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Small steps and giant leaps: transitioning to self employment

Sometimes in life, change is considered, planned and expected; at other times it takes you by surprise as your personal circumstances shift. The latter happened to me this year as I moved to full time self employment.

I was fortunate, having balanced my main job at Edinburgh Napier University with freelance work as Awdesign for 12 years. My roles in each were largely similar, involving a broad range of digital work like web design and web analytics. This allowed me to utilise skills developed as a freelancer at the University and vice versa.

However, despite working as a freelancer for some 16 years now, I still had gaps in my knowledge on the business side of things that I had to rapidly plug when I left Edinburgh Napier. Below are some of my key learnings over the past few months and resources that I have found useful.

Read More »Small steps and giant leaps: transitioning to self employment
Harlaw Hydro year chart

Harlaw Hydro: a case study in collaborative working

In my post on flexible working in June 2017 I mentioned work Iā€™d done for Harlaw Hydro. This community-based, crowd-funded hydro electric scheme has a small generator installed at the outflow of Harlaw Reservoir near Balerno, Scotland.

I was involved in the development of the Harlaw Hydro website used to raise awareness of, and funds for, the project.

With the pump in place, they were keen to display the power being generated.Read More »Harlaw Hydro: a case study in collaborative working

Why I’ve decided to start blogging

I’ve started blogging in order to keep my skills up to date and relevant. Over the last decade as a Web Officer at Edinburgh Napier University my role has moved from content collation and creation to project delivery and data analysis. As a result my main involvement with written copy is minor updates to existing content or adding content produced by others to new sections of the University website, such as Executive Masters.Read More »Why I’ve decided to start blogging