Volume 1 May 2020 - Flipbook - Page 10
F U T U R E S
PAGE 09
C O N T .
How did you end up in your current role? What did
you study?
I studied computer communications many years ago
at Northampton Uni. After spending a summer after
graduation working in a theme park in America, I had
to come back and joined the council’s IT team
working as an engineer for a few years. I started to
study football coaching and was about to go and do
that when a new Web Team was created in the
council. I was put into the team on secondment for 6
months…15 years later I’m still there!
I created Digital Northampton 18 months ago with a
colleague in my team, David Bevan, Iain Douglas from
the Uni and support from local digital businesses.
We wanted to promote the local area more and be the
flag wavers for the innovation taking place here. We
started with a Twitter account, then putting on events
each month, then one big tech showcase event at the
Uni Merged Futures.
From there we have run competitions in schools,
sponsored prizes in colleges to encourage innovation,
run a charity digital bootcamp, promoted a women
into tech initiative and in June we will run our first
virtual tech showcase day #mergedfutures2020.
What advice would you have for anyone looking to
get into a similar career?
Well there are so many different roles within digital it’s
all about getting a little experience of each until you
find the part you really like then you will want to do
more in that area.
If you’re academic the University of Northampton have
a great new Digital Business course starting this year
that will give you a good grounding in many areas.
Northampton College have a new Digital Academy
they are building so keep an eye out for that. Or there
are many different apprenticeships in digital careers.
Or you could go and get a role at a company and get
experience and work your way up, maybe as a junior
web developer or social media marketing assistant. Try
different digital roles and see if you like them.
If you’re entrepreneurial you could start your own
YouTube channel or sell things in an online shop. So
many pathways out there for you…
Once you do find an area you enjoy do try and get
some qualifications or certificates in it, even if you’re
doing those in your own time. Digital is always
evolving so you will need to keep learning new things.
