Why Not?

I am kind of late with this post, but it looks like I finally have the free time, and energy to get to it. Since January I have been on my second co-op with IBM working on the Jazz Foundation Web UI team. That looks like a mouthful, but it basically means I am helping to develop the tools of the framework that the products implementing a Web UI under the Jazz technology will use.

Since coming on in the middle of January, this job has been a roller coaster of excitement and achievements for me. I cannot say enough how impressed I am with the team I am fortunate enough to work with, I don’t think I have ever been in an environment where so many people I talk to are so passionate and extremely smart with what we are all working on. To sum it up: I love my job. It is really rewarding to be working on projects that many people will be interacting with and using for a good deal of time. This job has involved a lot of Javascript, building Rich UIs, and designing our projects to accommodate enterprise users and many different products and servers interacting with each other. Some really interesting and cutting edge work is being done, and it is amazing to be a part of.

The other half of my time at IBM has been devoted to implementing and designing new pages on the Jazz.net website. This was not one of the original projects I was planning to interact when coming on the team, but it has been a very worthwhile one. Where the Web UI work increases my skills with Javascript and the Dojo toolkit, Jazz.net development has made me comfortable to work with CSS and developing standards-compliant pages that work with IE. See some of my work here and here

Outside of work, it has been amazing to return to Raleigh. It has certainly been different compared to last year, but so is life. Last year, I feel I lived the IBM experience to its fullest, this time though, my goal was to interact and explore the community of Raleigh as much as possible. One of the firs t things I did was attend my first Tweetup. Although it was nerve racking at first to go to my first internet meet up, it greatly fit with my goal of exploring the area. I met people from all walks of life, from artists, to developers, to entrepreneurs. It was an amazing experience that came with some free food.

The last big event that happened to me was attending my first ever video game conference. It was the Carolina Games Summit out in Goldsboro, and was a small event with some interesting speakers, but it was interesting none the less. It is certainly an experience when you walk into a room and the first thing you see are a storm trooper, 2 Boba Fetts, and Darth Vader.