Glee flash mobs

I've had a bunch of episodes of Glee piling up on the MySky for ages, and this weekend I've finally gotten around to watching them. I'm almost caught up again. Yay!

I don't know how they do it, but I reckon Glee is pretty much the only show where I can be guaranteed to laugh out loud and shed a tear or two in every single episode. It is, simply, delightful.

And then I found Glee flash mobs on YouTube. Such fun!

Official Seattle Glee Flash Mob Video - Seattle, Westlake:



Glee Flash Mob - Grafton Street - Dublin, Ireland:



Flash Mob at the Ohio Union 5/3/2010 - The Ohio State University:



GLEE - Il FlashMob in Rome:



glee flash mob Tel Aviv:



All School Assembly Flash Mob (not all Glee, strictly speaking, but I love this cos it's the teachers flashmobbing the students):



Technorati tags: Glee, flash mobs, Seattle, Dublin, Ohio State University, Rome, Tel Aviv, All School Assembly, music, musicals, TV shows, YouTube, video, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.

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A CSS/jQuery solution for creating multi-column lists

I seem to have found a solution for one of those front-end developer "Holy Grail" challenges - getting an unordered list to rearrange itself into two (or more) columns if the content of the first column gets too long.

Before I explain how to do it, I should point out that the vast majority of this solution is already out there in the form of a neat jQuery plugin called Columnizer jQuery written by Adam Wulf. I had nothing to do with the creation of it - I just stumbled upon it when I was googling for a solution, and wondered if I could adapt it for my particular layout problem. I added a bit of additional jQuery so it would do exactly what I wanted, and to my complete astonishment - it worked. Amazing!

There are a bunch of CSS-only solutions for multi-column lists which kinda sorta work - as long as you have a static list and can attach classes to various individual <li> tags. They generally work on the principle of moving some of the list items to a different position on the page using CSS - so that the list remains intact within the HTML, but appears to be broken up into multiple columns when viewed in your browser.

The CSS Swag: Multi-Column Lists article at A List Apart is one of the best examples of this, and in fact shows a whole bunch of different ways of achieving this goal.

However (and it's a big "however") - none of these solutions will work with a dynamically-generated list where you don't know from page to page how many items will be in that list, and where you can't add your own individual classes or IDs to each <li> in advance.

A perfect example of this situation - and the one I was wrestling with - is when you're building a set of templates which will be integrated into a CMS, and the unordered list in question is the subnav - which has to fit into a fixed-height space.

Here's what the subnav in my design normally looks like:


But... I do not know how many pages the client will end up creating within each subsection of their new website. What I do know is that the number of list items in each subnav menu will vary from section to section, and will be generated automatically by the CMS (which means I can't add classes or IDs).

So this is what I want it to do when the number of items in the list gets too long for the fixed-height space to contain them all:


One thing to note: you need to be sure that your client isn't going to use massively long names for their pages, as these will generally translate into massively long links in the subnav, in which case you will soon run out of room - especially in the 2-column layout. You can pre-empt this by training them to use short page names and/or re-name them for the subnav. Most CMSs will let you do this - Silverstripe, for example, which is what we're using for this site - has an additional field in each page where you can define the text you want to be used as the subnav link. Very sensible.

Adam Wulf's plugin is designed to automatically lay out your content in newspaper column format. You can specify either column width and/or height or a static number of columns. I noticed that one of the lines of code in his jQuery was

$('li').addClass("dontsplit");

...which made me think he might have included something to ensure that lists which get split into two different columns still work properly - and he has! Clever man. We're 90% of the way there already!

I have nowhere near the technical expertise required to write my own jQuery plugins - or even to understand all the code within a plugin - but I do have enough of an understanding of jQuery to be able to utilise what others have created and adapt it to my own requirements - sometimes.

I'm not even going to try and explain how Adam's plugin works - because I don't actually know - I'm simply going to highlight the bits you need to make this list do its thing, and then show you the bit of jQuery I added which makes the list do one thing when it's short - and another when it's long.

Here's how I did it...

I began with Adam's Sample 5 page. He describes this example as one that:

Shows fixed width and height columns scrolling horizontally

...which seemed to be what I was looking for.

I viewed the source of his example page and created a copy for myself - test-columnizer. Then I replaced his example text with a simple unordered list, exactly like the subnav code I'm going to be using. You can see my test example here - test-columnizer2. Because his columns were initially set to be 400px high I put a whole bunch of list items in my test list to make sure it was working properly.

In the jQuery function I removed

$('h1').addClass('dontend');

because I didn't need it, and replaced it with

$('li').addClass("dontsplit");

The class "dontsplit" is built into the plugin and prevents individual list items from being split into two columns. The jQuery now looks like this:

$(function(){
     $('li').addClass("dontsplit"); 
     $('.wide').columnize({
          width : 300,
          height : 400
     });
});

I also removed the <div class="thin"> </div> in the HTML (you can see it towards the end of the page in test-columnizer) because, again, I don't need it. This "thin" div in the plugin can be set to contain any overflow from columns created within the "wide" div - you can see an example on Adam's website - Sample 4 page. Because I don't intend to have any overflow in this design, it can come out.

The next step was to style the list so that it looked more like my design, and to place it inside my subnav div, which is a fixed width, fixed height container. You can see an example here - test-columnizer3.

I altered the jQuery to this:

$(function(){
     $('li').addClass("dontsplit"); 
     $('.wide').columnize({
          width : 90,
          height : 150
     });
});

...which tells the plugin to make each column 90px wide by 150px high.

In addition to my specific CSS styling for the subnav box and the list items, you'll also notice I made a couple of changes to Adam's existing CSS styling. I set a specific width on .wide, like this:

.wide { 
     clear: both; 
     width: 190px !important;
     }

Without this width setting, the total width of .wide is calculated by the plugin, and ends up as 180px (2 columns at 90px each = 180px). I wanted a gutter of 10px between the two columns, which meant that the .wide div needed to be 190px wide in total. By adding !important to the style in the CSS I can force it to override the plugin's calculated width.

Adam has very helpfully coded the plugin to add a class of "last" to the last column in the div, which meant I could then add this style to my CSS:

#subnav .wide .last {
     float: right !important;
     }

...to force the last column to float right - so creating that gutter of 10px between the first (left-hand) column and the last (right-hand) column. Again, by adding !important I can force it to override the plugin's default float: left.

Here's the example page again - test-columnizer3 - in case you missed the link earlier.

OK - so now let's look at what the subnav does if the number of items in the list is quite small - test-columnizer4.

Hmmm. That's not exactly what I want. If there are just a few list items, and we don't actually need two columns to fit them all in, I want a single column that stretches right across the subnav space - like this:


...not like this:



In other words I need an if... statement in the jQuery that will trigger the columnize plugin only when the number of list items exceeds the space available in the first column.

Firstly I defined a variable maxHeight of 150px, and then created my if... statement which basically says "if the height of the .wide div is greater than 150px, then run the jQuery plugin." The whole thing looks like this:

var maxHeight = 150;

$(function(){
     if ($('.wide').height() > maxHeight)
     $('.wide').columnize({
          width : 90,
          height : 150
     });
});

I decided to set my variable as a maximum height rather than by counting the actual number of items and setting a maximum number of items in each column because a) individual list items might sometimes wrap onto more than one line - which would mess up the calculation and b) if you're viewing the website in an older browser like IE6 or IE7 and you've increased the font size, it will again mess up the calculation (although I guess I could have overcome that issue by using ems).

You can see an example of the completed solution here: test-columnizer5.

And here's the same solution with a few more items in the list to show how it rearranges itself into 2 columns when necessary: test-columnizer6.

Perfect! Now the subnav list spreads nicely across the whole div, unless there are too many list items to fit into the fixed-height space, in which case it splits into two separate lists in two columns, with each column only half the width of the original single column.

I've tested the solution in IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox, Opera and Safari on both PC and Mac where appropriate, and it works just fine. Incredible.

Thanks a million to Adam Wulf for coming up with an awesome plugin that allowed me to do exactly what I wanted with just a little tweak at the very end. It's a great piece of work!

I hope that by blogging about it I'll flag it as a solution for the multi-column list problem, which will make it easier to find for those googling for a fix. Let me know if it works for you.


Technorati tags: multi-column list, 2-column list, css, jQuery, jQuery plugin, Adam Wulf, Columnizer jQuery, Columnizer jQuery plugin, break a list into columns, fixed height, fixed width, unordered list, ordered list, web development, web design, WebWeaver Productions, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.

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The Gathering archives website - and the ONYAs

WOOHOO!

The Gathering archives website is a finalist in the Best content (personal) category of the ONYAs!

Crikey!

I'm completely thrilled. It took me a year of working on the site to get it to a state where I was ready to put it online, and it's grown quite a lot since then.

The ONYA judge's comment about the site cracked me up. It's so funny, and also so true...

A multi-media mashup of memoir, fractured histories and anecdotes from a series of events that erased the memories of many that were there. Alison's site is a public service...

New Year 2006/07 marked the 10th anniversary of the first Gathering dance party on top of Takaka Hill near Nelson. The last Gathering was held over New Year 2001/02, and as I had been involved in the organisation of four out of the six Gatherings, and had created the original Gathering website, I felt sad that there was virtually nothing remaining online about these iconic events.

In October 2006 I set about creating, designing, building and writing the Gathering archives website, with the aim of becoming the authoritative source of information on the history and background of The Gathering. The site is divided into different sections for each of the six Gatherings, and includes facts & figures, media coverage, Gathering artwork, photos, video and film footage, Gatherer stories and maps of the venue for each party.

It will always be a work in progress, because each party was so vast and complex that it would be impossible for one person to have a complete overview of what went on at even a single event, let alone six. Although I had a whole lot of "official" archival material (including media coverage, Gathering artwork etc), I wanted the site to be much more than that. I wanted it to reflect the memories and stories of the many thousands of Gatherers who took part each year, as well as the hundreds of crew members and organisations who supported us in putting on New Zealand's best-loved dance parties.

I haven't had much time this year to add new stuff to the site, but I've already spent time improving the usability of the homepage as a result of my ONYAs nomination (see what a bit of good news does to kick-start me into action once more!), and I plan to do quite a bit more on the site before February when the winners in each category are announced.

The other two finalists in this category are Jared Gulian for Moon over Martinborough and my dear friend Zef Fugaz for zef[a]media. Those of you who know your Gathering history might remember Zef - he was our very awesome assistant producer/BetaSP-Cam/graphics guru for The Gathering documentary 97/98.

The ONYAs celebrate those who design, develop and create New Zealand's best websites and applications. They’re awards by the industry, for the industry.

It's a real honour to be nominated for the award, and to be a finalist in such esteemed company. Good luck guys, and may the best website win!

Technorati tags: ONYAs, ONYA, web awards, finalist, best content, The Gathering archives, The Gathering, dance party, rave, New Zealand, Canaan Downs, web design, web development, website, Zef Fugaz, Jared Gulian, The Gathering documentary, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.

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Thrilled to bits with the ONYAs

A year ago things looked pretty bleak job-wise. Sue and I had just been made redundant from our dream web design company, together with Rosie and Rene from the Welli office and four others from the Auckland office.

My first thought when I heard we were losing our jobs was that I would lose my house because I wouldn't be able to pay the mortgage. My second thought was that maybe I wasn't good enough and that that's why I had been one of the ones selected to go.

It was a pretty rough end to the year, to say the least.

However, you have to play with the cards you're dealt, so after a few days feeling sorry for myself I picked myself up and started looking for work.

I've been doing contract and freelance work as WebWeaver Productions for about 13 years now, off and on, so that's what I went back to. Tom and I had done a few little WebWeaver projects for various clients since we met at Shift and I love working with him, so I had my programmer already in place, and we invited Sue to work with us on projects where we needed another designer.

We've done a mixture of freelance work as WebWeaver and contract work for various web design companies over the past 12 months. Here's (some of) what we've achieved this year:

• WM Bamford & Co Ltd - a WebWeaver Productions project - design and build by me, CMS integration by Tom
• Tourism Exchange - an Origin Design project - design by Jason at Origin Design, build by me, CMS integration by Tom
• Cavalier Bremworth - a DNA project - design by DNA, build by me
• Round Peg Recruitment - a Shelley Masters/WebWeaver Productions project - design by Shelley, build by me
• Pike River Coal - an Origin Design project - design by Jason at Origin, build by me
• Expedia Flash banner ads - a Badger Communications project - design by the Badger crew, Flash animation by me
• Telecom Global Roaming - a Shift project - design by Shift, build by me
• Ministry for the Environment - a WebWeaver Productions project - design by Sue, build by me
• Master Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Inc - a WebWeaver Productions project - design and build by me, CMS integration by Tom
• Environmental Protection Authority - a WebWeaver Productions project - design by Sue, build by me
• Optimation - a WebWeaver Productions project - design by Sue, build by me, CMS integration by Tom

Oh - and...

• Created a baby - a Sue&Jon project - design by Sue, development by Sue, integration by Jon - congratulations you guys!

It's been a great year!

I think one of the best things about being a freelancer is the immediacy - and the range - of the work you do. When we create a website as WebWeaver Productions, we know we've personally won the right to work on that project, because we've pitched for the job, written the quote, done the IA, liaised with the client, managed the project, designed the website, built the HTML and CSS, integrated the site, and tested (and sometimes even content-loaded) it.

No-one else won that work and then employed us to do the design, build or integration - we won it, and we worked on it in its entirety from start to finish. It's a great feeling. When the client likes our work they tell us directly - and if they really like our work they tell other people and we get to do it all over again. It's awesome.

So you might have noticed that in recognition of all that beavering away we've done this year we decided to enter a couple of WebWeaver Productions websites for the inaugural ONYAs web awards...

Yesterday they announced the Best Accessibility category -- and there was our website for the Environmental Protection Authority of New Zealand - we're one of the three finalists, together with Radio New Zealand (for the Radio New Zealand site) and Springload (for the New Zealand Rehabilitation Association website). Crikey! How completely cool is that?

We knew the EPA site stood a good chance - it's completely accessible and passes all the WCAG 2.0 accessibility requirements - and needless to say we're completely thrilled to be selected as a finalist, especially as we're up there with such very excellent company. Gosh.

This is a seriously big deal for us. We're such a tiny little company - in fact we're not exactly a company at all - we like to describe ourselves as "an informal co-operative".

We all work together on projects when there's a need for us to each have a role (for example on the Optimation website), and sometimes it's just me and Sue, (for example on the EPA website), or just me and Tom (for example on the Plumbers website), and sometimes it's just me (for example, a website I'm currently completing for a government agency I've worked with in the past). It depends - and so far this year we've all been able to dovetail our various WebWeaver roles very neatly with design agency contract work (me and Tom) and producing babies (Sue!).

For the ONYAs we're potentially up against every one of the big NZ web design companies (assuming that they entered), and so to get nominated as a finalist in one of the categories we've entered is EXTREMELY exciting, and very gratifying. We absolutely LOVE what we do, so to get acknowledgement from the industry itself that we're doing good work is satisfying to say the least (and that may well be the understatement of the year!).

But wait - there's more.

We knew they'd be starting to announce the finalists in each category on Monday, so when we heard about the Best Accessibility category on Wednesday I was still rather butterfly-tummied from the anticipation I'd been building up all week. Today I was somewhat more blasé. I'd sort of gotten over the excitement a bit - and I almost didn't spot the second email that came through from Mike this afternoon...

I read it and virtually fell off my chair in shock.



Oh



My



God!


The three finalists for the Best use of HTML and CSS category were announced today - and WebWeaver Productions has not one but TWO websites in the top three!!!

Our website for the Environmental Protection Authority of New Zealand is once again a finalist, as is our website for Optimation. We're up against the Radio New Zealand website in this category as well.

How can I explain how much this means to me?

I love my job. I ADORE my job. I love designing and building websites just as much (if not more) today, as I did 13 years ago when I first started out. It's the best job in the world, and I feel so lucky to have found it.

I'm also a perfectionist, and very single-minded when it comes to doing stuff. I want to be the best I can possibly be, and I want the work I produce to be as near-perfect as I can possibly make it. I know that HTML/CSS is my core skill, and dammit I wanted to see how my work compared to the work of my peers. I thought I was pretty good, but I didn't know for sure. I really really wanted to see one of my websites up there as a finalist in this category. I mean I REALLY wanted it.

And I got two. I still can't quite believe it.

I keep on wanting to run round and round yelling "I did it! We did it! We rock! EEEEEEEE!!!"

Actually I did do a bit of that this afternoon at Optimation. It was fun!

It's funny how things come full circle, isn't it? There we were a year ago wondering what we'd done wrong, and trying not to take the redundancies personally, and yet still feeling like we mustn't have been good enough to keep - and now here we are as finalists for the ONYAs. It's bloody awesome actually.

And the coolest thing? Our dream web design company, Shift, is the major sponsor. Thank you Shift, thank you Mike and Tash and the rest of the Webstock crew - you rock!

As I said earlier, it's been a great year.


Technorati tags: WebWeaver Productions, ONYAs, ONYA web awards, web design, web development, Sue Quigley, Tom St George, best accessibility, best HTML and CSS, category, finalist, Webstock, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.

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Working with the Ministry

Earlier on in the year we were given the opportunity to pitch for a re-design job on the Ministry for the Environment's website, which we won. Sue and I were completely thrilled - it's the first Government client that WebWeaver Productions has pitched for (although I've worked on over 50 government websites as a contractor and/or employee), so to win it was pretty darned cool.

Our primary contact was Dee Guja, the Ministry's senior adviser, Stakeholder Engagement/Publications, and we worked on the project with the Ministry's webmaster, Jennifer Geard. Both Dee and Jennifer are very good at their jobs, and as a result the Ministry has become one of our favourite clients - they absolutely rock!

The brief was tricky, to say the least. The Ministry's website is huge - somewhere around 13,000 pages - and the old site was based on a set of Dreamweaver templates which were pretty old and had a bunch of table-based layouts to contend with. Over the years many different MfE employees have added content to the Ministry site, and in some cases the code used to display the same 'look' has been achieved using a variety of techniques - some of which are now out of date and no longer validate.

Our job was to design and build a new set of e-government compliant best-practice Dreamweaver templates which would seamlessly replace the old ones, together with a stylesheet that would not only control the new template HTML, but would restyle all of the old legacy code within the subnav, main content area and feature column so that it would display properly in the design without the Ministry web team having to rewrite the HTML.

Oh - and it needed to be sufficiently robust and all-encompassing so that Jennifer and her team could be confident that all 13,000 pages would display as expected - without having to check every page before go-live.

Sue worked her magic and produced a beautiful new design which was light years away from the old design. I built a set of 11 HTML/CSS templates which I then converted to Dreamweaver templates, matching the editable regions as closely as possible to their existing ones so that when Jennifer came to do the global 'find and replace' that would replace their old templates with our new ones, the site would hold together.

Our test list consisted of 16 different browser/OS combinations (the number has been somewhat reduced since then), which meant I had to get on TradeMe and buy a bunch of old PCs so that I could get the full range of PC operating systems I needed for testing. The completely awesome standalone versions of IE6 and IE7 no longer work properly when you've got IE8 installed, so I needed separate versions of the same OS in order to test all three versions of IE. Oh joy.

The project began back in April, and the site went live in June, which is not bad going for such a large website. Jennifer and her team are working through the site to remove the worst (legacy) examples of non-compliant code, and the new templates were tested for e-govt compliance by Bruce Aylward of W 3 A. He's an expert on website accessibility, and taught me a bunch of new tricks, which I really appreciated.

All in all a great project to be involved with, and a very satisfactory result. We hope you like the Ministry's new website as much as we do.

Technorati tags: Ministry for the Environment, MfE, website, web design, web development, HTML, CSS, WebWeaver Productions, Sue Quigley, Dee Guja, Jennifer Geard, Bruce Aylward, W3A, e-government, accessibility, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.

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Entering the ONYAs

I've spent the weekend completing multiple entries for the inaugural ONYAs web awards, which are being organised by the very wonderful Mike and Tash who also bring you the equally wonderful Webstock.

The closing date was today - originally 6pm this evening, but they've extended it until midnight. You have less than an hour, folks!

Actually, having said that, you might have some trouble making a submission between now and midnight - the site's down. Wonder if we knocked it out with the sheer volume of last-minute entries?

WebWeaver Productions have entered two of our most recent sites - the Environmental Protection Authority website that went live on October 1, and the Optimation website that went live just a few hours ago.

We're very proud of both sites - we think they represent some of WebWeaver's best work this year - and we think we've got as good a chance as anyone of winning an (already coveted) award.

We've entered the EPA site for Best use of HTML & CSS and Best accessibility (both in my name), and the Optimation site for Best use of HTML & CSS (me) and Best visual design (Sue). I think Amanda might also be entering the Opti site for Best content (corporate) because the writing she's done for the new site is really good.

We were only sad that there wasn't a category for Best integration into a CMS, because poor old Tom's the only WebWeaver(er) who doesn't have a category to enter. No fair! I think we would definitely have entered the Opti site for that category too if there had been one.

Oh - and I also entered The Gathering archives in the Best content (personal) category - just because I can. And also 'cos I think it's a pretty cool site.

Now all we have to do is keep all our fingers and toes crossed until February 19. Crikey!

Technorati tags: WebWeaver Productions, websites, ONYA, ONYAs, web awards, categories, entries, Optimation, EPA, Environmental Protection Authority, Tom St George, Susan Quigley, Amanda McVitty, web design, web development, accessibility, HTML, CSS, WebWeaver's World, webweaver

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Thoughts on being a contractor / freelancer

As those of you who regularly read my blog will know, I lost my job at the end of last year - I got made redundant. It wasn't that much of a shock really - I had seen the redundancies coming a mile off - but it was certainly a bummer that I was one of those chosen to lose my job.

I was mighty sad to leave Shift - it's an awesome company with awesome people who are more like family than colleagues - but there you go. Life goes on. Shift's doing fine now, so it's great that by cutting a few jobs when they needed to (however much that hurt at the time), they've come through the crisis and things are looking up for everyone who still works there.

I've been in the web industry for over 12 years - and for about half that time I've been an employee at various Wellington web design companies - and the rest of the time I've been a contractor. I've worked for a lot of different web design and development companies over the years, and I have a pretty good reputation and a strong network. Wellington's a small place, and the web industry is a pretty small industry - so people know people, and lots of people know me.

So it wasn't too difficult to decide that I'd go back to being a contractor/freelancer - at least for a while. When I'm doing work for a design or development company, that's contracting. When I'm designing and building websites directly for an individual client, that's freelancing. I'm currently doing both.

I rather like being a contractor. It's quite a different discipline from being an employee. Yes, you're using the same skills and expertise to achieve a similar end result (a beautifully-built website), but the process itself differs in a number of important ways.

Plug-and-play

Firstly you really do have to hit the ground running. You're there as a temporary (highly-skilled) worker, and you don't have time to settle in. The company you're working for doesn't have time to introduce you to everyone or take you through a long-winded explanation of their systems or the way they work - you're there to do a job, and you're expected to pretty much get your head down and get on with it.

I like that. You have to be a self-starter, a self-motivator, a very organised person. You have to know what you're doing technically - and although you have to recognise when you need help and be able to ask for it, you're expected not to require much (if any) hand-holding or direction. It's up to you to figure out what needs doing, and how to do it.

It's interesting going to a new company on a temporary basis. You have to figure out all the logistical stuff pretty much instantly. Where are their offices, how am I going to get there each day, where are the loos, how does the coffee machine work, where am I going to have my lunch, how should I set up my computer so that it can talk to their systems - and within the first couple of hours you need to have all that sussed so that you can get on and do your work.

Putting in the hours

The amount of effort required and the accompanying stress levels are quite a bit higher than they are when you're an employee. For a start you've probably been asked to provide a fixed-price quote for the project you're working on - and you jolly well have to meet the deadline and stay within budget. That's why you're there - you are generally expected to take responsibility for a single project, and there can be no excuses.

If (as sometimes happens) you underestimated how long it's going to take, you're just going to have to suck it up and do the additional work for free in order to get the project finished - and you absolutely MUST hit the delivery deadline. That can mean working long hours, evenings and weekends if necessary, in order to achieve it.

Funnily enough, I really enjoy that discipline. It keeps me on my toes. And you learn for next time, and are (hopefully) able to calculate your fixed-price quote more accurately for the next project.

Self-discipline and perfectionism

The self-discipline required to be a good contractor is pretty high.

I'm a perfectionist, which means that I need every job I do to be the best it can possibly be, and I realised long ago that in order to achieve this I have to accept that I'm probably going to spend longer on a job that some people would. I'm happy with that. I would rather spend my own time bringing a website up to a level of perfection that I'm comfortable with, rather than saving that time and delivering a site that (in my opinion) isn't finished properly. Ugh! I couldn't do that, actually.

Fortunately, my perfectionism also includes a need to deliver on-time - so even though it might have taken me a while longer to get it done to my exacting standards, this doesn't impact on my client - they still get their site on-time and at the original fixed price.

Proving yourself

I think there's also something of a need to "prove yourself" at each new company when you're a contractor.

I get pretty much all my contract work through personal contacts these days, as I find this strategy infinitely more effective than trying to get work via most recruitment agencies.

So you go into a new company knowing maybe one or two people there - but the rest of the employees don't know you from a bar of soap - and you have to prove to them on a daily basis that a) you know what you're doing, b) you don't need much help from them, and c) you're worth the money.

To me, this means working with 150% effort the whole time - and also being infinitely flexible. I'm there make everyone else's job easier, which means when they say "jump", I really do have to ask "how high?"

The client always comes first

Ultimately, whatever work you're doing, and whoever you're doing it for, it's vitally important as a contractor to remember the simple rule: The Client Always Comes First.

There's a certain level of comfort associated with having a permanent position at a company. You've already proven your worth - demonstrated by the fact that they wanted you around enough to give you the job in the first place, and over time you've shown them that they made the right decision.

You know the ropes, everyone knows you, you have your comfort zone of your own desk all nicely set up just how you like it - and you know the way things work around here. I do think it's possible (perhaps likely, even) to get a bit complacent if you've been in a job for a while. It's possible (likely, even) that after a while you can slip a little - from 100% effort every day down to maybe 99%, or even (shocking, I know!) down to 98%.

Every once in a while one of your colleagues has a big night out and they don't turn up for work the next day - but they don't get fired for it - and you know that if you decided to have a "mental health day" you would get away with it too.

It's not like that when you're a contractor. Not at all. You have a responsibility to get the job done when you said it would be done, and that's that. No time off if you're sick - you simply can't afford to get sick. If you don't work, you don't get paid, simple as that.

Occasionally you might have to pull an all-nighter in order to get everything done in time - and if that's what it takes, that's what you have to do. You also have to be available at a moment's notice when a client needs something done in a hurry - and the work hours can sometimes be unconventional, to say the least.

Here's a perfect example. It's 4.30pm on a Saturday afternoon, and I just got an email from a client with feedback on some work I did yesterday. I'm going to have to stop blogging for a bit and make the changes they need...

*Pause*

OK, back again...

Because of this constantly having to prove yourself thing, you have to be on your toes, on the ball, giving it everything you're got, all the time. And that means knowing that The Client Always Comes First.

Recently while working on a project I realised that one of the days in my schedule was actually a public holiday. The day came and went, and I worked on the project at home. No time for time off!

I also realised after I had done my timeline and quote that the last two days of the project were the two days of Webstock. Aaargh! I REALLY wanted to go to Webstock - it's the best conference ever! I worked like a crazy person to get everything done in time, so that I would be able to go.

For various reasons that didn't work out, and I had to make the sorrowful decision that I wouldn't be attending this year. The project took precedence, as it always must. And honestly - if I'd gone to Webstock instead of finishing the project properly, I would have been stressed out to the max, and I wouldn't have enjoyed it anyway, so there you are.

Variety

It's interesting how many times you're asked to do something completely different from the job you're there to do.

For example, I've just finished a month at DNA building a massive set of templates for a major commercial client's website. Big project, tight timeline, high levels of jQuery required (which I had to figure out as I went along). I loved every minute of it. And a couple of times they needed someone that minute to do updates on another major commercial client's website because it had to go live the next day and the client needed a last-minute bunch of alts doing.

So you get thrown in at the deep end and have to make those alts instantly on this new website you know nothing about. Awesome! That's pretty cool because there's a level of trust implied in that request. Asking me to work on a completely different website than the one I'm building says to me that they trusted me enough by that point to know that I could do it.

Another example. I'm doing ongoing contract work at Optimation, which is a development rather than a design company. I love working there - the people are awesome (and very, very bright!) and the work is interesting. And quite varied. I'm their HTML/CSS expert - everyone else is a .net programmer, and I haven't really got a clue what they do or how they do it. They see CSS as a "dark art", and I see their skills in a pretty similar light. We work well together.

So I go in there one day to do some HTML/CSS stuff on one of the big online apps they're building, and instead I'm asked to spend the day doing a re-skin design of one of their products, so that they can show a potential client just how flexible this product is. Cool!

I'm really enjoying the level of flexibility and sheer range of skills I need to demonstrate as a contractor. Check out this comparison between what I did at my last job, and what I've been doing recently:

As an employee

• HTML/CSS and jQuery, building approx 25 websites in three years


• The occasional bit of Information Architecture input if required


• The occasional bit of design development if required

As a contractor/freelancer

• Badger Communications: building and adapting a range of Flash advertising banners in a variety of shapes and sizes for a variety of countries and products


• Bamford: project management, information architecture and site schematics for a new site for one of New Zealand's leading medical supply companies. Also site design, site build (HTML/CSS), creating dynamic functionality via jQuery and facilitating CMS integration for my programming partner, Tom St George


• DNA: XHTML/CSS and jQuery build for a large commercial client, where the technical requirements were as high as anything I've ever done before


• DNA: urgent HTML/CSS work (client alts) on a website I knew nothing about in order to get it live ASAP


• Optimation: HTML/CSS consultant/expert for a coding company that builds online applications in .net


• Optimation: Re-doing the design of an online app (showing that it could be re-skinned) for use in a pitch to a potential client


• Origin Design: HTML/CSS build on a couple of CMS-based websites, where the range and number of templates was far smaller than either Tom or I were used to. An interesting exercise in achieving a great deal with a minimal number of templates


• Round Peg: HTML/CSS build on a highly graphical website designed by an old-school graphic artist who really cares about type line length, letter spacing, and all those beautiful print-based elements that HTML does really badly.

Feast or famine

They say that contract work is always "feast or famine" - that there's either not enough work, or too much - and I've certainly found that to be the case.

Over the past three months I've sometimes worked two jobs at the same time - spending the day working for one client and the evenings and weekends working for another. It's not that hard to do - when you don't have any other responsibilities, that is - but I wouldn't want to do it for extended periods of time. Even I - who love my job to bits and wouldn't give it up even if I won Lotto - need some time-out sometimes.

When there's "feast", you have to accept as much work as you can handle, and then lock the door on the rest of your life and just do it. You'll notice I haven't blogged very much at all over the past couple of months, and that's why. I've been in feast mode. I figure there will certainly be periods of famine in the future - and so I have to take on as much work as possible when it's available, to tide me over during the times when there's no work.

At the same time, you have to know when to say "no". It's very important to know your limitations and stick to them - otherwise you're going to end up doing a half-assed job for all your clients and that's Not Good. For example, when I was working on the DNA project I accepted no other work at all, because the amount of effort and stress levels were high enough anyway - and I needed to concentrate my whole being on getting that job done on-time, and to as high a standard as possible.

Right now (as you will have figured out from the fact that I'm blogging again) I have some work on - but not enough to keep me occupied 24/7. I'm going to need to get out there and start hustling again.

Ask The Universe - and put in the hard yards

I'm a great believer that The Universe Will Provide - but I do accept that this belief comes with some provisos. At the moment I'm doing quite a lot of Asking - and more often than not The Universe comes through for me - but it wouldn't work if I just sat on my ass and hoped something good will happen.

That's where hustling comes in.

My first priority when I'm not working full-time is to keep my online portfolio website up-to-date. That way, if a potential job does come through unexpectedly, I can send people over to my website, confident that all my work is being displayed, and there are no dead or "since-been-redeveloped" links showing. With 130+ case-studies on my site, it's important to keep up with that.

I try to keep my ear to the ground at all times, looking for the next work opportunity - but I have to say that recently most of my work has come in unexpectedly (thanks, Universe!), through friends and contacts in the industry. I guess that's a pretty strong indication that I've been around a while...

However, when the serendipitous call doesn't come through, you have to get out there and make it happen.

Next week, in between bits of work, I plan to get my CV out there to a bunch of web design companies I haven't contacted yet. I have friends who already work at some of them, which will be handy for getting inside info on whom I should speak to - and where I don't already have a contact, this is the time to call up and make one. It's not one of my favourite pastimes - I don't think anyone really likes cold-calling very much - but it has to be done. The Universe can't Provide in places where no-one knows your name.

Absolute freedom - and no freedom at all

You might think that life as a contractor would be fab, in that you have absolute freedom to do what you want, when you want. In some ways I suppose that's true - in theory you could say yes or no to any project that comes along - and in theory you could also probably set your own timelines and work hours.

BUT.

That presupposes that you're always in a full-on feast environment - which is generally not the case. In order to be able to call the shots to that extent, you'd have to be in a feast where you had so much extra potential work that you could pick and choose - and in my experience that happens only rarely. I should probably be a programmer or something - then maybe that would happen on a regular basis :)

It also presupposes that clients are going to be cool with you setting your own timelines and messing them around if you feel like it. And in my experience that's not the case at all. If you deliver a great product on-budget when you said you would, if you make yourself available whenever they need you (as much as you can, anyway), if you work hard for them and always do your best - they might just ask you back again. If you don't - well, they might just call someone else next time.

I guess it's true that you could decide in advance to have 6 weeks (or 6 months) off to go overseas or have a nice long break or whatever. You wouldn't have to ask anyone's permission like you would if you were an employee - you'd just tell all your clients that you won't be available for that period of time. Easy.

The downside of course is that, as I mentioned earlier, if you don't work, you don't get paid. So any calculation of your holiday expenses has to include the amount of $$ you would have earned if you'd been working. Ouch!

Being organised

I mentioned being organised right at the beginning of this piece, and in some ways it's one of the most important aspects of being a contractor. If you're not organised, important stuff is going to fall through the cracks and get lost.

The first thing I keep with me at all times is my diary. I'd be seriously lost without it. Whenever I do any contract or freelance work I record a very detailed timesheet in my diary, and I provide a copy of it whenever I submit an invoice.

Most people don't actually ask for this, but I figure it's a useful additional service I can provide. Clients use timesheets to help them cost similar jobs in the future, and I think it also provides an extra layer of trust within the client/contractor relationship. When I'm asking for a wodge of $$ for a job I've just done, I think it's reassuring for the client to be able to see exactly what I did, and how long it took.

If I've over-quoted for a job and it takes less time than I thought it would, I only ever charge for the actual amount of time I spent, so again it's important to show that to the client in the form of a timesheet and reconfigured invoice. Clients like it when you come in under budget!

It's also an extremely valuable resource for me when I'm costing new work. When I work to a fixed-price quote and it takes longer than I quoted, I don't charge any extra for that extra work (assuming that the client didn't make changes halfway through) - so it's important that I continually improve my accuracy in this area.

My diary's also very useful when it comes to invoicing, because I can go through page by page to ensure that I've charged all my clients for all my work. When you're working for a number of different clients on a number of different jobs it's easy to forget to invoice someone, and that would never do!

In addition to my diary, I have a set of monthly calendars, drawn out on large pieces of art paper. This is my forward-planning device. I have a pile of squares of blank paper, each of which fits neatly over one day on the calendar. When I've got work coming up I blu-tak a square on top of the appropriate date, and write the client's name on it. Using blu-tak means that when the client changes their mind and the dates shift (as they often do), I can simply move the paper square to the new date.

Once a day's work is done I refer to my diary and calculate the number of hours and the amount earned. I pencil this in on the calendar itself. At the end of each week I tot up the total amount earned for that week, and at the end of every month I do the same.

I have a target in mind for each week and each month, which at the end of the year will provide me with the same amount I was earning as an employee, taking into account the fact that you get no sick pay and no holiday pay as a contractor. I'm hoping I'll achieve it. We shall see.

In conclusion - do I like being a contractor and freelancer?

Hell yes!

Of course there are many things about being a permanent employee that I miss. I miss my desk. I miss my friends at work. I miss being a permanent part of a team. I miss the comfort that comes from knowing what you're going to be doing tomorrow, and from knowing that you'll be able to pay the mortgage this month.

But ultimately I think it was really good for me to be forcibly ejected from my comfort zone. I had become a little too settled, a bit too set in my ways and somewhat unadventurous.

Being out again in the cold harsh world of contracting is a GREAT discipline for me. I always did love doing the best job I can possibly do, and that's virtually mandatory when you're a contractor. I love learning new things. I love revisiting old skills that have gone a bit rusty and polishing them up again. I love the variety that comes with doing contract work, and the question in my mind of "Shall I go for this contract? Do I think I could stretch my abilities in order to do it?"

It's very interesting working for a variety of masters. Unlike the single permanent employer, each of my contract clients sees me in a different way, depending on what their needs are. I do different work for all of them, and so, unlike in a permanent position, I'm unlikely to be pigeonholed into doing the same thing all the time.

I have an interesting life. I don't have kids, so I have the freedom to focus a lot more of my energies on the work I do. We all need meaning and purpose in our lives, and for me a lot of that comes through my work. Being a contractor intensifies that purpose in some ways. You have to focus on earning enough to survive, and with that comes working as hard as you can, and producing the best product possible all the time so that clients will ask you back.

I don't particularly like change, and I don't go out of my way to make it happen, but when it's thrust upon me I can rise to the challenge and do well. It's important for me to remember that when I'm happily stuck in my comfort zone.

You never really know what's going to happen in the future. Nothing is permanent, not even a permanent job - and in these tough economic times that's going to be the case for more and more people. It's good to know that losing your job isn't the end of the world - it's simply the start of a new one.

PostScript

I would be lying if I said that I didn't write this knowing that it might be read by a potential new client. That would be silly. So if you are looking for a contractor, or you're looking for a small company to design and build you a new website, and you like what you've read, please get in touch.

You can find all my contact details (together with a detailed summary of my past 12 years in the web industry) on my portfolio website. Thanks for reading!


Technorati tags: work, redundancy, contract, freelance, contractor, freelancer, web design, web development, HTML, CSS, jQuery, find a new job, get contract work, how to be a contractor, positive thinking, self-discipline, WebWeaver's World, webweaver

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My cupboard is bare

With my Shift going-away present (a book token - brilliant!) I bought Jamie Oliver's new book Jamie's Ministry of Food.

I'm useless at cooking. I just don't do it. My diet is utterly crap - I can go for well over a day without eating anything - and I'm quite capable of living on nothing but coffee and cigarettes. Most of the time I eat one meal a day - either by buying sushi for lunch, or making myself a chunky salad drowned in mayonnaise in the evening. But sometimes I have nothing at all.

I can't be bothered cooking for one, so most of the time I don't. Then there's the mission of having to go to the supermarket and buy stuff - and actually having a plan for what I want to cook (which I never have!).

Plus I have issues with food.

My earliest datable memory is when my sister was born. I was two and a half. She was born at home, so I was dispatched to the neighbour's house for the day. I remember they gave me stew to eat, which I totally didn't want at all. I guess they must have forced me to eat it because I remember being sick afterwards. Welcome to the world, baby sister!

I wouldn't eat meat. I hated the taste, the texture, the smell. At some point I realised that meat was actually DEAD ANIMALS, and that sealed the deal for me. No way was I going to eat that stuff! I couldn't even go into the butcher's shop with my mum because it smelled so bad.

Problem was, as far as I knew, I was the only vegetarian in the entire world, and no-one knew how to deal with my bizarre eating requirements.

Every single day at school for four years I was tortured by the dinner ladies because I wouldn't eat my dinner. Everyone sitting at my table would have to wait until I finished before they were allowed out to play. And as I couldn't finish it because I couldn't eat the meat, they missed their playtime - every single day. It was awful.

Finally when I was eight years old my mum acknowledged that I was indeed a vegetarian, and she had a chat with the headmaster. From that day onwards every dinnertime I was given a HUGE block of cheese wrapped in greaseproof paper to go with my veggies. I used to share it with everyone else at my table 'cos there was so much of it.

I was an extremely picky eater. I think I withheld food from myself because it was one of the few things in my life over which I had some level of control. I think I've continued that pattern of behaviour ever since. Which is a bit silly really, as I have control over all areas of my life these days :)

So - fast-forward to today, and my entirely unexpected purchase of a cookery book.

Not sure why I did it, except that I'd quite like to improve my diet, while at the same time trying to save money (or not spend much!). I know the years of under-eating must be taking their toll on me, and I think it's about time I sorted myself out.

Plus this whole contractor thing seems to have kick-started me in a whole bunch of different ways, and I'm stepping outside my comfort zone all over the place. Cool!

Jamie's book starts off by listing all the kitchen implements you need, and then there's another massive list of all the staple items you should have in your larder, most of which I didn't have. I'm a perfectionist, so I really wanted to do everything exactly right and have everything in place before I started. So I didn't start 'cos I didn't have everything.

A couple of weeks ago I stopped procrastinating because I didn't have all the right ingredients, and I decided to try out the simplest recipe in the book - spaghetti with tomato sauce.

Disaster!

No basil. No garlic. No chillies. An old tin of tomatoes and some old spaghetti. When I opened the tin it made a weird gas-escaping noise, but I had a quick taste and it seemed OK, so I carried on.

The recipe said chopped tomatoes, but chopping them up ended up releasing so much juice that it overflowed the chopping board and spread out across the bench. And then I spilled half the juice transferring it into the pot. Because I had no garlic, basil, or chillies I just heated up the olive oil and bunged the tomatoes in. Not a good plan.

Once the spaghetti was cooked I mixed in the oily cooked tomatoes, a bit of sweetcorn, and topped it with some old cheese. Yum yum. Not.

It was completely gross. Like, so bad I couldn't eat it. I'm pretty sure the tin of tomatoes was off for a start, and really, when there are so few ingredients it is rather imperative that you don't leave any out.

Back to the drawing board.

The root of my problems was a) using crappy old years-past-their-sell-by-date ingredients and b) not having all the ingredients I needed.

Time for a complete overhaul of the larder!

I threw out EVERYTHING.

My larder's always been pretty well-stocked - "I'll be OK if we have an earthquake", I used to think. Except of course I wouldn't, because it was all old and crappy and entirely inedible. The flour and cereal was absolutely infested with flour beetles and utterly unusable. If one tin of tomatoes was off, then all the others were probably off too, so they all had to go. As I cleared and cleaned I got more and more ruthless. This was quite difficult to do at first, because I hate waste, but really, none of the stuff was safe to eat anyway, so I ended up chucking it all out. What a feeling of relief and release!

Next was the issue of where do I put all the stuff I throw out. In the bin? But it's too heavy! Bags of old flour and everything else weighs so much I'd need heaps of bin bags. So I decide to get rid of as much as I can down the waste disposal. Great plan!

Only not. After the fifth packet of old crackers went down the waste disposal sink there was a gurgling, grinding noise - and suddenly there was liquid cracker goop coming up through the plughole of the other sink.

Disaster! Call Marcus the emergency plumber!

I do love Marcus. He's wonderful - and because he's an on-call-all-of-the-time kind of a dude, you can have a waste disposal emergency at 8.30 at night and he'll be there within half an hour.

He got me to pull out all the stuff from the cupboard under the sink (good excuse to give it a bit of a clean) and then he got down to work. It was pretty gross really - the cracker goop looked pretty much like vomit, and we had to use a couple of old (never to be used again) towels to mop up all of the goo that ended up on the cupboard floor. Poor Marcus!

Anyway, he fixed it - so after giving the whole cupboard another clean I put everything back and decided to put the rest of the old food in bin bags and get rid of them the traditional way. I think it took three or four bags in the end. And I still have a shelf full of old tins to get rid of gradually over the next few weeks. Ah well.

Since I started writing this blog post (hence the title) things have moved on apace, so...

On to the new food. I didn't feel like lugging a dozen heavy bags of staple items up the path to my house, so I did the supremely lazy thing and ordered all the food on the list from Woolworths online store. I love that website. It has the crappiest nav ever - but you can order a ton of stuff and they deliver it all to your door the next day. Awesome!

The next day I spent a happy few hours decanting every single thing into glass jars and labelling them all. No more flour beetles in my house! [And do you know, it seems to have worked? From being virtually infested with the damned things a few weeks ago when I started writing this post, my house is now pretty much bug-free. Hooray!]

My first attempt at actually properly following one of the recipes in Jamie's book was a second go at the spaghetti with tomato sauce. And it was LOVELY! Oh wow! I cooked something other than salad and baked potatoes! Go me!

I think it's all the fresh basil leaves he gets you to include - I now have a pot of basil growing on my window-sill - and the garlic and the olives and the parmesan and, and... yes I know, it was pretty dumb to try and cook it without 90% of the ingredients the first time, but there you go.

For my next trick I decided to go for something a little more adventurous, and settled on salmon and pesto with french beans, cooked in a foil parcel and served with organic new potatoes. Lordy lordy, aren't we posh?

And ohmygod it was absolutely awesome! Like, seriously good, and healthy, and filling, and just completely yummy! Hey this is cool! I could invite someone round to dinner now and actually have something really good I could cook for them! It's a revelation! I was so completely proud of myself I had to do a Snoopy Happy Dance round the kitchen in celebration.

Since then I've cooked both the spaghetti and the salmon recipes a few more times, and been really pleased with the results each time. I've also tried my hand at prawns and avocado with Marie Rose sauce (which is also yummy).

And I even did some baking. Crikey!

There is one thing I know how to bake, and that's melting moments with jam and butter cream filling. Delicious! So at 10 o'clock one night I settled in for a bit of baking therapy. I was through the cream-butter-and-icing-sugar stage, and had measured out the flour ready to add it to the mixture. Now for the cornflour.

Oh.

I have about a tablespoonful of cornflour left in the jar and it requires two cupfulls. Doh! How did I not get more cornflour during the Big Shop?

I leap into my car and go tearing off around the neighbourhood looking for a cornflour merchant at 10.15 at night, but sadly the local dairy is closed, so's the nearby supermarket, and the local petrol station has custard powder and baking powder but no cornflour. Darn it!

I decide I can't be arsed going to all the way into town on a Friday night just for cornflour, so I go back home and put what I've made so far into the fridge.

The following day having obtained the necessary packet of Edmonds cornflour from the dairy (well you have to use Edmonds, don't you? After all I was using the Edmonds cookbook for the melting moments recipe, so it's only right and proper, eh? Plus the packet design is just fab), and after leaving the butter-and-sugar mixture out on the bench all afternoon to let it soften, I was finally able to finish my little baking project and - oh my lord - are they good or what? I eat one a day and they've lasted me a couple of weeks so far - and they get better over time, too!

A couple of very interesting things I've noticed since I started this whole cooking lark:

Firstly, it's made me want to go to the big supermarket in town so I have a big choice of nice fresh ingredients - and it's made me want to go on a regular basis so I don't run out of stuff. I hate battling with the crowds in the supermarket - I like to wander around peacefully - and I have discovered that 7pm seems like a good time to go. You still get fresh bread and stuff without the millions of people glaring at you when you pause at a shelf to consider an item in more detail.

A result of this (and I'm thinking it's the combination of the bigger supermarket and the slightly altered shopping list) is the realisation that buying ingredients is MASSIVELY cheaper than getting ready-made or ready-mixed stuff.

Now I certainly wasn't ever a ready-meals kind of a girl (ugh!), but I have been known to buy a packet of dessicated pasta or rice mixed with other dessicated stuff which you add milk and butter to, stir in a pan for eight minutes and glop onto your plate and eat without tasting it...

Not any more. I just don't feel the need to, now I know I can cook much lovelier food from scratch. And the result, I have found, is that even when you buy yourself a nice bit of salmon and a whole big packet of frozen prawns as well as all your fresh ingredients - it's still a whole lot cheaper than if you included the dreaded dessicated packets and a jar of crappy pasta sauce.

And did you know that if you buy a piece of salmon with the bones still in, it costs over a dollar a kilo less than if they take the bones out for you? And that if you get a bit near the tail it doesn't have bones in anyway? And that you can easily remove the bones using a handy pair of pliers from your toolbox? Heh heh. Kewl!

The second thing I've noticed is that being able to cook stuff has given me an added incentive to eat a bit better all the time. Like, I'm actually thinking about having a snack during the day as well as an evening meal - and I'm having the evening meal as well! Amazing!

AND I've lost weight! In a good way. Even though I'm eating more. In my bid to save money I've stopped buying and therefore eating most of my treats like chocolate and heaps of biscuits, and it's made a real difference. I had to put a belt on my jeans the other day cos they kept on falling down when I ran for the bus.

So yeah. Go Jamie, and go the Ministry of Food. If it can get a completely non-cook like myself interested in cooking - and actually succeeding in my culinary endeavours (eventually!) then that's a really good thing. I'm not sure about the Pass It On aspect of the whole movement - only because I'm pretty sure all my friends can cook anyway - but I'm certainly thinking more positively about inviting people over for dinner once in a while. Hooray! Thanks, dude!

Technorati tags: Jamie's Ministry of Food, Ministry of Food, Jamie Oliver, cooking, cookery, anyone can learn to cook, book review, improving your diet, food, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.

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Eulogy for my job

A couple of weeks ago I lost my job. (Don't tell my mum, she'll freak out!)

I've had my dream job at the best web design company in New Zealand for three years now. And December 31 will be my last day. Except that, as we break up for the Christmas holidays on December 19, that day will be my last. It's only a week away now. One more week of working with the best group of people you could ever hope to meet. One more week at the best job ever. One more week hanging out with folk I see as family. One more week.

Ironically enough, I saw it coming when many others didn't. It started small. The cancellation of the annual hui. The slow move from nice expensive chocolate biscuits in the kitchen to crappy cheap ones that no-one likes. A progressively smaller selection of eats at Friday night drinks. The automatic response of "sure you can" is somehow not forthcoming when you ask about going to next year's Webstock. And of course there's the workload. Because that's what it's all about in the end, isn't it?

You sit there at your desk for a couple of days thinking "Uh oh! I have no work to do today..." So you do all your filing. And then you sort all your emails into the 'completed by job' folders you set up ages ago and never seemed to have the time to fill before. And then you twiddle your thumbs a bit and make the next task last a bit longer by taking a few extra cigarette breaks and making yourself a fresh cup of coffee every 10 minutes. And then you finish that and twiddle your thumbs some more while doing online research into the latest developments and innovations in web design to keep yourself busy.

And you know.

You know the inevitable is coming.

There are three reasons why I didn't jump ship when I saw the water rising three months ago.

Firstly because I was pretty much in denial - or at least, the decision-making part of my brain was in denial. The logical behavioural scientist "I have seen this pattern before. In my experience A + B = C. I see that A + B are in place, therefore I believe C is likely to happen again" could see it all quite clearly. But the logical dude in my brain got overruled by the "I have my fingers in my ears! Lalalala I can't hear youuuuuuu" dude. *sigh*

Secondly I really really hoped it wouldn't be me. Because of course if it were me making the decisions, I wouldn't have picked me. Duh. That is so obvious on about 5 different levels of obviousness :)

And thirdly because I really really love my job and I really really love the company I work for and I really really love the people I work with. And how can you just leave all that behind on a hunch?

So I didn't leave. And now I have to leave anyway.

Redundancy sucks.

It makes you feel like such a... loser. Even though you tell yourself (and everyone else tells you) that it's not personal, it kindof is really, isn't it? I mean, someone picked you and not the other guy, didn't they?

[UPDATED 15/12/08: I want to be clear here - I mean the random other guy in any situation like this - because my "other guy" absolutely ROCKS and I love him dearly - Dom - you totally rule and I only wish I could carry on working alongside you. You're an inspiration.]

But you know what? Thinking like a loser isn't going to get me anywhere. It really isn't. I have to pick myself up, dust myself off... and at the risk of sounding like a 1930s Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie - I need to start all over again.

I need to look at my strengths - and acknowledge my weaknesses. I need to figure out how to eliminate those weaknesses and diversify. My jQuery could be better - although I'm learning fast, and I write my own stuff rather than borrowing it all from elsewhere - it's the best way to learn. I know I'm shit-hot at HTML and CSS - but maybe I've been resting on my laurels for a bit too long. If I need to teach myself PHP next, then that's what I'll do.

Working in the web industry has always been like that, and it's something I've always valued. When I started designing and building websites way back in 1996 there were virtually no courses you could do beyond a brief introduction to HTML. I did that intro course and raced through the exercises ahead of the teacher as I realised this was something that really really appealed to me - and which I might just be really good at...

But after that, you were pretty much on your own. So we 'Viewed source' like crazy and figured it out by ourselves. "How did they do that?" we'd wonder - and then we'd go look at the code and work out how to do it.

It was still the same three years ago when I got my break at my dream web design company. At the time it seemed like everyone else was beginning to grapple with pure CSS, and I was still building tables-based websites. I had an initial interview for a contract job which went OK, but I knew that I really had no idea what I was talking about, and that my CSS skills weren't up to their requirements. I went away feeling really bummed out, and assumed that I'd completely blown my one and only chance with them - but a couple of weeks later I got a call asking if I'd be available for another contract interview in three weeks' time.

I spent those three weeks teaching myself pure CSS, and rebuilt my own website as a pure CSS site, instead of the old table-based layout. At the interview I showed them what I'd achieved - and I got the contract. I was in!!!

Brian - thank you for being my mentor on that first project. The learning curve was so steep it was pretty much an inverse slope, but you were endlessly patient with me, and helped me out so much - I can never thank you enough. The best piece of advice you gave me? "Stick border: 1px solid red; around it and see what's going on". I still use that technique today. Thanks dude.

The company that Selwyn lovingly created, and the family he first brought together whenever-it-was is still going strong, but it's a tough world out there at the moment. The economy's crapped out, no-one's spending money, all government work has been on hold for pretty much the whole year. It only takes a couple of delayed contracts and all of a sudden the tightrope you're walking between sufficient work / sufficient people turns into not enough work / too many people, and you have to let some of them go.

My fellow adventurers - Sue, Rosie and Rene - have been awesome. We've gone through the stages of grief together (albeit at different speeds).

I got through Denial pretty quickly - probably because that was the state I was in before it happened. At our initial meeting I lost the plot completely, sobbed all the way through and had what I can only describe as an attack of the vapours as I freaked out at the possibility of losing my house.

I had moved into Anger by the end of the meeting (the rubbish bin will never be the same again!) and then I spent a week in Bargaining, as I tried to figure out ways to persuade them to keep me on. Fortunately I managed to stamp out the tiny flickering flames of hope in my soul before they delivered their final verdict on our collective fates, and then I began to move towards Acceptance, via the occasional detour into Sadness.

Actually sadness has appeared and disappeared throughout the whole process - I cried at the drop of a hat during the first few days, and it's been a pretty strong force again over the last couple of days. Rene went back to Germany yesterday and I had a little weep as I hugged him goodbye, which caught me rather by surprise.

And today - well, I really wasn't looking forward to today.

We had our Christmas party this evening - and farewell drinks had been arranged for us beforehand. It was something I'd really wanted - I wanted to say thank you to everyone and acknowledge their kindness over the past 19 days, and I wasn't averse to the four of us receiving a public thank you for all our hard work either. But when it came to it, I was really scared I was just going to break down and cry all over the place, and I really didn't want to do that. I wanted to get through my speech, dammit!

Well you know what? It wasn't quite as bad as I had feared. Viv said some lovely things about all of us, and then Rosie did a very jolly and upbeat speech which had everyone smiling. And then it was my turn. I got a bit wobbly in the middle, but I managed to say everything I'd wanted to say without completely losing it. Hooray!

Last but not least came Sue, and she did us proud by tearing up pretty much as soon as she began, and then crying all the way through what she was trying to say. And you know what? That was really fucking cool, because it shows without any artifice how we're all feeling right now.

Because we all love our jobs, and we love our workmates, and we love the company and everything it stands for. We love the level of excellence that we collectively strive for every day. We love what we create as a team. We love hanging out together, and working together, and laughing at and with each other. And we especially love the celebration of intellect and inspiration that the company has always encouraged, and which I hope it will always continue to value and develop.

Anita, April, Bindy, Brendan, Brian, Dom, Franc, Frances, Hayden, Jen, Jonny, Jozef, Laura, Matt, Megan, Nikki, Peti, Selwyn, Sophie M, Sophie S, Thomas, Tone, Viv and Woody - YOU ALL ROCK!

I know the last couple of weeks haven't been easy on you either, and I just want to let you know how much I appreciate your support and kindness. I know it's pretty much impossible to know what to say in these kinds of situations, so thank you all for making the effort to say something, or email me a note, or give me a hug. It really means a lot.

Auckland dudes - sorry we didn't get to meet up this year - I was looking forward to the madness. Hope you all get to go next year instead. Thanks for all the FunStuff - and especially to Marshall and Andrew Z - your comments crack me up on a daily basis. I'll miss you.

Sue and I were discussing how to avoid using the dreaded "R" word in job applications. It's so depressing. We eventually came up with "Due to the economic squeeze, the company is downsizing and I am looking for new challenges" - which made us laugh but which we both rather liked. So much more up-beat.

I'm no longer going on my Obama Inauguration trip to DC in January, which totally sucks, but Sue and I are having an inauguration party at my house instead. We're planning to wear our warmest clothes, we'll open all the windows and hope it's a cold day, and we're going to huddle together in the middle of the living room and pretend we're in the middle of a crush of 4-5 million people while we watch it all on TV instead. Lady pee bottles at the ready!

It sucks to be looking for a job at this time of year, and especially this particular year. But hey - I have asked the Universe to provide, and because I believe it always will, it is already beginning to do so.

Tom and I have a number of leads for contract work early in the New Year, and I'm confident that at least some of them will pan out. I'm also hopeful that in a few month's time we might even be able to do some work back at the old dream company. You never know!

So here's my pitch. I guess you knew that was coming, right?

I've been designing and building websites for the past 12 years. During that time I've worked on virtually every aspect of the web design process from scoping, IA and wireframing through design to HTML/CSS, JavaScript and preparing sites for integration into a range of CMSs. I'm highly motivated, logical, creative, focused and determined. I give 110% to everything I do (I'm a perfectionist) and I love my job as much today as I first did 12 years ago. Every day I wake up happy to go to work because, to me, it's the best job in the world.

I have kick-ass HTML/XHTML and CSS skills and have never yet met a design I couldn't build. I know usability, accessibilty and e-govt guidelines inside and out, and believe that every website should be accessible to everyone - so that's how I build them. I validate and test my websites across a wide range of browsers, and build pixel-perfect renditions of the original design, whatever the browser. I'm the best bug-fixer I know, Holly and Big John are my heroes and I am proud to write my blog in a template designed and built by Doug Bowman.

If you are looking for an awesome contractor to do front-end HTML/CSS development for you, I'm your girl.

If you want someone who's at the top of their game with PHP as well, Tom St George and I can offer you a two-for-one deal. I do the HTML/CSS build, he does the PHP integration. We've been working together for the past three years and we really know our stuff.

If you want to talk to someone about designing and building you or your company a website, come and talk to us. We've worked on a few in our time (I estimate my total is now somewhere around the 150 mark).

We can work from home, or work at your place, and we're happy to do telecommuting too - wherever you are in the world, we can deliver.

Maybe you'd like to check out my website and see what I can do. I have included case studies on the majority of sites I've worked on over the past 12 years. My contact details are on my site. Here's Tom's online resumé too.

My dream job may be almost over, but I know there are new challenges, new adventures and new great places to work. I just have to find them.

We hope to hear from you soon.


Technorati tags: redundancy, jobs, web design, web development, HTML, CSS, PHP, CMS, work, I love my job, New Zealand, economic crisis, economy, WebWeaver's World, webweaver

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