After Deric left Petra in 2008, he went to South Africa but soon realised it wasn’t working for him there, so in October he moved to Beijing. He loved it so much that he decided to change his visitor’s visa to a study visa so that he could stay there and attend University.
Everything in China was ‘just crazy different’ and quite exciting. He studied some basic Chinese and then later Aeronautical Engineering. In Aeronautics, there was a lot of software and programming-related material to work through and so he was introduced to Web Development via JavaScript.
After University, he did a little freelance work, and then joined www.uhouzz.com which was an eye-opener. It was a huge and complex start-up project.
Later, he joined Mullen Lowe Profero under the Mullen Lowe Media Group. This office, where he currently works, is a tech hub for the group and he does web development work for the group’s other offices and for clients around the world. With Mullen Lowe Profero, he has been able to work on some interesting projects, such as Harley Davidson, Bahlsen, Kaiser Permanent, and Apple, to name a few.
Deric is keen to help people who want to start out in this industry. He says that in China, everything is done via the web or mobile apps and he believes the rest of the world is headed in that direction. Do contact him via Facebook if you think your interests could lie there.