Svevo Romano

Full Stack Developer | Project Manager | Trainer

Profile

Having worked as a web developer, designer and project manager for over 20 years, I've helped many brands with their online and offline marketing strategies.

Born and raised in Italy to an Italian father and a Swedish mother, I've started creating websites using the Photoshop slice tool, HTML tables, inline styles and some JavaScript in the mid nineties, while studying Law at Uni. In the early 2000s, I fell in love with SEO, when keywords were everything, and learned WordPress and PHP. I also fully embraced the Macromedia revolution using Flash and ActionScript for websites and even animated cartoons (which was great fun!) and Director to create CD-ROMs.

I then moved to London (UK) in 2004 to explore new opportunities. In London I worked as an Apple employee for about 3 years, starting in sales and later transitioning to software training. Eventually I started Mavo Studio as a boutique communications agency, after a brief period spent at Langland (at the time the largest independent healthcare marketing agency in the UK) as a New Media Developer and Designer. Throughout these years, I contributed to the development of PR and marketing campaigns for small companies as well as large corporation and institutional clients such as Roche, Novartis, GSK, Astellas, Pfizer, Puffs, Walkers, Activision, Blackberry, Department of Health, Department for Transport, Global Campaign for Education, Investec, CBRE, Danone, Miele and Wall's.

After a vibrant and quite immersive work experience in the UK, I moved back to Italy where I returned to freelancing as a consultant under the same brand name of my former London based agency.

Today I am an advocate of a clean, non-redundant, performant and mobile first design and development approach. While I have leveraged pure JavaScript (in fact I still write Vanilla JS every time I can) I've also learned the React ecosystem for more 'app-like' products.

When I'm not working, I spend free time with my family and occasionally still find the time to play some blues guitar, alone or with my old friends, with whom I have shared quite a few great gigs in the past.

I am available for work, especially remote work, as a project manager, hands-on developer, as well as a trainer. I love working with clients from Europe and the UK, in particular.

Skills

Programming Languages

Libraries & Web Technologies

Software

Portfolio

My portfolio selection is available on the website of my studio.

Wider interests and lifelong learning

I like playing guitar and listening to music. I also enjoy TV series, even though I try to read more nowadays.

Whenever I am not working on a live project I study. Among other resources, I've found Frontend Masters to be an excellent learning platform for modern web technologies. There, I'm deeping my knowledge of the Node.js echosystem and I'm learning Python for AI applications.

I got curious about AI and data analysis, so I took a couple of online courses from Stanford University. I use ChatGPT Plus in my everyday life and I'm reading more about developing and training models with frameworks, especially Tensor Flow.

I'm also intersteed in the real estate market. In fact, as a side activity, I run a small venture in the holiday homes sector. I am also looking into the usage of AI in the tourism sector.