The Fat Lady Sings

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Now this is a sad announcement, due to powers outwith our control (and a fundamental shift of training priorities by Scottish Enterprise…) GIC 43 will be our last GIC course. Their final project presentations will be held in our offices at 2pm on Wednesday 27th of September.

If you want to come along and give them your support, or if you are looking for staff then please let me know and come along. This will be the last chance to see this wonderful experience.

I’m sure many of you readers have probably walked through these doors not knowing what to expect, and have left months later ready to take your new found knowledge into the big bad world. Some of the students I have had the pleasure to work with over the last year and a bit have gone on to great things.

Hats off to Theo Katsoulis (GIC41) who wound up as project manager for one of the most high profile Scottish Executive projects in the past few years. He managed to pull off a roaring success in an amazingly short timescale. Mike Caithness (GIC40) who also wound up in a senior position with the Scottish Executive – although both didn’t end up doing web design it was with the support and enthusiasm of the team here at the Fortress and their peers that they found employment that utilised their existing skills (and in the case of Theo his web design skills kept the contractors on their toes!).

However, there have been those who have taken the skills offered and have spread their wings into the wonderful world of web design…

Stephen Thompson (GIC39) flew south west to the wilds of Dumfries where he crafts wonderful web experiences for web presentations. Gail Watson(GIC40) consolidated her already excellent design with excellent code skills and landed a prime post at run deep, Francis Emmerson (GIC41) spent some time as a pixel jockey with us (creating the initial mockups for the Jason Baxter site before heading off into academia – as a web designer for Edinburgh University.

And last, but by no means least there is the enigmatic and suave Mr Robert Wemyss (GIC42) (who should have been the next James Bond IMHO) who has been standing in for our own good doctor while he has been off globetrotting. In a very short space of time he has created an impressive body of work, including taking Francis’ design for Jason Baxter, coding it and improving upon it, an impressive task! He is currently finishing off a site for Wight Chiropractors which will go live within the next two weeks or so, and also the new designs for the Hugh Dodd site… phew it makes me tired to watch him work! He is going south to the big smoke this weekend to seek his fortune.

To all of these ex-GIC students and to the countless others I don’t have space to mention I wish them all good luck.

In the words of the immortal Douglas Adams, “So long and thanks for all the fish”.