Palegoldenrod

I’ve been working at a pretty cool little web development company called Izilla for about the last 2 years, and today is my last day here for a while. The guys have graciously allowed me to take a six month sabbatical to travel, starting this weekend, and tonight we will all head out for some food and drinks.

I’d like to take the opportunity to do something I haven’t done before - plug Izilla and maybe more importantly, the guys who work there.

At Izilla my position is officially Senior Developer / Analyst but I have been wearing a few hats:

• project manager of a portfolio of web projects - usually new developments or significant enhancements to existing sites, and also long term management of a few maintenance projects
• process review manager - responsible for review of the software development process and for recommending and implementing improvements to the process; reviewing internal development standards and skills;
• managing developer meetings - implement and run regular developer meetings aimed at covering interesting events within the company as well as sharing technical knowledge on solutions implemented, techniques used, advances or improvements in technology, development standards and best practice, training sessions etc
• a few other bits and pieces such as business analysis mentoring, assistance with other projects, product and tool evaluation, input on business service offerings etc

As such I’ve had the opportunity to work with almost everyone at Izilla in some way or other. While I have enjoyed most of my work at Izilla and the various projects I have worked on, I’d like to touch on the most recent site development I have managed since early last year -

SecureNSW - NSW Counter Terrorism Website

The SecureNSW Working Group, made up of members of the NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet and the NSW Police Force engaged Izilla to develop the SecureNSW website - branding / logo design, page design, implement Izilla’s Cognition ECM for content management as well as carry out custom development as required.

I managed the website development project on Izilla’s side, from running the initial workshops in the requirements gathering phase, developing the functional specification, co-ordinating the development, QA and UAT phases and Izilla teams involved as well as the deployment live and ongoing maintenance and enhancements. My core team included:

• Ilona Leibbrandt - account manager
• Matt Thompson - lead developer and deployment manager
• Chris Good - developer
• Llewellyn Robinson - developer
• Amos Robinson - developer
• Mark Davies - site branding and concept designs
• Matt Stow - front end development and design implementation
• Elena Yermakova - quality assurance
• Dean Thompson - content preparation and entry

My team worked well together and produced a sweet final product. I’m proud of what they have done, and in case you stumbled here looking for info on one of these guys, would wholeheartedly recommend any of them!

I’d like to thank the secureNSW working group from the NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet and the NSW Police Force for the opportunity to work on such an interesting project and see it evolve from concept into reality. It was a pleasure working with you, and I hope to see the site grow further in the future! Also thanks to Holly Robertson of the Department of Premier and Cabinet for all her hard work managing the project on DPC’s side.

Izilla - The Team

What can I say? They are cool people, and work well as a team. For those of you who may not know, I can tell you the following about the group at Izilla, especially in the Newcastle Development HQ:

• They care about quality. They take pride in their work.
• They actually develop to web standards and good design principles. I’ve come across some web development shops that don’t seem to care about web standards, accessibility or compatibility with browsers other than Internet Explorer - or they charge more for the “luxury”. Izilla produces accessible, semantic (no table-based layouts here), compliant markup and CSS as a standard. The team wouldn’t want to send anything less out the door - its a matter of pride.
• They have revived the age-old tradition of high-fives. (Nice work, Amos, hahaha)
• They play a wicked Mario Kart during breaks Who has the trophy at the moment guys? Elena? lol
• They get along well together and have a sense of humour. Lunch and a beer at the pub on Thursday is a ritual.
• They know their stuff. Both our design and development department excel at their specialties and are continually improving their skills with enthusiasm. The vibe is good in the office

And if you’re thinking it, no this is not a sales pitch. This is me high-fiving the guys I work with, because they do their job well. And I want everyone to know

I had fun working with you all - thanks for the good times, and Izilla - thanks for the opportunity to pursue my dream of travel. I’ll keep you posted of my adventures and see you in six months!

Carly Lyddiard

In keeping with my plans to keep PGR as useless information only I have decided to shift all my tech and dev related posts over to KleeneCode. All future tech or dev posts will be posted there (I’ll prolly add a list of my recent KC posts to PGR at some point).

This should make you all happy. The sensible people among you will probably want to go and read KleeneCode and not be distracted by my rants. Those who are more interested in entertainment than information can stay here at PGR and enjoy my usual hodgepodge of stuph.

KleeneCode is a collaborative project, founded by Amos and I, aimed at pooling our technical knowledge and maybe the knowledge of a few others in the process. It should be interesting. Well, actually Amos‘ stuph will probably be more interesting because he is far more advanced than I. My posts are more likely to be either at a beginner’s level technically, or dealing with such boring things as business analysis and team management techniques among other things.

I am planning to use PGR as my main travel blog when I leave for South America (yes, three weeks away) and hopefully I can even post regularly for once! So enjoy both KleeneCode and Palegoldenrod as I will endeavour to keep both active.

I bought my ticket last night. I finally forked out for it, and I have my little e-Ticket in my little e-Hands. At 11am on Saturday April 19, I will be leaving Australia bound for the perils and adventures of Santiago de Chile. high five!

Things I have learnt so far, and I haven’t even left yet:

• 3 months is not much time to plan a long trip
• there may be significant savings if you buy straight from the airline rather than via a travel agent (in my case, around a AU$1000 difference for the same flight on the same airline)
• round the world tickets can be a pain in the butt. I was planning on buying one of OneWorld’s 5 continent tickets, and even checked my itinerary on both of their online tools (one checks the number of legs in the right areas and the other checks that a OneWorld carrier can make a flight between those two points). This is not enough - you see, the carrier checker doesn’t tell you if the flight that is available for an airline that is available for your type of ticket. I went through 3 or 4 itineraries before I got sick of it and just bought a simple ticket straight to Santiago.
• vaccinations hurt. I think the Typhoid one was the fun one. d’oh.
• rabies vaccinations are expensive in Australia - 3 needles at about $120 a pop. And if you get bitten, all it does is buy you an extra 24 hours to get to a hospital to get a bunch more injections anyway. hmmm
• the current value of the Australian dollar (against the US dollar) makes it a great time to buy flights! Much of the travel industry is based on US dollar value, so you get more travel for your money at times like these.
• even if you get rid of clutter regularly, you will always, always have too much stuff when it comes time to get rid of it.
• I am terrible at learning languages. errr. Soy no hablo espanol muy bien.

Catch you later, you crazy cats.

I support the OpenSource movement. I think its a great ideal with good intentions and I’d like to see more businesses include OS projects in their activities - either use them, contribute to them, supply them or support them. As a developer I’d love more time to contribute to OS projects - its a way to use my skill to give to the community.

But I am well over of the elitist whiners I seem to keep hearing lately. I’m talking about the developers who are in commercial closed-source (or source-provided) development houses, whinging about how much they wish their company and others (read: the entire world) would just “go open source”.

Well, here’s a dose of reality guys. The business was around before you. It is not owned or run by you. You might not even have much of an interest in the actual product itself. If you haven’t managed to convince your managers to “go open source” then shut up. Seriously.

Either go and work for a company that suits your values, or start your own company, or go on the dole and contribute to OS all day long (so you can convince yourself that you really aren’t bludging off the taxpayer). Just quit bitching while you are earning damn good money from closed-source applications and go enjoy your OS ideals and self satisfaction.

If you go and find a way to supply an equivalent open source product and make a living, you can come back and rub my nose in it. I might even make a contribution. But at least I’d have had some peace while you are working.

Maybe I’m being unreasonable - I do have a headache and am tired from making travel plans and longer commutes to work. All I know is that right now I am sick of the whinging. Show me action, not words.