation, accessibility, and civic technology.

This all came shortly after my decision to retrain and completely change career through CodeClan.

A few weeks later I also reflected on unexpectedly crossing paths with other CodeClan graduates while working in civic technology in When Two Cohorts Collide.

A lot of this also connects closely to why I enjoy fixing systems and understanding how things work.

Looking back, this was the point where I rediscovered how much I enjoy practical problem solving and building systems that genuinely help people.

A lot of the same mindset around workflows, usability, automation, and meaningful technical work still shapes the projects and reflections I continue to write about today.

You can explore more of that journey through the blog and related projects here.

Starting My New Life as a Web Developer at Aberdeen City Council

Looking back now, this was one of the moments where my entire career direction genuinely started to change.

After years in engineering and oil and gas, walking into a completely new environment as a web developer felt both exciting and slightly surreal.

At the time, I had no idea how much this role would eventually shape the next decade of my life.

I started on Tuesday at the Marischal College office in the center of Aberdeen. Wow, what a nice place to be. I thought working at the new AIBP office in Dyce would be hard to beat. But I think Marischal College has it by a nose. Super new, clean, open, wired for tech, has great architecture, and is right in the center of town.

The First Morning Felt Like the First Day of School

My first day was a quick drive into the park and ride in Bridge of Don and jump on a bus. I had to laugh as on the bus was a mate from Udny also off to his first morning in his new job. We both had a report time of 9:30, we both had our smart new clothes on, and had our packed lunches and play pieces in our school bags. It was good to pass the time on the first bus ride for a while.

Starting Again in a New Career

It's official, I'm a Web Developer I have signed a year's contract and it says it on my shiny new badge.

I use it to swipe in and out every day and the system automatically tracks my time. Hooray, no more time sheets! no more chasing someone for a cost code! No more having my cost code shut down mid-job! No more justifying to a PM that I need to book a couple of hours on their project having done the work they asked for. It's like a shackle has been removed.

Discovering a Different Working Culture

So what does Web Developer mean in reality? The first couple of days were getting settled in reading and working through presentations, core values, HSE, and the eLearning tutorials. I met hundreds of new people in the department. (all super nice). It's a Hot Desking environment (working from home is encouraged) so it's sitting where you fancy that is free when you come in. Plugin your laptop, log into your phone (I have a real phone again… no more stupid Madonna headphones!). So far so good as you can be sitting with a group of different people every day.

Learning New Technology and Systems

I had been given a new Windows laptop and was quickly readjusting to a different environment after spending a lot of time using Macs during CodeClan.  I need to get the hang of the mouse scrolling in the wrong direction and have the @ symbol in a different location on the keyboard again.

I also have a few interesting applications installed as default which I am keen to see if I get to use. These include Visual Studio 2015, Android SDK tools, and Java Development Kit.

Oh, and one more that made me chuckle is PaintShop Pro... Oh, PaintShop Pro how I have missed you. It was key to drawing graphics for Master Control Station screens many many moons ago. Many an hour I would be there drawing lines in a .BMP files frustrated knowing there were vector graphics packages out there. But hey I may laugh, I have used it already to resize a graphic file.

I have also noticed quite a few of my new colleagues are Trello converts and have a number of Trello boards on the go to manage their tasks and workflows.

So I'm back to using Outlook to organize my work email and calendar.

It's quite refreshing to start with an empty, inbox, empty calendar, and no overdue tasks. I was hoping to set up the same rules linked to developer buttons that I had set up in my last job to manage my inbox. So far I've failed and I think it's because some of Outlook has been locked down. I like a button that runs a rule that moves any read mail that I have not specifically flagged into my archive folder. That way all that is in my inbox is something that is unread or flagged and I need to do something about it. All the rest can go to the archive. I will have another try to set up the rule.

From Engineering Into Web Development

I can’t give specifics on what I'm going to be doing (I'm still figuring it out myself) but I will be helping develop a new website in a team of about 6.

It will be based on Drupal, which is similar to WordPress. I had some experience with WordPress when I created the Hill of Fiddes website a few years ago. It is a CMS which is one of my new TLA or buzzwords I need to remember… Content Management System. It is based on the language PHP (another TLA… Three Letter Acronym), and it will be hosted on Amazon Web services.

I have run through the Code Academy Tutorial on PHP which is a scripting language with similarities to HTML. It runs on the server side of the web interface rather than being in the browser like JavaScript. Oh, and it needs a semicolon at the end of every line. Don’t forget that semicolon!

The new website seems quite a big ask with lots of parts that need to be done. It does however have an MVP for its first release. Thanks, CodeClan if I don’t use the languages you taught me at least you made me aware of the Minimal Viable Product.

Looking Back at the Beginning

Reading this back now is strange because so many of the systems, technologies, and ideas mentioned here eventually became a huge part of my later career.

At the time though, I was simply excited to be learning again, building things again, and working in technology for the first time professionally.

What started as a one-year contract gradually became the foundation for years of work around digital services, accessibility, workflows, automation, and civic technology.

This all came shortly after my decision to retrain and completely change career through CodeClan.

A few weeks later I also reflected on how refreshing it felt to be hands-on and building things again.

Looking back, many of the same themes around digital services, workflows, automation, and civic technology still shape much of the work I do today.

Looking back, this was the beginning of a completely new chapter in my life and career.

What started as excitement about web development gradually evolved into years of work around digital services, workflows, accessibility, automation, and civic technology.

You can explore more of that journey and the projects that followed here.