From DTP to web publishing and developing websites.

Above: the home page of Write Away.

As a teacher of English you also teach writing: they go hand in hand at all levels. The same for other teachers of language: literacy and its underling, writing, are at the core. In my case, I taught some high school English but for most of my career I taught adult migrants. Writing can be as simple as form filling and as complex as a job application, a short story, a difficult letter,  or the recounting of some experience. From basic notes to literature. 

I encouraged writing of all kinds with my advanced students on a wide range of topics. Such student writing resulted in a print magazine called Write Away. Subtitled "a showcase of writing by Australian adult migrants" it went to print in 3 editions. A small group participated across AMES. We did the design, layout, collating,  and the offset printing for the first two issues. Desktop Publishing (DTP) was emerging in the 1980s and I was keen to master it. I still treasure the copies I have of Write Away, and the memories of putting it all together. Adding the artwork was a joy and talent was plentiful. It was the only magazine of student writing circulating in the NSW adult ESL scene at the time.

Write Away is today the name of a PR and marketing company across Australia, so we chose the name well. It indicates writing, now and without restriction. And then printing: the final stage of writing when it is shared and published.

I was also on the committee producing Interchange, the AMES professional journal. I also did one issue of a magazine for the Skillmax Program. This enabled me to exercise a full complement of publication skills. Since my university days, and in the years that followed I'd contributed to university student magazines, and to variety of other print publications. They were not major publications by any measure but supported radical causes I believed in. So I continued from the old cut-and-paste on light boxes to rub on lettering, or Letraset, for headings. This was the technology of the time before Pagemaker and laser printers changed the landscape forever.

I must confess to being an early adopter of computer technology, changing computers regularly and reading widely to keep up. I couldn't afford the best technology available but with the help of bank loans I kept on upgrading and learning. Despite our limited budget I spent heaps on PC magazines which in those days had DVDs on the cover with lots of software to unravel. I developed the reputation for being the go-to person for fixing and for support, both at work and in private life. Neither roles helped our bank balance but they did extend my skills and confidence, particularly with office skills, DTP and graphics software, and then with web publishing programs. At work, computer support was an informal role and made not a jot of difference, just more unpaid work. It certainly didn't advance my career, not that I cared, but I did get to work in the new computer rooms that were coming into vogue. Many friends and colleagues bought computers on my advice, and when I taught in the Skillmax Program they bought IT resumes for my feedback. 

When the World Wide Web burst onto the scene in the 1990s an online showcase of migrant writing beckoned. Typesetting and expensive printing were becoming a thing of the past. Write Away was ready to go online at a trivial cost. It was time to take on board HTML and Web publishing. It was time for the computer screen to do the job and for the Internet to show the results. No more inky or gluey fingers.

My manager at the time, Karen Banfield, encouraged this digital development and allowed meetings in our centre in work time. Before long I  had teachers from AMES, NSW TAFE, ACL, NSW Community Education and NCELTR on board and promoting writeaway.edu.au. There was a teacher in Victoria who expressed an interest. We also got good support and web space via Judy King at NCELTR, at Macquarie University. This support was of immeasurable value.

At first, much of the content came from the print magazines being reproduced online with colour photos and images. It was important to encourage writing and to showcase it on the Internet accompanied by impelling graphics and full-colour photos. But those were the early days of the WWW when file sizes, speed and bandwidth were restricting factors. Slow loading pages to were not ideal, and impatient users would quickly abandon them. Only early adopters had the Internet at the dawn of the WWW. One colleague remarked, "The Internet, what's that?" See right and compare the screen sizes with those today. My current display is a modest 1920 x 1080. The Netscape browser is a thing of the past and Explorer 11 has now been replaced by MS Edge. Few had mobile phones in those days, and they were the size of a gym shoe, and Facebook and Twitter were well away into the future. IDSL hadn't arrived yet and the NBN was over two decades away.  Pioneering days indeed when the Internet was still in first gear.

Before long nevertheless there were 3 collections of writing, Destinations, an extensive page of links, and many other features. Writing projects were organised along the following lines.

There was massive content and at the time and Write Away was arguably the largest website of its kind in the world. Many of the contributions were a joy to read as the writers shared past experiences, heartfelt cultural issues, and other matters of importance. Writing was both personal and public. Having one's writing published online for the world to see was a great motivator. 

We had great feedback in particular from a Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her feedback is buried somewhere in my files but I remember the great thrill it gave me. 

Best of all was when, in 1999 the National Library of Australia added Write Away to its Pandora Archive, an archive designed to preserve online material of "lasting cultural value". See http://pandora.nla.gov.au/alpha/W/65 

Note: Because of the vastly different screen sizes it is necessary to view in a greatly reduced window depending on your monitor.  As the website didn't continue it was not archived again. 

But all this came to nothing as far as NSW AMES was concerned. They politely acknowledged it as an independent effort but, as they were not sole and total owners, kept out of it. I'd had enough. I was by this stage getting into the web development business and one of my earliest clients was the Australian Council of TESOL Associations or ACTA, the umbrella group for ESL association in Australia. Write Away got far more traction there.

Webbing IT

It was time to move on to: it was time for Webbing It, a part-time business venture to replace an unappreciated venture by my employer, NSW AMES, which had its own agenda. I was happy and ready to go my own way. Webbing IT  was the next stage of my technological development, and with no business experience at all, I honed my skills and plunged forward into the unknown. 

It was clear to me that I had to develop a healthy portfolio to entice clients, even if I initially worked for next to nothing, and I did a lot of that. I remember doing a website for a wine expert in 1999 called wine2000. I also recall a website for Cotswold furniture maker. This was largely dabbling and didn't pay much for all the time I committed to it. I did other websites which were more challenging: one for a writer of educational books, Heather Harvey's Intensive Reading Program; and a website for a writer, Patti Miller, which I still maintain - lifestories.com.au. Things started to turn when I did 2 websites for Lord Howe Island which lead to a submission for funding that was successful and to me doing websites for the official Island website island board, and from that many other Island websites.

I was shortly after asked to do the international student website for the University of Western Sydney (UWS), since rebadged as Western Sydney University. The Lord Howe Island and UWS work provided most of my income although over the years I was commissioned to do a range of other websites at the rate of 2 or 3 a year. I had to take all my long service leave to fit it all in, but saying that didn't mind putting the hours in at night and over the weekend. I took as much unpaid leave as I could without compromising my super and lowering my income. Webbing IT brought in enough money to more than cover my absence from AMES. I loved working at home, dressed any way I wished, and felt I had a good life work balance that allowed me to spend a lot of time with my kids. I did many websites for people I never met but communicated with by email and with the occasional call.

I knew which questions to ask and how to prepare a trial website that incorporated the colours and themes of the business. I learnt how to handle my tax situation and got an ABN, or an Australian Business Number, for my single owner business. My principal weakness is I never charged enough but I felt better for providing the best service I could at a reasonable price. Of course there were no weekend or overtime rates, which is not how it works. But that was perfectly ok. I could even include my IT purchases, or indulgences, as tax deductions. A very satisfying life indeed.

Shortly after I retired it all wound up apart from a few selected clients, but I was ok with that. I did some casual teaching that included many IT students and their job seeking, so computer knowledge remained in my life. I even led a 2 day AMES staff development, my workshop being on technological change. But even that ended when AMES lost most of their work and my casual teaching days ended. 

I am now happily retired but remain an online activist calling out the stupidity of Donald Trump and the dangers of climate change, amongst other issues. We have to stand for our values no matter how despondent life seems. Money is of secondary importance.