School Project

We were assigned a group project. The class is divided into 2 groups: developers and designers. I'm on the design team with 5 other kids. The German is the class Project Manager. (I was originally going to volunteer for that job, but then I remembered that one of my main reasons for switching careers is to NOT be the project manager/producer anymore.)

Since I'm not the Project Manager or a Team Leader, I couldn't care less how it gets done, or if it gets done. There's something amazingly liberating about not being the one responsible for managing the client, the schedule, the teacher, and the rest of the team.

The job is big. It's creating a nationwide content management system for students and teachers throughout NZ. We were given 10 days. And the fact that there's a whole class working on it is meaningless. It's like someone saying, "Cook a gourmet meal for 100 -- you've only got two hours but there's 30 chefs"

The project didn't start off too well. We spent a week messing around with designs while the programmers researched the best way to code it (write their own? use WordPress? use Joomla?). Finally, the programmers announced that they were doing the entire thing in Joomla.

Joomla (http://www.joomla.org) is an industry level content management system that I've spent exactly 5 minutes working in -- it's HUGE.

Only one of the kids in the development team knows how to use it, so she set off to work while the rest of her team now stands around trying to look busy.

Luckily, one of the kids on our team is this design and coding genius from Chile. I don't even think most of us even noticed he was in the class because he barely speaks up. Turns out, not only is he an incredible designer, he's brilliant at code and has worked in Joomla for years. 4 of us spent the last week messing around with designs in Photoshop (see mine, above) but nothing looked right. Yesterday he sat down at his laptop for about a half hour then said, "How about this?" He turned his computer around and there was this fabulous design he'd thrown together. Awesome. Anyway, he's volunteered to incorporate our design into the Joomla code. Yea! So I guess I'll be spending the rest of the week sitting around with my other teammates trying to look busy.

The best thing about this project is that it's given me the opportunity to hang out with other students. There are two women who sit on the opposite side of the room who I've never had a chance to talk to -- they're actually really nice and I can't help but think how different my experience would've been this year if I'd sat next to them instead of weird German guy.

The project is due at the end of the week. Then we're off for 3 days for Labor Day Weekend!