Because there is no developer yet to replace me, my workload has not decreased, and I’ve been scrambling to finish up a couple of projects. I completed one yesterday, but another will likely not be done before the final whistle blows (been watching too much World Cup). So the reality of my departure has not hit since I’ve been so busy. It will be weird to just stop and leave it all behind.

My Time at Pitt

I started working for the Pitt web team as a contractor in the summer of 2003 after moving to Pittsburgh from Arlington, Virginia. Originally, I was meant to stay 11 weeks. But they soon found me indispensible, and I was hired full time in December. It was my first full-time job since being laid off from a dot-com company one week before September 11, 2001.

Nearly three years later, I have built around 20 or so sites and leant a hand in a dozen others, and have gone through a lot of development myself.

How CSS Changed My Life

My biggest achievement was taking on CSS positioning and web standards and then introducing them to my team. That really transformed the way we built sites, and it changed the way I viewed my work. It began a heavy investment in industry best practices, information architecture, usability, design, and open source solutions.

Further, it led my application to CMU’s interaction design program within their School of Design. And since I got into the program, you could say CSS changed my life.

How I’ll Be Remembered

I’ll probably be remembered for asking questions like, “Did the client provide content for the design element mocked up in the design?” and for responding to every question about whether we can do something with, “We can. But should we?”

But I’ll also be remembered for my Starbucks coffee cup collection decor, and affinity for sprinkles.

Moving Right Along

So on the eve of my last day, I am happy with what I contributed, but excited to be moving on. I got my CMU student ID this morning. And I start my six-week design fundamentals course on Monday. It’s surreal to think that this time next week, my life will have changed so much.

Of course, if you know anything about the last year of my life?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùand arguably most of my life?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùit’s been about big changes.

I will leave you with a quote from a song from the Muppet Movie, as sung by Kermit and Fozzie Bear, “Moving right along!”

The list that follows is what I submitted:

1. I introduced the idea of having several stand-up meetings each week to share what each team member plans to work on during the next day or two and to talk about any issues that have arisen. This has helped increase the communication between team members and has allowed us to identify where work can be shifted. It has also helped us identify problems with our process and correct them early, saving time and frustration later.
2. I created a web team blog so that web team members can share ideas, resources, and solutions to common problems. This has been effective in increasing the communication among team members and has become a reference for useful sites and solutions.
3. I identified a top web designer’s blog and asked if he would advertise our web developer positions. He agreed. This yielded zero-cost resume submissions that were more in line with the types of developers we were looking to hire. In fact, an offer is being made to a candidate I brought in this way.
4. I became the project manager, a role that is outside the scope of my position, for the Department of Anthropology web site by establishing a strong relationship with the client through a firm understanding of the client’s content and goals. I used this relationship to work through many difficult issues and keep the site moving on track. The resulting site is one of which the web team believes to be one of our most successful.
5. I introduced page description diagrams (PDDs) to the information architecture process. PDDs describe the content that will appear on pages of the site and indicate the hierarchy of importance of that information without the assistance of design. This has allowed us to develop better information architecture that aids in design that supports the goals of the content.
6. I developed a reusable Flash application that uses an XML file to drive a random photo rotation complete with captions. The XML file can be updated by non-technical staff without going into Flash. This application has been used on many sites, including pitt.edu, the Office of Institutional Advancement, and the Department of Psychology, to name a few. This is just one example of the many reusable applications and scripts that I have developed over the past year to increase our options while keeping development time and costs low.
7. I introduced sIFR to our arsenal of techniques for providing unique type faces in a medium where there are only a handful of fonts to choose from, given the limited number of universal fonts available collectively on users’ computers. This allows us to provide more professional solutions and more elegant designs.
8. I discovered an open source web calendar in response to several client requests for such a solution. Because it is open source, there was no cost to UMC for the software. This calendar solution has been implemented in the Honors College web site and French and Italian Languages and Literatures.
9. I identified Campaign Monitor, an email newsletter service designed for web developers, to send email campaigns due to an increasing demand from UMC client’s for such a solution. The service is very low is cost for us, and yet extremely powerful and professional. We have used the service for the Executive MBA program and plan to use it for a number of other clients in the near future.
10. I redeveloped the code of the Department of English web site, as part of a realignment of that web site. The significance of my involvement was that I built the previous site in 2003 as a contractor for UMC, and was able to upgrade the site to the latest in web development standards in 2005, which demonstrates my commitment to improving the quality of services we provide.