January 4, 2009
2008 turned out to be a very big year for me.
It began with a promotion at Design Reactor, where I went from Associate Engineer to Engineer.
In February, I started working on a new website for Navigant Consulting. I was the lead engineer, which ended up meaning the only engineer (save for the Virtual Knowledge Center). Through that project I learned the ExpressionEngine CMS, and got into extension development for it. At its end, I was awarded Design Reactor’s prestigious Core Award during a company-wide staff meeting.
Rather than take some much-needed time off, I was immediately thrown into a tech lead role for Design Reactor’s new website. I was in charge of two other engineers, and had to see the site completed in a month’s time. I was pessimistic (the company’s previous website took half a year to complete), but one way or another we pulled it off. And we were exhausted.
Soon after, two things happened: I moved into an apartment with a friend from high school (a first for both of us), and I accepted an offer at LEVEL Studios, a web agency in Downtown San Jose. In effect, my life changed entirely over the course of one week.
I hit the ground running at LEVEL. They had just recently launched a new blogging site for Cisco using ExpressionEngine, and there were a couple high-priority tickets they had me address. Once things had calmed down on that front, I joined the Apple team, where I have spent most of my time since. Working on Apple’s website has always been a dream job for me; no other company has inspired me as much as they have. And the real deal has not disappointed. Apple’s attention to detail and dedication to perfection is just as true in the spirit of their web team as it is in Steve Jobs himself.
In the later months of 2008, I turned the attention of my spare time toward ExpressionEngine. I resumed work on Playa, one of the extensions I had written for Navigant’s website. I set a roadmap for a 2.0 release, which is now well underway. (Many of the 2.0 features have made their way into 1.x releases.) I’ve even begun planning a commercial version of the extension. In December, Playa was awarded Extension of the Year by Devot:ee, an all-things-ExpressionEngine website currently in the works.
When 2009 drew near, I decided to kick off the new year with a new personal site. (The content on my site has come a long way from the portfolio gallery and occasional blog post.) So the last few weeks of the year went into what is now the new brandon-kelly.com. In the process I wrote two new extensions: Gypsy and Editor. I released Gypsy on its own, which instantly became a new must-have extension for any complex ExpressionEngine-based site. Editor was written late enough in the game that I decided to wait and release it in tandem with the new site, so the community’s response to that has yet to be seen. I also spent a couple days updating my other extensions, Snitch and Sarge, giving them the ability to check for updates, and bringing the style of their Settings forms in-line with the others.
I have a lot planned for 2009. On top of my aforementioned plans for Playa, I have a couple of side projects in the oven, and I’m hoping that one or the other will come into fruition sometime this year. Time will tell.
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Thanks for reading, and have a productive year!