Suffolk County Council photos

After a few years in the printing industry, it's time to change tack again.

This ends up with a job on the corporate helpdesk at Suffolk County Council, supporting the Windows 95 PCs of various departments of the council, including Strategic Management and the Chief Executive, as well as the OfficePower servers that most of the Ipswich departments use.

However, there's an interesting little side project going on - a corporate website - which has been running since the summer of 1995. It's one of the first local authority websites in the UK, and one of the first 35,000 websites anywhere. It was indescribably cool to get to be part of this project.

It soon becomes the main job, as the site expands along with the whole Internet thing, which is only just taking off in the UK. Nosher becomes its project manager, and the site ends up winning awards including the Society of Public Information Networks (SPIN) award in 1998, and the Local Government Association award in 1999.

There are also various pioneering projects run in association with Libraries and Heritage - including the wiring up of every library in Suffolk to the internet and the Suffolk TraveLine online transport timetable system - creating online digital archives, including Suffolk's oldest document - the Charter of Eye from 1119AD - and the Suffolk Roll of Honour, both in association with the Suffolk Record Office, and the Saxon Horse dig along with E&T's archaeology department.

It was also the only job to date where colleagues were more like family, with a social core built around the SCC Social Club on Rope Walk - pool, beer and music by night, the staff canteen by day, and even the occasional wedding-reception venue.

There were also many nights crashing round Andrew's house or Trev and Orhan's on Cavendish Street, evenings after work playing Quake, and nightclubbing in Ipswich: The Double-O Club, Hollywood, Global Netcafé, Liberty and Liquid.

All good things come to an end, and by 2000 a change in Chief Executive came with a change in politics and a lack of support to do the "cool stuff", so it was time to leave.