286aa12bb0
Point 7 of the page-wording review. The pages no longer show their data structure as headings, and they no longer explain their own conventions. - Level 1 is one screen: claim, status badge, three figures, the technology row, and one sentence carrying one link. Measured in headless Chrome at 1440x900: 1404-1845 px tall before, exactly 900 px (no scroll) after, on all six area pages. - DocPage: no kicker line, no visible level label, no "Evidence for this page" heading or instruction note, no "Drill-downs" list, no "Status <word> - sentence" footer. The artefact table starts at level 2, under the heading "Artefacts"; the history timeline is level 2 only. - Landing page: "Start here" link text gone, "How to read this site" panel gone, the footer's status-label explainer gone. - Content, presentation only, no claim softened: the leading H1 that duplicated the page title removed from all 41 documents; level 1 bodies reduced to the constraint as ordinary prose plus the way in; "**Status: ...**" prefixes removed from the artefact stubs; "## Drill-downs" and "## Period and confidence" removed from the level 2 pages, with the cross-area links moved into the prose. - The six level 1 claims are now sentences with a subject, and use commas instead of middots. Same facts, no new ones. Not in this commit: the 35 level 2 and 3 claims still use the compact CV style. That is a voice decision for Sam, not a wording tidy-up. make validate: 41 documents, 0 violations. go test ./...: pass. (cherry picked from commit 03009f80fc7815ad7719412e125df9297a6e653f)
54 lines
4.6 KiB
Markdown
54 lines
4.6 KiB
Markdown
---
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id: history-engagements
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area: history
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level: 2
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title: "Fifteen years of delivery for agencies and their clients"
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claim: "Twenty-two agencies and twenty-three brands · national campaigns · bank and broadcaster platforms · betting front-ends · and a habit of being called in to rescue work someone else could not finish."
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confidence: historic
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period: "1999–2014"
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tech: [ActionScript, PHP, JavaScript, MySQL, XML, SOAP, React, Python]
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metrics: [{label: "agencies on the client wall", value: 22}, {label: "brands delivered for", value: 23}, {label: "code exhibits kept", value: 6}]
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artefacts: [{type: doc, label: "The client wall", url: "content/history/l3/history-client-wall.md"}, {type: doc, label: "Six code exhibits across five eras", url: "content/history/l3/history-code-exhibits.md"}]
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public: true
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last_verified: 2026-10-26
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tags: [history, agencies, brands, exhibits]
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---
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**Capability statement.** Range under deadline. The work in this period ran from car classifieds and online betting to a bank's pitch piece, a broadcaster's on-demand banners and a publisher's education platform — usually with a date attached that could not move.
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## The eras, briefly
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**1999–2002 — the start.** Web design and development for a high-volume car marketplace, then freelance work building sites, applications, interfaces and database back ends for small agencies.
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**2002–2005 — London, full time.** Online gaming: lead front-end developer on a synchronous multi-game platform handling a thousand simultaneous clients, integrating against Java back ends and XML sockets. Then the emerging interactive advertising industry, where a creative front end with a technical spine was scarce.
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**2006–2009 — the agency run.** The bulk of the client wall: bank pitch work delivered in weeks, broadcaster promotions, a global oil company's re-brand site, premium drinks campaigns, a news organisation's media presentation layer, a publisher's education platform, and a global computer-aided design vendor's localised site. Several of these were rescues — brought in on a short deadline to rewrite work another team could not land.
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**2009–2012 — product and campaign.** A standalone encrypted presentation builder with its own media library and remote update path. A national beer campaign with video submissions, cross-brand promotion, in-store mechanics and authorisation over SOAP. Interactive launches with 3D content in the browser.
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**2012–2014 — small products for small business.** Online book building, a reactive design system, and art applications for a motion-sensing controller, transitioned toward mobile.
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**2014–2020 — the workshop years.** The site builder and the signage product (see [Products](../products/products-business.md)), which is where the work moved from delivering campaigns for other people's brands to owning software and supporting customers.
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## Languages across the eras
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The point of the exhibit set is that the tooling changed repeatedly and the delivery discipline did not: ActionScript 3 with class-based architecture, hand-written JavaScript engines, PHP media pipelines, TypeScript with typed service layers and a relational schema, embedded C++ for firmware, and now declarative infrastructure as its own kind of code.
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## Evidence
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| Claim | Evidence | Artefact |
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|---|---|---|
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| Twenty-two agencies and twenty-three brands | The client wall, carried from the résumé and the recovered site content | [Client wall](l3/history-client-wall.md) |
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| Work across six technology eras | Six exhibits from OO ActionScript to a hand-written Nix package | [Code exhibits](l3/history-code-exhibits.md) |
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| Rescue work under immovable deadlines | Multiple engagements recorded as rewrites of stalled projects | [Client wall](l3/history-client-wall.md) |
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| Sponsorship of the later product era | 2014–2020 product work described in the résumé | [Products](../products/products-business.md) |
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## Trade-offs and limits
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- **Historic work is labelled historic.** Nothing in this section is presented as current capability; where a technique is still used today, the page links to where it is used.
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- **One engagement has no screenshot.** The national archive work was an internal tool. It is described and not illustrated, because there is nothing legitimately publishable to show.
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- **No client has been named beyond a brand.** Brands are named because they were public campaigns. Individuals, internal contacts and unpublished commercial detail are excluded.
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- **The exhibits are excerpts.** Around forty lines each, chosen to show judgement — structure, error handling, an exit plan — not to demonstrate volume.
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This work is finished, and it is presented in the past tense throughout.
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