Out of Hiding

It's been nearly a year since I last posted, and I'm just glad I remembered my login info. On the bright side I can say that I haven't been absent for nothing.

In the last year I started my contract with AJC, and after three months they took me perm. All I can say is, it's very different working within a large development group compared to freelance design. I've learned a lot of new skills, touched up on some oldie but goodies (javascript, I'm looking at you), and met some very talented people.

I'm not really sure how I can summarize an entire year into one post, but here goes nothing.

Worked with a million vendors, wrote code, maintained code, came back and rewrote some more code. Design debt sucks. Trained in Django, trained in Rails, practiced standards, and learned more javascript. Became confident in my position here, and started arguing design philosophy and usability best practices. Won some and lost some, but for all the debates, all the work came out better in the end. Built a rails site, built a CSS framework, reworked the framework, and reworked the framework some more. Decided I don't really like CSS frameworks, but sometimes they do help a lot.

Somewhere along the line I started meeting with the bosses' boss and pushing our agenda. I have to admit I like being in contact with the higher ups. It reminds me of freelance work, at least in the sense of having close contact with the clients. I think the work gets done quicker, and with less revisions that way.

This has been a rather rambling post, but cut me some slack. It's been a year... and a busy one at that. My resolution is to post more frequently.

Oh, I'm on Twitter and LinkedIn now too.