Hardest Day at Work in a Long Time

As I mentioned back in 2007 I don't blog that much about work, though I see the work label is #20 on the list of labels, so more than I thought?  Yes I've blogged about having a Tough Day at Work before; but that was ironic.

Yesterday I gave notice that I would be leaving Blackboard Collaborate.  I've left companies before, over differences over direction, lack of funding (they stopped paying us), that sort of thing.  None of that applied in this case. 

I love working on a product that enables global education.  While working on it I've met people who are fans of our product from around the world.  I've met people in my corner of Calgary who's daughter uses the product to learn French as part of her home schooling.

As development shop we've embraced an Agile process and are getting better at it. 

We're in the same space as our level 2 support people, so they wander over and ask questions, and we ask questions of them to get an idea of how things are working.

I'm part of dev team with history.  They worked on Multix, they took a young developer out for lunch with a buddy from college and the friend turned out to be James Gosling.  They tell stories about how they nearly got James kicked out of a favorite restaurant on Talk Like a Pirate day.

I love the team I'm on.  We've gone camping, biking and done photography together. 

It's been a amazing place to be and I don't expect to encounter anything like it again.  So announcing that I was leaving was really hard. 

I have a new gig, it fell in my lap, it was too interesting to turn down.  More on that latter.

- Peace

Dieter Rams’ ten principles to “good design”

Good design is innovative
Good design makes a product useful
Good design is aesthetic
Good design helps us to understand a product
Good design is unobtrusive
Good design is honest
Good design is long-lasting
Good design is consequent to the last detail
Good design is concerned with the environment
Good design is as little design as possible

From Good Design is as Little Design as Possible on Yatzer.  Was struck by how much that applies to software design.  Not just to the UI but also to code.

- Peace