John Walsh-Green

Founded Digital Greenhouse in 2011 to do I.T. properly for organisations as they scale - honestly priced and well-built. Now operating as a small team. Across the years the work has covered three overlapping waves: traditional web and CMS development, custom e-commerce, and (more recently) AI integration and cloud software engineering.

Web & e-commerce development

• Designed, built, and maintained Joomla and WordPress sites - including back in the early days when content management on the open web meant rolling your own templates and security baseline.
• Hand-coded fully featured shopping websites with custom Stripe payment integrations, well before drag-and-drop e-commerce or AI-assisted coding existed.
• Hand-coded HTML / CSS / JavaScript / PHP / MySQL websites in the earlier years for Australian start-ups, small businesses, and established sole traders.
• Delivered repeatedly on tight deadlines and small budgets - the kind of constraints that teach you to ship something that actually works, not something that looks great in a deck.
• Sydney Hype (now defunct) - an early Digital Greenhouse Pty Ltd start-up venture. Hired, briefed, and led a 4-person team of writers producing content for a Sydney-focused web property I designed and hand-coded in PHP and MySQL, featuring a bespoke “hype algorithm” with visual “hype charts”.
• First website: Puppeteria.com, built in 2003 - still a client today, with the site going strong over 20 years on.

AI & cloud software (recent)

• Early adopter of ChatGPT and Claude - using them daily in production work since the public APIs first appeared.
• Built AI chatbots and AI-powered website integrations for clients - tying the OpenAI and Anthropic APIs into existing sites and bespoke tools.
• Designed and shipped full-fledged software running on AWS using Node.js and the modern JavaScript ecosystem - back-end services, APIs, and customer-facing front-ends.
• Translates the AI / cloud landscape for non-technical stakeholders - what it’s good at, what it isn’t, what it costs, and what to avoid.

Consultancy services (current)

• Personally leads Digital Greenhouse’s service lines, including web design and development, AI training, hosting, and domain reselling.
• Designed and built the company’s own marketing site (this one) as a mobile-first, accessibility-focused build with structured-data SEO.
• Established a transparent hourly pricing model ($160/hr inc GST standard, $200/hr inc GST RUSH) with time tracked in minutes and billing for the work actually done - no binding hour cap promised up front.
• Direct support: clients deal with a senior point of contact who knows their setup, backed by a small team - never an offshore ticket queue.

A regular one-day-per-fortnight shift running the tool store across multiple trade departments at TAFE - issuing and recovering tools, keeping the workshops stocked, and supporting teachers and apprentices on the floor. Maintained alongside a busy Digital Greenhouse client schedule.

• Fitting & machining - lathe and mill tooling, measuring instruments, consumables for apprentices on the workshop floor.
• Welding - electrodes, gas, PPE, fabrication consumables; safe storage and turnaround between classes.
• Carpentry - hand tools, power tools, and fasteners for the cabinetmaking and construction students.
• Plumbing - fittings, hand tools, and consumables for the plumbing apprentices.
• Stayed close to the trade floor and the teaching staff while keeping the consultancy running - the fortnightly day was a deliberate change of pace from screen-based work.

KM Business Information (formerly known as Key Media) is one of the leading niche publishing companies in the world, with over 300 employees across eight countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, USA, UK, Korea, Antigua and Canada.

It delivers world-class content via multiple platforms – online to a combined audience of over 2.4 million unique visitors per month, through the pages of over 100 magazines it publishes per year, and face-to-face at its 90+ annual events enjoyed by thousands of key industry players.

• Telesales Manager – Conferences & Events – led a small team of 2-3 telesales staff selling delegate places into conferences and masterclass events. An energetic team that found interesting perspectives and engaged potential customers on subject matter that could otherwise be considered ‘dry’ (legal masterclasses, for example).
• Business Development Manager – sole BDM for a human resources industry magazine. Introduced a new classifieds section which secured upfront $40,000+ per year in additional revenue.
• Advertising Sales – Magazines & Online
  • Achieved Top Salesperson for the month in a large sales team.
  • Part of a dedicated 3-person sub-team (within the larger company sales team) on a mortgage industry magazine that set a new company sales record.
• Telesales – Conferences & Events – 80-120 outbound calls per day; won multiple bonuses for exceeding sales targets and regularly topping incentivised internal competitions (“most calls”, “most time on phone”, etc.).
• Database Researcher – manual data entry, keeping the customer database up to date, and processing magazine subscriptions.

A hands-on trade qualification covering manual machining, welding, fabrication, and reading / producing engineering drawings - completed via TAFE evening classes alongside running Digital Greenhouse full-time during the day. Complements the software work nicely - the same problem-solving discipline, but with steel, sparks, and tolerances measured in fractions of a millimetre.

• Welding & fabrication - TIG, MIG, and MMAW (stick) welding; brazing, oxy and plasma cutting; clean weld preparation and fit-up.
• Manual machining - lathe work (turning, knurling, threading), milling, and precision surface grinding to spec.
• 3D CAD modelling - Autodesk Inventor, FreeCAD, and OnShape; parametric models, assemblies, and engineering drawings.
• 70 practice models to spec on Too Tall Toby - regular CAD challenge models built strictly to the published dimensions to keep the technique sharp.
• CAD-to-part workflow - taking a model from design through manufacturing (machining, welding, fabrication) to installed on site.
• Hand tools & precision measurement - micrometers, calipers, dial indicators, surface plates.

Real-world applications of the workshop skills - one-off brackets, custom holders, improvised cooling, carpentry pieces, and bespoke shipping solutions for delicate equipment. The kind of “I need to make this thing fit this exact situation” problem-solving that bridges design, fabrication, and trade-craft.

• Metal fabrication - custom brackets, mounts, and holders, designed and welded / machined to spec for one-off jobs.
• Carpentry & woodwork - bespoke storage and small joinery built for the workshop.
• Custom packaging - timber crates and shipping boxes (some on castors) for safe transport of fragile and medical equipment.
• Improvised engineering - one-off solutions when nothing off-the-shelf will do the job.

• Active Toastmasters member from 2013 to 2018 - regular prepared and impromptu speaking, evaluations, meeting roles, and running meetings.
• Completed the Icebreaker - the first speech every Toastmaster gives.
• Multiple First Place awards in club-level speech contests.
• First Place at Area Evaluation Contest - progressing past club level against speakers from other clubs in the area.

• Organised and led a 3-person team in a busy polling place for the local election.
• Previously served as 2IC (second-in-command) at an earlier state election.

Employee Recognition Award “in recognition of outstanding performance and contribution to Key Media”.

Certificate of completion for “A toolkit for new managers”, conducted by the Centre for Continuing Education.

An earlier brochure-style website I built and maintained for the practice, with a homepage and a service-FAQ template. Long since superseded.

An earlier multi-location site I built for the Ageless Clinics group — Sydney CBD, Tamarama, Bathurst, Goulburn, Young, Canberra and Batemans Bay — now retired in favour of a fresh build.