014: Welcome Sev Furneaux, our fifth co-op member!

We asked Sev a few questions that you, our dear readers, are already familiar with, and this is how he responded:

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Who are you, and what did you do before joining Village One?

Hello, there! 👋

My name is Sev Furneaux. Well, my full name is Severin William Furneaux, but if you call me Severin it feels like I’m being told off by my Mum 😳. “SEVERIN, GO TO YOUR ROOM NOW!“.

I was born in Oxford, UK and I’ve lived in various English places including Bath, Margate and a long stint in London for 11 years. Thankfully those are easy to pronounce, unlike my current destination which is Ilkley in West Yorkshire. The look of puzzlement on people's faces: “So, uh, how do you pronounce that?“. ILLK-LEEE. There we go ✅.

Following Ilkley, I have a personal goal of living in other hard to pronounce UK places, including:

• Keighley
• Frome
• Loughborough
• Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

Rewinding back to my time in Bath, in 2006 I graduated as a graphic designer from Bath Spa University college. 2006: that’s like a billion years ago in internet years. I am literally ancient 👴🏻. I then started work as junior graphic designer at SampsonMay in London.

I was asked if I knew HTML and if I could update the SampsonMay website, and that’s where my developer career started! My previous 1990s geeky teenager knowledge of updating my GeoCities website had finally paid off! 😱

Following that, I worked in another London agency as a “digital designer“ before going freelance and offering both design and development for clients for a few years.

But I got annoyed with freelancing, urgh, so then I moved to Berlin to join diesdas.digital as a full-time developer in August 2017, and in October our son was born in a Geburtshaus on the same street where we lived.

Fast forward a few years and we moved back to the UK to be closer to family, but then 3 months later the pandemic happened 😵‍💫. I remote worked for diesdas for another 3 years before leaving in February 2023 for a brief freelance stint (yeah, I forgot I was annoyed with freelance 😅) before joining Village One.

Phew 😅

2. What motivated you to join the Village One Co-op?

As I feel ancient in this industry, I’ve worked in a lot of agencies. They pretty much follow the same model, with the leadership folks at the top. You can sugarcoat it with things like “company culture“, but it’s pretty much the same apparatus from agency to agency. I wanted something different and from working initially freelance before joining full-time, Village One feels so much different! As a cooperative, we’re all equal and we’re not hiding each other's salaries: it’s all open.

3. How does your work day usually look like?

It’s pretty chaotic to be honest. Prior to actually sitting at my desk, there’s us parents getting the kids ready for school, making sure everyone is fed and dressed and out the door. But once that’s done, I’m hopefully starting work at 9:30am and hopefully finishing on time at 5pm 😅.

4. What do you do when you’re not sitting in front of a computer screen?

Ilkley is right next to a "Moor". I don't know why it is called a Moor, maybe some kind of northern English thing? Anyways, it’s A REALLY BIG HILL. And there're a lot of really big hills around here, as we’re near the Yorkshire Dales. And I like walking up really big hills, so that's what I do when there is “personal time“. I've put “personal time“ in quotes, as it's kind of superficial, or a whimsical thing when you are a parent 😅.

Yorkshire and me up a really big hill in the wind and rain, questioning why I have done this.

5. Anything else you would like to share?

Did you try and pronounce Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch?

You can also find Sev here: LinkedIn, Website, Twitter, Mastodon