Today’s Chores

I'm gonna try journaling my daily work tasks for the week to see if (1) I can make it interesting and (2) if it somehow affects my working process. I'm not sure what will happen, but maybe it'll be good! If it's boring, then I probably have to change what I'm doing every day :-)

So Today is a little like Yesterday:

• Finish Showing Evidence fixes / tweaks...there's just two more listed in FogBugz, then we can test test test for the rest of the week.
• Show Jason how ActionScript 2.0 classes work, get him started on converting his code to that.
• Write up the client meeting notes for a web site design, mail 'em off.
• Review job postings sites, rank and evaluate them.

I also have to take some pictures of myself to have a visual record of "before haircut". I'm getting my hair cut today at a stylist that a friend recommended. I'm hopeful that getting my hair cut by someone who knows what they're doing will be worth the extra time and expense; before I start getting out there again meeting potential business contacts, I want to look a little sharper. A little silly, I know, but first impressions do count for something. I used to have my hair buzzed short, which I thought looked good but apparently was not very approachable (my sister said I looked thuggish and scary). So I've been growing it out for the past few months to get maximum length for the stylist to cut it down just right. Since I'm balding on top, it's starting to look like a mullet. This hair cut can't happen soon enough!

Today’s Chores

Today I've got a few things going on:

1. Adding a few teacher-requested features to the working build of Showing Evidence

They're simple changes on the surface, but involve a lot of conditional checking to enable certain features in certain modes. This part of the codebase is relatively fragile; next time I would think about implementing some kind of mode manager tied into some kind of distributed event management class so these kind of changes are trivial. Right now, they're not. At the time we started, the modes themselves were not known, so I shouldn't beat myself up too much about it.

2. Show intern Jason how to convert his Actionscript 1.0 project to clean 2.0 code

I had him start in AS 1.0 with basic movieclip manipulation so he could just get used to MovieClips and events in Flash. At the time we began I figured that since he didn't have much OOP experience out of school, it might make sense for him to program using procedural methods so I could see how he thought in code. After that, I would know how to present the OOP material as it pertains to Flash. One unfortunate side effect: I had forgotten how lame the compiler is about error checking in AS1.0, and I didn't force Jason to strictly type (as in variable typing). And it's funny to see how silly the MovieClip class and hierarchy is as you're explaining it...thank goodness for Moock's Essential Actionscript. Today we'll be porting Jason's code into a class framework, and then I think he'll really be able to take off.

3. Meet up with Eric in Manchester

It's been happening more frequently: I'm meeting like-minded people through this blog. Meeting up at noon to meet, because it seems like the thing to do.

On the Backburner

• Quickbooks Setup (I've been putting this off for months)
• Reviewing the dozen or so job-related boards for usefulness in establishing a project pipeline
• Ramping up on the architectural outline for an upcomining Flash creative website project. Not a lot of money, but a good creative opportunity.
• Putting together a plan for implementing a very small-scale WordPress 1.5 based hosting service for clients. I have hit critical mass on requests for this, and if I can make it work monetarily I think this is something worth doing.
• Taxes Taxes Taxes

DavidSeah.Com In Review

I have the nagging feeling that it's time to redirect my blogging energy toward specific life goals. I enjoy posting everyday about things that I just happen to find interesting, and I'm glad that my friends find this entertaining. I've been able to reconnect with folks I haven't talked to in years, and as a result I feel closer to everyone. It's a good feeling! I've also learned what interests me and how motivated I am with respect to the type of work.

So what does that really mean? Where to go from here?

Here's what's on my mind these days from a professional perspective:

• I want to create a successful practice, where success is measured by doing what I'm good at and working with people that I admire, trust, and like.
• I want to transition from pure services to creating original content that works for me all the time. Force multiplier!
• I want to do innovative things, which my buddy Scott has defined as invention plus commercialization. Commercialization doesn't mean selling out or being evil.
• I want to teach, because I enjoy it.

From a personal perspective, my greatest priorities are:

• Find/attract people I admire, trust, and like. To communicate with, to work with, and to hang out with. By building the community center, if I have to. Like attracts like!
• Tweak my working style to unleash the highest-possible sustainable level of productivity.
• Practice happiness, compassion, and peacefulness without stifling my own ambition and drive.

A pretty tall order, I think, but I've realized that my most powerful focusing tool for setting direction is actually this blog. I like working on it every day. I am compelled to write every day. Therefore, I want to make a more directed use of it to drive toward my business and personal goals. I've been talking about this with a new acquaintance and heck...it's time for me to step up and start answering my own questions.

So a new commitment: write about the development of the practice every day. I imagine that I'll be refactoring the site and probably doing a redesign, but that won't be for months. Let's see if blog power can take me home!

Collaboration

Today I posted to the MMBug Discussion List, to see if I could find any other folks in southern new hampshire / northern mass region who wanted to get together and chat about interactive design:

SO FAR: Three, THREE People have responded. :-)

Here's what I posted:

I'm an independent new media designer/developer in the Southern New Hampshire region, and I'm wondering if there are people in the area who would like to get together to share what it is about "interactive design" that's so interesting to them, and why. I'm NOT looking for a "professional networking/business" group; instead, I'd like to interact with other people to riff about interaction, programming, and making stuff that feels relevant. In other words, you think interactive design and programming is pretty cool, you care about quality, and you wonder what it all means with respect to your life's work.

If this is an appropriate place, we can maybe throw out some thoughts here...otherwise, please feel free to contact me and we'll get some dialog going. Mmmm...dialog!

The issues I'm interested in these days are developing my next generation interactive toolkit, grousing about bad interfaces, making good interfaces, and figuring out how to grow an independent design business. But I'm also very interested in what others are exploring, facilitating discussion, and pooling some knowledge together creatively.

Transparency in Web Development

Cornell University's Web Communications Team kept a blog about their site development, which is an interesting exposition of "why decisions are made a certain way". It's an interesting read, for those of you who are interested in seeing how the production process goes from the PM's perspective.

A lot of missteps can occur early in the project cycle when the client is (1) misunderstood by the developers or (2) vague about their goals. This leads to a lot of "the client doesn't know what they want" grousing by the literal-minded developers, who would prefer to get everything handed to them as a technical spec. On the client's side, they're confronted by what seems to be a passive-aggressive wall of defiance, because developers don't know how to translate other people's concepts into technical implementation. Hence the need for Project Managers who are fluent in both clientspeak (itself with many dialects) and developerspeak. I like how this blog not only illuminates the decision making process in a large organization, but also includes the raw, unfiltered reactions from people outside the process. It's a neat microcosm of the media development process, from the social interaction perspective.

On a side note, using a multiple-blog system as a way to facilitate client communication is itself an interesting idea. I've used intranets in this way in the past, laboriously updating HTML manually. It took hours, but the result was that I had a pretty good sense of project continuity. I'm not so sure that clients found it useful on a day-to-day basis, but perhaps it was reassuring. My big problem is I write too much, and it's tough to read on the screen. I'll have to think about this a bit more.

Cornell Update spotted on Digital Media Minute via Full as a Goog.