|
Greetings. So you want to know who Brett Brewer is huh? Well, until recently the standard BS line I was telling prospective employers went something like this: "I am currently seeking employment working with a skilled web development team, or in a leadership position, helping to set priorities and design new products and services that can take advantage of electronic distribution and scales of economy offered by the internet."
After a couple of months of soul-searching and looking for some magic way to get a "good job" in Vancouver, B.C. or the closest US city I can find, I discovered that there was not much out there that sounded like it would be very much fun, and most of my job offers were coming in from the lamest places on the planet. Places even worse than Tallahassee, FL. where I currently live. The kinds of places whose residents appear regularly on the evening news, fleeing one natural disaster or another, or working way too hard to fuel a perversely unsustainable way of life. I don't want to be that kind of person and I don't want to live that kind of life. Spending 40-hours a week helping to pay for my boss' child-ridden McMansion in some suburban ecological tragedy is not an option. Spending 40-hours per year sitting in traffic (the average in big U.S. cities) is not an option. I refuse to fuel this world-wide social and environmental disaster anymore. Driving less and spending less is part of the solution. Fortunately, I have recently found a nice niche doing X-Cart customization work that allows me to work from home and provides enough new business that it doesn't look like I'm going to need to get a day job again any time soon. So, I hired an accountant, set myself up with an LLC and am officially doing business now as BrettBrewer.com, LLC. Among my first clients are my former employer, The Real Estate School, and two very different clothing retailers who are each classic examples of DIY entrepreneurs that are successfully leveraging commoditized open-source technologies such as Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (collectively known as a LAMP) to become serious contenders in their industries. They each need someone with a diverse set of skills who can program and integrate various PHP-based systems, and do top notch graphics work when the job requires it. So far, everyone is a very happy customer. Recent Clients:- www.realestate-school.com - Detailed in my downloadable resume. Did everything you will find on their web site as their employee, and now work for them as a consultant.
- www.deadgoodundies.com - implemented a Manufacturer Coupon modification to their existing coupon system which had already been modded to account for special European VAT display issues.
- www.bonobospants.com - In progress, expect completion by 10/1/07. Work includes implementation of their new site and online store design in X-Cart with extensive x-cart image customizations and some modifications to the Affiliate Tracking module. Also integrating the site design with a new Wordpress blog and doing some custom programming to display specific category RSS feeds on their homepage with custom thumbnail images implemented via a custom-designed Wordpress plugin which is futureproof against Wordpress updates.
- www.soulfulartsdance.com - This community dance studio had a big heart, but no money and no clue. I gave them a clue and then I set them up with a simple Joomla-based web site on the cheap that they can manage themselves.
So how did I end up in this place? Until August of 2007, I held a position as the Executive Vice President of The Real Estate School, Inc. where I managed all aspects of their online operations and all electronic/software infrastructure, as well as serving double-duty as a graphic designer and audio/video production "hack". I programmed online learning applications in PHP and Flash and spent about 5 years there helping them become a dominant player in the Florida online real estate education market by leveraging all my design and programming skills to conceive and create products that our competition couldn't duplicate without bankrupting themselves. I firmly believe I had something to do with raising the bar on web sites in the online real estate school industry, at least in Florida. We forced other schools to change their strategies and offer better products and services. It was there that I learned what a HUGE difference customer service can make in one's long term prospects for online success. Over 50% of our new business came from word-of-mouth referrals, the rest through careful SEO and adwords spending. Prior to my work with The Real Estate School, I did consulting for a handful of fortune 5000 companies in addition to hundreds of individual clients through various employers. In terms of my skills, you will find few who can keep up with my diversity. I am a very well rounded graphic designer and web programmer who as been deep into internet technology since about 1994, when I put together one of the first online versions of a daily newspaper in the entire country, a local daily known as "The Florida Flambeau" which was eventually bought by a competitor. Since then, my skills have expanded from professional photography, graphic design and desktop publishing to include virtually every technology currently used on computers or the web including C++, PHP, MySQL, Apache, Linux and Windows server administration, Flash design and Actionscript (all versions), XHTML, CSS. Over the past 5 years I have also developed a complete knowledge of white-hat SEO techniques, which is a MUST for anyone who wants to sell something online. This is not superficial laymen-type knowledge, but rather extensive work in each of these technologies and I have plenty of examples to show for the effort, especially PHP/MySQL and Flash/Actionscript and SEO. I have designed and programmed Flash-based games, Dreamweaver Extensions, Flash components, PHP libraries, Windows desktop applications and continue to work on numerous ideas in my small amount of free time. I am also an avid musician, gardener, and nature lover. If you have a short or long-term PHP/MySQL/XHTML/CSS/Flash or related project you would like to discuss, please feel free to Skype me or use my Quote Request Form . In the unlikely event that you are reading this while sitting in the Vancouver headquarters of some really cool company that wants a full time PHP or Flash junkie on staff and would help relocate and delouse an American immigrant, you will find my complete resume below, which is hopefully only slightly out of date. I will also take offers from any company located in New Zealand or any other country where they have big-ass mountains with snow on them, universal healthcare, and they don't hate people who can only speak English fluently (Le Québec désolé, mon Français est horrible). Thanks for taking the time to read my gratuitous self promotion. I hope to hear from you soon. Regards,
Brett Brewer
|
Brett's Resume 
