Are you chicken? we are!

All of us and some others at a Drupal user group in Bristol back when we were young and spritely - 2013
Here’s us at a Drupal meetup in May 2013. 11 years ago...

We've worked on websites for organisations you've heard of.

There's a good chance we've worked on websites you've used.

We host the Bristol user group monthly meetup. If you're in the area, come chat with us and other tech peeps.

Our Story

Justine ice skating for a christmas party challenge.

Justine Pocock

Creative Director

User research, Design, Frontend development, CSS with the occasional site building.
Grows veg, usually has chickens.

Ru sat at a bar with mounted moose antlers lined up perfectly behind his head, at a work Christmas party at a previous job.

Rupert Jabelman

Technical Director

Solves tricky problems, builds prototypes,
writes back end code, rides bikes.

  • 1999
  • Rupert started studying for an MSc in Electrical & Electronic Engineering at the University of Bath. Eventually graduated after far too long with a BSc in Computer Science.
  • 2003
  • Justine gets BA in New Media from the University of Bath (studied at Swindon for her sins!)
  • Her first grown-up job was designing books, leaflets and banners for Natura 2000, The Wildlife Trusts, and BirdLife International.
  • 2005
  • Ru worked as an in-house dev for an insurance company. He built the first online insurance site that would let you buy an insurance policy online and make adjustments to it online.
  • 2008
  • Karen
  • She found Drupal after needing to create a new website for BBOWT - an issue of Net Mag called "Choose the best free CMS" found in tesco, made her mind up.
  • 2009
  • Rupert decided that he'd had enough of insurance, and took a job at Sift in Bristol, building sites in Drupal.
  • Justine joined Drupal UK IRC channel and became part of the community of devs, mostly talking rubbish and annoying the real developers.
  • 2010
  • Why build one site at a time when you can build thousands? Ru joined SubHub - a startup company in Cardiff building a site builder platform in Drupal 7. SubHub ran SWDUG, the South Wales Drupal User Group.
  • 2011
  • Justine and Rupert met IRL at SWDUG.
    We both attend our first Drupalcon in London/Croydon that same year.
  • 2012
  • She joined Torchbox and became their frontend developer.
  • Ru Worked as a technical consultant for Acquia for 6 weeks. Decided the lifestyle wasn't for him so took a much more normal job at Aroq, a publishing house.
  • 2013
  • He became Senior developer at Torchbox. Worked with Justine and Glenn for the first time, despite having known them both for actual years by this point. Before I joined, I decided that one way or the other, this would be my last job where I'm just an employee.
  • Justine organised a bunch of Frontend United conferences in London, Copenhagen and Bristol.
  • 2016
  • Ru left Torchbox for a life of startups and consultancy. Been doing it ever since.
  • At Drupalcon Dublin, Justine spoke about mental resilience in the first Being Human track
  • 2017
  • She joined Code Enigma as Head of Design - oversaw the company rebranding, helped hire a marketing whizz and learned a lot about ISO processes.
  • Justine and Simon (her boyfriend) got chickens and moved to Bristol, finally.
  • Karen
  • 2018
  • Ru moved out of Bristol! (but not too far away that they can't meet for business brunches!)
  • 2021
  • She went freelance, followed Ru to Ricardo. Designed a LGD website for LBHF.

In 2022 Chicken was born and although it all feels like a blur, we've got a lot done!

  • We tried to convince Uncle Glenn to come along for the ride, it wasn't for him. We still love him.

  • Assisting Ricardo's Digital Services team by rebuilding NAEI, UKAIR and making whole bunch of smaller air quality websites and European Commission sites.

  • Provided Hammersmith & Fulham with a new LocalGov Drupal website, the phased rollout started with Search and included a microsite platform.

  • 2023: Created Subsites extras for Hammersmith & Fulham and worked with Essex Council to release this back to LocalGov Drupal

  • For Publications: We picked up the designs created by LGD and made it into a module for everyone

  • Events: Working with Essex again we made a big start on refactoring how directories work to be able to create a more robust events content type and listings

  • Justine became co-opted in as a director for Open Digital Coop, keeping Mark Conroys seat warm.

  • Joined Natwest Accelorator, started to take this more seriously! We just need to find the time to go

  • Created an interactive floorplan for Newcastle - which will be launched soon.

Lesser Spotted Chickens

The following might pop up in a meeting or send you an email, they are free to come and go as they please...

Karen

Karen Leech

Operations Manager

Herding chickens

Karen has 2 chickens, 2 pigs, a dog, a cat and a foster kitten.

Joachim

Joachim Noreiko

Drupal Developer

Joachim is working on improving the Events features for LocalGov Drupal

He has no chickens.

Join the flock

Our communities are important to us. Over the years, our professional community's given us work, friendship and great advice – come and join in.

  • Hang out with us in our Slack channel

    We started chicken to be loosely joined freelancers. We welcome and support those who have chosen the free-range path.

  • Work with us on projects

    As we take on more work we want trusted freelancers to help deliver more great work. On large projects we'll invite you to tender with us.

Email us to join

We'd love to create something with you

Email your ideas, brief or chicken jokes to hello@wearechicken.co.uk or book a 30 minute slot with us on Calendly.

Peaches