Sam Johnson, web guru

Sam Johnson is not waiting around to catch the knowledge wave, he's already up and riding.

A 15-year-old pupil at Kristin School in Auckland, Sam has been making web pages since he was 12 and in 1999 he designed and built a full e-commerce website for his father's pharmacy business.

Since then Sam has been honing his skills at school and home as he works on an upgrade for his Dad's pharmacy site, Health Chemist, which he also hopes to sell to other pharmacies looking to move online.

With a cool head on such young shoulders, Sam sees his expertise as a product of three things: his own interest, his family's encouragement and his school's support.

He was first attracted to the internet as "something to do" on his home computer and it didn't take long before he was building web pages for fun at the weekend.

Recognising his son's interest and ability, Lew Johnson encouraged Sam to pursue his hobby and the pair came up with the idea of developing a website for the pharmacy in Brown's Bay, on Auckland's North Shore.

Working with existing e-commerce software, Sam designed and built healthchemist, going live at the end of 1999.

Since then, the online business has been growing, both in the amount of business it receives and the range of products it can offer web customers - around 3000 products are currently on offer.

"We're getting quite a few orders from the website," says Sam. "A lot of international customers, a lot of people from Asia getting quite big orders of health-food products."

Sam says his father is very happy with the results, but not so the young web maestro, whose burgeoning knowledge has made him aware of the problems on the site.

"After the initial launch I started doing the new one, because after a few months I realised it wasn't flexible enough.

"We're doing an upgrade now, which is going to take it even further."

The new Health Chemist site will offer more products to customers, and will make it easier for the pharmacy staff to add new products and dispatch orders.

In creating the sort of product he wants, Sam has had to write everything himself.

That task has been made easier by his growing technical expertise, furthered by reading books his father has given him and his Information and Communication Technology (ICT) studies at Kristin.

The school uses ICT extensively in many of its classes and all pupils use laptops from Year 7 onwards.

Sam says his technology teacher, Andrew Churches, has helped the students to learn advanced programming languages and, as the project counts for 30 per cent of his year-end mark in the subject, he has been able work on it in class as well as at home.

Andrew says Sam is one of many students at the school doing amazing work in his classes.

"I've got another 15-year-old who has produced a maths tutor programme and another kid who is producing a French tutoring programme. It is very promising what I am seeing coming through."

The extensive testing and refinement process involved in producing websites and programmes gives the students a real experience of what it is like working in the industry, says Andrew.

He puts success of students like Sam down to a combination of self-interest, the school's commitment to the use of technology and parents' high expectation of excellence.

But the hard work has a payoff, and the value of Sam's creation could be very real - he hopes to sell the system to other pharmacies looking to move online.

"I am going to resell it as well to other pharmacies. So I am developing add-ins for both the existing pharmacy software systems."

Sam is considering starting a business to sell his product once he finishes his Dad's new website, which he estimates is only two months away.

And though he is not looking that far ahead, Sam says he is keen to develop his skills further in the e-commerce field and a career in technology looms.

With a start that he has, it would be no surprise to see Sam Johnson joining a host of young kiwis riding the knowledge wave on to an international stage.

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