As Lead Designer I worked in our Media & 3rd party advertising business, partnering with major Australian brands to help diversify our revenue and solve other segments of the home ownership journey.
My time at REA had plenty of memorable moments and some incredible challenges but everything that happened made me better for it. Huge thanks to every single person over the journey, my team mates, fellow designers, beer drinkers and close friends.
I used to wear red t-shirts a lot.
Move in to our apartment in San Jose, literally starting out again. Drinking wine out of plastic cups on the floor, stealing the neighbours wifi. This is my all time favourite photo
Fly out of Australia with just two suitcases
Start my first day remotely with realtor.com
Get married <3 at my parents house in front of 150 friends & family who thought it was a going away party ;)
Last day at REA. Spent most of it at the pub.
25th and final REAio Hack Day
Celebrate 10 years at REA
I (controversially) rebranded Hack Day as REAio by promoting the 'Final Hack Day' ;P
My final GKO was pretty loose
6 of us head to a little company called realtor.com in California for a week to join their hackathon.
2nd Real Deal Employee of the year winner. Seen here taking a terrible selfie.
On stage for nearly an hour - Global Kickoff 2015 in front of ~1,000 colleagues #terrifying
Promoted to lead designer to work on Finance & Media experiences.
Team from media play soccer *inside* Port Philip Prison with inmates, tour their cells and eat lunch inside. One of my all time favourite things.
Win 5th Hack Day with Agent Admin Lipstick. We made a previously desktop only web app responsive and mobile prime with mostly css.
Discover map experience goes live. Great idea, killer experience.
Team heads to Sydney to hack with our News Corp colleagues at their News Foundry event.
Move to 511 Church Street Richmond. So much space!
Covered the entire REA foyer in newspaper and bombed it with graffiti.
Conceptualized, branded & MC'd the first 'Hack it Forward' charity hackathon.
Under heavy secrecy, build & ship microsite for AusLivesHere campaign with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Didn't get to meet him :(
One night I lamented how messy the site looked. After a few beers and 2,000 lines of code deleted, Project Uplift goes live. Reskinned the site for the first time in 5 years with mostly css.
Legendary tradition of Boat Races starts as we needed to empty the cider kegs.
Take out an ad in the Herald Sun Love Book for I <3 HD
Luxury trip to Turkey with my Dad thanks to Real Deal win.
Mysterious sighting of the legendary Bat leads to a surprise photo shoot on a Melbourne rooftop.
Pioneer the Wicked WEM (Gin & Tonic in a coffee cup) at Hektors
CEO club trip to King Island, sat in the cockpit as we fly over Melbourne.
Team volunteers for the day at Mercy Health, speaking with residents & joining them for lunch.
A taste of the old Friday night drinks in Federation at 678. Great crew!
Win 1st 'Real Deal' - awarded to top 10 non-sales people across the company.
REA Legend: a grown-ass man dressed as Batman (really quite often) #TheBat #HeroREAdeserves
Hijack the vote to rebrand Tech Stop as "Fixizzle your shizzle". The Bat wasn't happy at all!
#HD13 - Classic Hack Day marketplace with the 'Speakeasy' Prohibition era theme. Place looked amazing, we even had a roulette wheel and fancy outfits!
Win 4th Hack Day after covering the office with 'I <3 Dashy' stickers.
Present to Rupert Murdoch. Forgot the memo and wore my Hacktivist t-shirt and fresh airmax.
We introduce the OG Hack Day Trophy: RIP - Rest in Paradise Legend <3
Win 3rd Hack Day with Affordinator, make Success Kid great again.
#HD10 - Our first Hackers Marketplace (for HD10 X marks the spot) in August 2012. Teams setup stands, we had fake VC printed money and plenty of food and drinks.
Italian cooking class - we were encouraged to dress the part so I created an apron fit for a serial killer.
#HD9 - First hackers presentation back in the office with some drinks and food. A new world order is on the horzion...
The classic flying shark floating around the office.
Team in Xi'an China goes paintballing after a legendary all night bender.
First trip to Xi'an
Meet internet legend 'The Oatmal' at Webstock in Wellington.
Win 2nd Hack Day with Investinator.
I bought rea.to and the URL shortener goes live with some open source PHP.
Meet Tour De France champ Cadel Evans and give him *my* yellow jacket.
Establish Media Temple for hosting several REA sites. For $20 a month. #devOps
#HD7 Hack Day 7 held in October 2011. Another showcase at Fenix next door gave rise to the OG Hack Day Trophy, shown here with alum Danial Hall who made the 'picture frame with flashing lights that didn't work'.
Bowling with the Experience Design team at Crown. One of my fav pics I can't explain.
RUI returns after a hiatus, begins its ascent.
#HD5 Hack Day 5 held in May 2011. Our first showcase outside the building, next door at Fenix complete with apps and drinks (thanks Tammy and Meegs!!)
#HD3 Hack Day 3 held in December 2010 at 678 with 5 teams. Pretty excited crowd for the showcase!
Infamous 6 hour bender at Royston lamenting stalled release.
Promoted to Senior Designer, part of the first Experience Design team at REA. Shown here in Wellington NZ at Webstock after a particularly heaving session.
First ever REA Hack Day showcase, Friday March 26th 2010: 5 teams presented and the winner was decided like an Iowa Caucus with us all crowding around a whiteboard to vote. I hung off Luke's coat tails to win with Gizmo.
First REA Hack Day kicked off Thursday March 25th 2010. Roughly 20 developers standing around for kickoff. 5 teams took part, mostly engineers. #humblebeginnings
Excellent moment at Coolum, right around the time we were terrified of Google.
Legendary Coolum Conference. Yes, cops called. If you wanna know the stories, ask someone who was there ;)
Google announces it's entering property market and everyone shits bricks.
First code for RUI ui library is committed.
Spend week in India with media team.
Realcommercial ships after I re-write all the css
We really loved the colour red. Before phones or large screens with the ubiquitous skyscraper ad hanging off the side if the monitor is big enough
First day at REA. Share price is $3.40