Defining our industry's methodologies, standards, and culture have long been a part of Happy Cog's values.
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Around here, it’s PSSA (Pennsylvania System of School Assessment) season. I hear lots of stories from friends and family about the extremes of testing. Most recently, my brother-in-law demonstrated for us how he is required to respond to student questions during the test. Monotone. Neutral. Dispassionate. Not an easy task for a music teacher.
In early 2014, I resolved to cook more frequently and expand my skills. Putting my years of Food Network and Top Chef knowledge to use, I challenged myself to create dishes outside my sautéed chicken and roasted vegetables repertoire. My mission relied heavily on recipes collected from personal blogs, publications, cooking websites, and cookbooks.
The meeting started 15 minutes ago and all I can think about is how humane cyanide might be at this point in time. If the look in our project team’s eyes are any indication, oh wait, I can’t see their eyes, because they’re rolling back into their heads as the project manager calls everyone’s attention to task 231, WBS ID 2.3.5!
Recently I’ve been privy to several good discussions in the Digital Project Management community around ‘next level’ project management – going beyond tactical proficiency and honing one’s skills around crafting client-team relationships. Tactical proficiency alone does not build a strong project manager (PM)-client relationship.
There’s been a lot of talk recently about experiencing the full internet on the latest and greatest device class, namely our watches. Apple’s exclusion of the Safari web browser on their watch has many people up in arms. “It’s the web” people say, “it should be accessible anywhere,” they scream.
For each development project at Happy Cog, we start with a set of starter files. Much like HTML5 Boilerplate or other similar initiatives, it’s intended to get us going as quick as possible. In that spirit, I’ve been thinking about how to move the needle in that direction as far as possible. The trick is to do so without burdening development with too many constraints and limitations.
In our industry there is pressure to always be posting and sharing our work: full projects, design snippets, writing, photos, tiny thoughts, and conversations. Each of these mediums come with their own degree of expected polish.
This is a question that’s been on my mind since stories about the Associated Press’s robo-journalists started making the rounds again. For those who don’t know, the AP uses an algorithm that translates data into corporate earnings reports, three-hundred word stories or so. They’re composed of short declarative sentences written convincingly enough to appear human-generated.
Yesterday at Happy Cog, Mark, Abby, and I had an intro call with a tech team for a client who will be implementing our templates into their CMS, which, in this case, is ExpressionEngine.
When I joined Happy Cog there were whispers about the elusive holy grail called monthly billing. It was hardly a new concept, but it was new to us. In theory, monthly billing would keep a regimented stream of cash coming in the front doors, and steady cash flow is almost more important to running a business than overall revenue. But we’d never made the move. We structured contracts so that our deliverable-based invoicing occurred at reasonable intervals, but if deadlines shifted, our payments did too.
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