What it’s Like to be a Project Manager.
Being a PM is like slaving for weeks on a group term paper, and then accidentally deleting the entire thing.
You get to see a project through from start to finish, influencing nearly every part of it. You get to watch proudly as a mere idea transforms into a great portfolio piece. You put your blood, sweat and tears into content creation and development. You get to work with great people to reach the end product. You get to use your skill of turning studio language into something your clients can wrap their brains around. Sometimes you even get to hand deliver the finished product with a big pretty bow on it.
But when something goes wrong, you’re the person it always makes sense to blame.
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Quality
About Apple’s possible entry into the TV biz:
“We’ve not seen what they’ve done but what we can say is that they don’t have 10,000 people in R&D in the vision category,” [Samsung product manager Chris Moseley] said.
(Because more people working on a project always equals more quality right?)
http://www.macrumors.com/2012/02/14/samsung-underestimating-apples-potential-impact-on-television-market/
Holiday Break!
During the Holidays, we usually take some time off from work to enjoy friends, family and a break from the daily grind. So, our response time might be a little slower than usual until we’re back in the full swing of things on January 3.
If you have an emergency during that time, though, just shoot us an e-mail- we’ll do our best to get you taken care of as quickly as we can.
Happy Holidays!
How You’re Most Valuable.
Wearing many hats can be exhausting. And rewarding, and painstaking, and refreshing. Guess that’s what you get if you have all those hats on…
I’ve given it some thought, though, and I’ve decided how I feel about the whole blending interests and being pretty good at all of them vs focusing on one thing and mastering it conversation.
When it comes down to it, I think being able to do lots of things makes you more valuable. When you’re confidently strong in several areas, is it really necessary to then “master” one of them and forsake the rest? Keep Reading
Help Yourself. Literally.
College didn’t do me a damn bit of good.
That’s not to say I didn’t take advantage of the classes I took, or do my homework, or participate in group discussions… I did. I was actually a relatively good student. But still, here I am doing work that’s directly related to my degree (communications) and I feel like everything I’ve learned has been on the job. That’s right- on the job, not in the classroom.
It makes perfect sense that I feel this way, because it’s the world we live in. We’re a self-taught generation, no professors necessary. We learn from each other’s mistakes, successes, trials and tribulations. No no no, we don’t use self-help to reach our goals, but we are self-taught, and that’s a huge difference.
I’m not the only one who feels this way.
“With the amount of awesome tutorial blogs and design blogs out there, I don’t see any reason for a degree.” – Mike Smith
“I have worked with other programmers with and without degrees. Some were good and some not; having a degree didn’t seem to make any difference as to which pot they fell into.” – Stack Overflow
I think Peter Chang sums it up quite nicely.
“…before I went to college I was self-taught and after college I consider myself to be self-teaching all the time. Learning should never end.”
Let’s Get Critical.
I think it’s time web development had a critical culture. Sure occasionally people pop off on Twitter, but it’s seldom reasoned, or well thought out. It’s a half-dashed sluffed-off thought that nobody, especially the critiqued, can profit from.
I think it would benefit clients and developers alike to see factual discourse on more than just “it looks cool on my monitor.” We should be assessing work on several attributes: design, architecture, copy, interactivity, compatibility, as well as the technical aspects living under the hood.
My hope would be that we can raise the bar for our chosen industry- treating it like the liberal art that it is. Giving credit where credit is due. Pointing out where the critiqued, and we as a whole, can get better. I think the “community” feel of web design is fantastic. But mutual back-pats are not going to elevate our craft to the status that oil painting or even editorial magazine design holds in the history of art.
So who’s ready? Do you have a critical eye, a cutting whit, and impeccable taste? Are you unafraid of being adored by some and loathed by others? Are you the type of person who can love someone dearly yet still tell them that their breath stinks? Then you have a lot of work to do. Public critical analysis of web development is in its infancy, and we all need you to help it grow up.
Small Victories.
A lot goes in to learning something new. There’s not always someone who can show you the ropes- you have to muddle through it yourself. If you’re doing it for the first time, it might be rough, and you might second-guess yourself. It’s truly awesome to know you can constantly get better and smarter, but it ain’t easy.
You’ll probably go wrong a time or two. You’ll probably mutter a few choice words you hope your cube buddy didn’t hear. You’ll might even want to throw your computer right out the window. But you’ll be glad you didn’t. ‘Cause what comes next makes all the frustration worth it.
Victory.
It’s that moment when you know you’ve done it. When you sit back, look at the completed project, and smile stupidly because you’re so dang proud of yourself. You went through hell to get there- and it took twice as long as you hoped, but the end result is right. Now you know, and you can do this new thing you learned over and over.
This thing might be relatively insignificant, and it might be something your co-workers already know how to do… or it could be something cutting edge you can teach those around you.
Small victories are a big deal, so don’t brush them off, or downplay them.