Mark & Mandy

This post is a little late… Last weekend we brought my mom down from Montana to spend the weekend with us. We spent Saturday morning golfing at Indian Peaks – it was a beautiful day, about 72 degrees with a slight breeze. Josh and I showed up without sunscreen – somehow mark helped remind my mom, but not me. We were screwed, but didn’t realize it until later that night. I have quite a farmers tan that I will be working to correct.

We play a game called Bingo, Bango, Bongo (I have no idea what it means), but basically each hole you can collect up to 5 points (Longest Drive, First On the Green, Closest to the Pin, Longest Put and overall score). So even if your overall score is poor you can still make some money. Amy met us with Beers on hole 6 (she was out doing yard work). This shot is of my mom on Hole 18 – the money shot – it looks like she is doing some product placement for Corona.

Sunday we had breakfast at the Huckleberry Cafe and then headed to see Poseidon, which was pretty entertaining. We topped our night off with pizza and the last episode of Survivor.

We love you Mom!

I recently went over to the UK on business and took the weekend before to see family and friends. I spent the weekend with Patsy and Anthony and got to hang out with Jonathan and Selena and take a ride in Richmond park as well!

One highlight of the weekend was seeing my old friends from Winchester (we’re known as Wykehamists after the founder William of Wykeham). I haven’t seen most of them since I left school almost 15 years ago, so I was somewhat apprehensive about seeing them all. It turned out that everyone looked much the same and had very much the same sense of humor. So it was one of those nights when you just laughed until your belly hurt!

Between discussing how everyone was doing (4 out of six married, one with 2 kids etc.) and what other people not present were doing, there was much reminiscing about old days and studying and the trouble we got into. My favorite quote of the night (at least for opening up memories that have long been dormant) was regarding our Latin exams that included translating passages from the Aeniad. We ended up memorizing a translation of the relevant passages rather than taking a chance on trying to translate the text directly. But some of the phrasing seemed so much more elegant in latin than english. Case in point: undique oppugnabatur – meaning “being attacked from all sides” (this was the end of the trojan war after all). Yes were were dorks back then too.

It was so refreshing to see everyone is doing well and few are taking conventional routes to success. I was lucky enought to see my Dad and Alison wednesday night before I left as they had just returned from New Zealand by way of Hong Kong. My dad even managed to bring back 4 bottles of wine that we had left in nelson, so those bottles have travelled about three-quarters of the way around the world!

Well I did it, after seven years I decided to leave Mercury. It was a sad day for me yesterday as I headed to the airport after saying good bye (I managed to hold it together until I got to my car).

It has been quite a journey for me… I started as an intern in the Marketing Department (Yay Chris Smith). During this time, Raj put together a Geekend [1] and since all of my roomies were going I went as well. This weekend I worked on a splash tutorial for Solution Express (soon to be Contori) with Chris Morace. After that Chris brought me into R&D as an interface designer.

Through my seven years I got to work with a ton of great developers and I really started to understand (with lots-o-help from Chris and Scott) where I could provide value for a web application. I went through a role naming crisis over the years [2] – Graphic Designer (nope) –> Visual Owner aka V.O. (cute, but maybe too cute?) –> Interaction Designer (Yup, its all the rage!).

Chain Link became Kintana – Kintana was purchased by Mercury – and I continued to work on ITG. I learned a lot… here are a few highlights

1. A picture really is worth a thousand words – when in doubt mock it up!
2. Being nice to people will get you more (Josh and Mark this one is for you) – you don’t know how many additions I got put into the product by asking nicely [3]
3. Validation is the key to making me do anything – I pretty much work for validation (and a paycheck I suppose)
4. Working with friends is hard at times, but it is so worth it, especially if you get to have beers after work
5. There are some crazy talented people out there – I was privileged to work with them
6. There is no better way to bond than over a few beers!

So what’s next for me?
Well I am going to be working part time for JotSpot (its all the rage too!) and then I am going to do some contracting work (for Mercury for a while). I am excited for the move to Jot to be in a smaller company and to have a consumer audience (Good Bye IT!)

Why did I do it?
Many reasons, but really I was hoping for diversity of work and more time to do my Mandy projects. I realized that I needed to actually build time into my schedule instead of trying to work on the weekends – so I now have the best of both worlds.

I won’t miss Mercury the company, but I will miss Mercury the people – I will continue to woo you all to Boulder! So be prepared.

[1]: A Geekend is a weekend where you woo developers to work all day and night by giving them caffeine and snacks (and beer, which is why I went) – it works surprisingly well.

[2]: Don’t all great artists go through this?

[3]: those little smileys in your emails work wonders as well!

I came over to the UK for a business trip and have spent a lovely couple of days with my aunt Patsy and Anthony and Jonathan. But, one thing I don’t miss about England is the weather. Despite promising a few sunny days, yahoo weather now has a more accurate appraisal of the weather. Notice the fine gradations between showers and light rain.