My journey with Perspective Projects started as a freelancer 14 months before I permanently started working there in early 2003.

ppNet: The estimation system 1.0

The accountant for JH Design also worked for them and recommended me when they needed an estimation system developed. Looking back, it was a strange arrangement: I needed to develop the system at their offices. I’m still not sure what the reason was, but they loved the result. It allowed multiple employees to work on the same estimation concurrently instead of sharing one Excel document. That was it for the MVP. Later it would get additional niceties such as exporting.

Discovery Challenge / Game Challenge

Held under the banner of Discovery Health until 2004, sponsorship was taken over by Game Stores in 2005. I developed a website with general information on the relay race and online entry functionality. A backend administration platform enabled the organisers to manage teams and members, and capture payments.

A separate web application was also developed for use on race days to capture results and generate the final results. After each race, the results were made available with a searchable interface on the main website. Used from 2002 to 2006, and also customised for use at the Game Outeniqua Wheelchair Challenge in 2006.

iRegister: The online event registration system 1.0

After starting permanently with Perspective, I was tasked with building an online registration system for all the customer events they managed.

Having looked at the code again recently, it was terrible. It didn’t even make use of variables for the table names which would need to be changed for every new event. It simply consisted of a set of files which was duplicated and modified for each consecutive event. Invitation emails were sent manually, confirmation emails were built up programmatically.

It was basic but did the job beautifully for hundreds of events over four years.

Perspective Projects website

Apart from the customer events, I also had to maintain our website. It was nothing flashy, but it was a good informational website.