About me

Dear Sir/Madam

I am a young professional who has recently completed an MA at the University of Nottingham, and am writing to you to state my suitability for the position of Web Editor / Content Editor.

Prior to undertaking the MA I had worked for five years in Web and New Media, starting as a production assistant at a top 100 NMA agency, where I worked on projects for prestigious clients such as Jaguar, Bentley and Center Parcs; before moving into freelance work: producing artwork for the worlds first online horror series; and working as a content editor/tester on the Army Jobs site. In 2007 a freelance position as content manager at luxury car event Gumball 3000 was turned into a full-time Web Manager role: after I was asked to project manage the design and build of two new content heavy sites, which included: an event archive, gallery, blogs, ezine, and in-house run online store. After completing the second site I continued to operate as manager and webmaster for the site, improving its SEO through editorial control, traffic from related sites, and giving the Gumball 3000 greater presence in social media.

My time at a large New Media agency required me to communicate regularly with colleagues across various departments, both in person and over the phone and/or electronically with another office in the US. It was therefore imperative that - in order to meet tight and demanding deadlines - I became digitally literate and attain an industry standard understanding of HTML and CSS; as well as design software and Content Management Systems such as: Photoshop, Flash and Tridion. Through working as freelancer I gained valuable experience in self-motivation as I came to grips with the business side of the industry: having to communicate directly with clients and manage my finances. All of these skills helped me to successfully execute the incredibly ambitious project that Gumball 3000 desired, which was made with a development team based in Vietnam, adding PHP and Javascript to my palette of language skills, and Plone and Drupal to my knowledge of Content Management Systems.

However, feeling that my career had become too focused on web development I decided to return to full time education so that I could re-engage and practice my writing skills, and would now like to build on my experience in content editing and writing. During my MA course I worked temporarily as a programme reviewer for Japanese channel NHK and utilised my collective web skills by creating an ezine, *, based around my research topic: Thai cinema and trans-Asian cultural flows. Although, essentially a personal project, the site did help me win a bursary to study courses in Film and, the East Asian Creative Industries at the University of Hong Kong, and I have since published contributions from other writers.

I look forward to hearing your reply and would appreciate any feedback you have to offer.

Yours faithfully,

Keith Wallis