So the Times Online redesign went live last week.

It was an exciting project to work on, I was based in Canary Wharf working with 2 other developers, 4 Information Architects, 3 Designers, a Content Management team, and countless management types.

I was involved at a early stage in the project life cycle in August 2006. My role was to take the illustrator designs and code them into templates showing the individual modules for each element in the design. Of course, validating and browser testing went along side this. And each module was given a timescale score depending on its complexity.

I was with the team for a month during which time I completed the front end build for all the main sections of the site: news, sport, fashion, motoring.. The job became quicker once the initial elements were built as they could be reused in other sections of the sites pages.

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Looking back at 2006, it was a very busy year, some excellent projects that I was fortunate to be asked to contribute to.

Spanning two cities, Brighton and London I quickly developed a good idea about what each job required. News International, Ebay and Emap my clients, the work for which I was nominated for, for this award.

However, I was none the wiser until one morning in January I was notified that I was a finalist in the Xchangeteam Freelancer of the Year Awards. I was quietly excited, but was too busy to think any more of it.

It was only until I was travelling up on the train from Brighton to the London event, with my girlfriend, Fiona, that I started to wonder how far I’d go. I was up against 150 other freelancers, obviously some other very established freelancers based in London.

This was a National contest with expert judges looking at our skills in relation to adding value to business as well as contributing to the freelance movement.

I must say meeting some friendly faces helped to calm my nerves, but no sooner had we arrived than the award ceremony started.

Each category winner receiving their award, to a rapturous applause. Then next was the New Media /Digital category, for which I was nominated. The description of the winner sounded familiar, and then my name was announced.

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