Recently in work

A little over two months ago, I received a surprising email via the contact form of my Learning jQuery web site. In the email Gwendal Tanguy, an employee at Switzerland's only online trading and financial services company, asked:

…apart from reading your book, which is already a good thing, do you know about a company or consultant in Europe that could teach JQuery basis to between 5 and 20 java developers. Maybe do you deliver such a training program?

It sounded like an opportunity too good to pass on to someone else, so I told him that I would be glad to do it myself. Also, knowing that it would be more fun and much more manageable to conduct the training with someone else, I asked Jörn Zaefferer, a brilliant jQuery developer from Cologne, Germany, if he'd like to join me. He agreed, and Swissquote agreed, and the two of us arrived last Wednesday.

It was a good thing Jörn came along. Not only was he able to answer a few of the more difficult questions that eluded me, but the two of us were able to split up the group, which had grown to roughly 35 developers.

The training went very well, with the "students" showing enthusiasm throughout, asking insightful questions and working through the exercises we gave them with great skill.

Since I went with the sole purpose of conducting the training, I didn't really plan on sightseeing or going out at night. I fully expected that Jörn and I would take a taxi or train back to our hotel at the end of each day, maybe grab a quick bite to eat, and go to bed at an early hour. However, I soon realized that things would be quite different when Gwendal took us straight from the airport to an outdoor cafe by Lake Geneva for a beer and then to a restaurant where we met five or six other employees. The next night we went to Lausanne for a traditional Swiss meal of fondue. Bread and cheese for dinner. My kind of meal. At 11:30 when we left the restaurant, five of the guys asked me and Jörn if we wanted to go out to a bar for drinks. Apparently for them the night was still young. We declined

After the training on Friday, Jörn and I walked through the town of Morges, where our hotel was located, and ended up eating at a little restaurant with televisions blasting a soccer game. Switzerland is preparing to host "Euro 2008," the European soccer tournament next week, and the whole country has gone mad with Euro Fever. Despite the noise of the game, we had a nice chat while eating steak cheval. (rough translation: horse meat).

Saturday was a blast. Gwendal and his girlfriend's 15-year-old son, Loïc, picked us up early in the morning, and we headed to the Castle at Chillon, which was built in the 11th Century. We took a fascinating iPod tour of the place which lasted three hours.

Jörn's plane was scheduled to leave Saturday afternoon, so we dropped him off at a train station before heading to a "cafeteria" for lunch and then a cave expedition. The mouth of the cave was halfway up a mountain, but the trek was worth it. After wending our way through the cave's circuitous conduit, we arrived at a waterfall — inside the cave! Loic tried to climb into every crevice he could find.

On Sunday I woke up early to take the train to the Geneva airport and finally arrived home at 8:00 Sunday night. Even the most interesting and fun and rewarding trip could not keep me from missing my family while I was gone. My heart leapt at the sight of them coming towards me in the airport.

One of the more interesting projects that I've had the privilege of being involved in (albeit in the tiniest of ways) at work is the website we put together for Zondervan, a Christian communications and publishing company. They just published a newly repackaged Bible, The Bible in 90 Days, and wanted an online resource for it.

Background

Inspired by Ted Cooper, who six years ago spent 90 days reading the Bible from cover to cover and became a Christian in the process, the Bible in 90 Days project encourages others to do the same by dividing the Bible into 90 12-page sections. The website claims that most people should be able to complete each reading in roughly 45 minutes, but if you're a slow reader like I am, it'll probably take a little over an hour.

The Website

The website provides all of the usual marketing materials that you would expect from such a project, but the cool part of it is the community-based support elements woven into it. There are discussion forums for anyone who is doing the reading or thinking about doing so, as well as inspirational quotes and videos from people who have gone through the process already. The folks at Zondervan clearly recognize that barreling through the Bible in such a short amount of time is a formidable challenge.

But Wait, There's More!

The site's features get even cooler when you register (free) with a user name and password. There is a personal progress tracker that allows you to check off each day's reading as you complete it, along with the full text of each reading so you can do it online if your eyes can withstand the punishment of that much sustained screen time. Registered users can also keep a journal of their progress, writing about their reflections on the passages and reading those of others.

Under the Hood

If you're inclined toward the techy side of things, you might be interested to know that the site was built using Drupal, a powerful open-source content management system that was created mostly by a community of volunteers. The company I work for is fortunate enough to have a Drupal mastermind who has made significant contributions to the program itself and developed a number of plugins for it. He put much (all?) of the guts of the site together, while others provided design assistance. So, what was my tiny role? Mostly to admire it from afar, but I also lent a hand to iron out a couple kinks with the CSS layout.

Well, we thought they would talk about the web site on the channel 13 news program tonight, and the report did show a web page for about four seconds, but the focus of the story was on what Priority Health is doing to drive health care costs down and why generic drugs are such an important part of that.

This afternoon I saw a reporter and a camera operator in our office filming one of the agency's owners. I hear the local Fox station will be doing a report on its Sunday news program. Then again, they migth decide to feature the architecture of the office and focus on its past as a bank. Who knows.

All of this reminds me of an Entertainment Tonight story about Nicole Tieri ("Scooter Girl") that aired a few months ago. After American Idol lavished so much attention on her during her New York audition, Entertainment Tonight sent a film crew out to Grand Rapids. They interviewed one of the managers of Four Friends Coffeehouse, because Nicole used to like to go there. But when they showed the manager talking about Nicole, they identified her as Nicole's "closest friend," even though the two had only met a handful of times. Funny how these things work.

One of the web sites that I helped put together at work is going to be featured on the Channel 13 News (Grand Rapids) HealthBeat segment tonight at 6 o'clock. The report will explain why the site—Priority Health Generic Drugs—is considered "best in class" and describe some of its features.

My small contribution to the site, by the way, was writing some of the content and editing/proofreading it.