(Written by Pamela - January 2012) I met Ryan around 2007/2008 through Paula Graham. He was giving a presentation about his work. which was implementing Drupal and such-like for people in the voluntary sector. i liked the way that he was interested in the human side of ICT use as well as the technical implementation. When Ryan said that he also did freelance work for people I was interested.
I had been experimenting with an implementation of Moodle (Cawdnet Campus) with help from Omo Olaiya, and was just starting to look at Drupal. In a way I was following in the footsteps of Dick Heller who had started his work on peoples-uni.org at Cawdnet Campus, and then developed his own sites, with Omo's help, using Moodle and Drupal.
I had got to the point of realising there was rather more to implementing Drupal than there was to Moodle. It was not going to be a matter of simply downloading Drupal onto a server and then learning how to use it. I knew Omo did not have time at that point to personally help me get started with Drupal, so I was glad to meet Ryan, and use the services of Equitas IT Solutions.
He helped me to get started with Dadamac.net, hosting it and also helping me with the initial design, until Andy Broomfield joined the team. Ryan also hosts the Dadamac Limited and Collage sites for us.
As Ryan says on his website:
More about Equitas IT Solutions
Equitas IT Solutions exists to permit me, Ryan Cartwright to operate as a freelance web designer and developer. Although I have offered such services on an ad-hoc basis for some years, it has only been done under the name of Equitas since mid 2008.
I am also a regular columnist for Free Software Magazine, writing articles, blog and drawing the Bizarre Cathedral cartoon.