Journal
Fellowship (of the) Tech
12 December 2008 › 29 comments
Today marks one week at my new job, as a User Experience Developer at Fellowship Technologies. A few weeks ago, a third party recruiter from the Rowland Group named Jessica Wilson contacted me on their behalf, asking if I’d be interested in a faith based organization in the DFW area. Initially, I was skeptical because many IT recruiters can’t tell Java from JavaScript, but she seemed well versed in the subject matter, so I decided it might be worth looking into. After talking with the dev team, it became clear that they are a sharp group of guys, and that I would have something to bring to the table. To quote the Godfather — “They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
The Office
So far, things have been pretty fast paced yet fun at the same time. We use the scrum agile software development methodology, and I was able to hit the ground running in the middle of a project sprint. We wrapped that up mid-week, and presented our progress to the stakeholders. We are now in the process of moving to our newly renovated office a few miles away. The other UX designer / developer did the workspace layout, and chose most of the furniture. Below is a photo of the nearly completed dev area.
The dev team purposefully wanted an unfinished ceiling to make the space feel more open. There are also brick walls that were added, to lend an urban grunge feel. We’re actually considering having an artist come in and do some tasteful graffiti to spice things up. For ease of project management, we have a ridonculously big white board which will house, among other things, the progress on each project sprint. Could double as a movie theater, too!
The rest of the office is equally cool, but in a different way. Near the reception area, there is a wall made of old stone, with a stained glass window and wooden church pews. Opposite that, is a decidedly more contemporary juxtaposition, with a wall made of glass brick and a wide screen TV. I will be sure to post more photos on Flickr once we get situated in the new digs.
My Role
Anyway, enough about the sweet work environment, and on to the actual work. My job there will entail a lot of interaction design, as well as front-end development and some .NET, working on the flagship product Fellowship One. While public facing FT sites are handled by our marketing department, the dev team handles F1. Basically, everything beyond the login page is our jurisdiction. If you’re not already familiar with it, essentially Fellowship One is to church metrics what Basecamp is to project collaboration.
The astute standardistas amongst you might be saying: “dot-NET? Is that not incompatible with Web Standards and good front-end code?” I must admit, this was once my perception, having seen good HTML and CSS fall prey to pre-fabbed tools in Visual Studio. Like any tools though, success or failure lies in the hands of the craftsman. Thankfully, the guys at FT don’t condone cookie cutter approaches, and instead wrote their own MVC framework modeled loosely after the approach taken by Ruby on Rails.
That was prior to Microsoft creating an official MVC of their own, so down the road we might switch to that. Some of the FT devs were even invited up to Redmond, WA to discuss best practices with the MVC team at Microsoft. Again, one might be thinking: “You use a Mac, don’t you?” In fact, yes. For the time being, I’m using a Dell while I await the order for a shiny new MacBook Pro to arrive. I plan on having partition running Windows within VMware Fusion, in order to edit ASP and C#, and to compile code via Visual Studio.
The Future
As is the case with any big web app, our sprints will comprise a larger marathon, gradually overhauling all the components to be more modular and extensible. One of my coworkers demo’d a sweet RESTful API that he’s been building, so eventually 3rd party apps will be able to communicate.
As for myself, I will be forging consistency in our front-end code and design patterns. I will also be championing the migration from Prototype to jQuery, which everyone is on-board with, now that Microsoft has decided to officially support jQuery by distributing it bundled with Visual Studio. I am looking forward to all the cool stuff we are going to build in as a team.
Speaking of which, we are looking to hire an additional .NET developer! :)
Discussion + Dissension
Comments closed after 2 weeks.
#1 David Neal
Congratulations on the new job! The environment sounds incredible. Almost wish I were in the job market ;)
#2 Chris Harrison
Congratulations on the new job, Nathan. It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on leaving Viewzi – if you feel comfortable talking about it – as a follow-up on this.
#3 Rogie King
Wow dude. Movin up! (Literally) I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on Viewzi as well as Chris Harrison.
I’m very stoked for you as always. Nice work on being the champion of the proto 2 jQuery conversion. Good call.
Have fun and blessings to you bro. Cheers!
#4 Yannick
Congrats on the new job, Nathan. I’m sure you’ll be a great addition to what seems like a great team there at FT. I’d be interesting in hearing about how you’ve found working with .NET while working there. I’ve been getting a little curious about it, especially with Microsoft releasing ASP.NET MVC and also their open source content management system, Oxite.
God’s Blessings on you dude and all the best with FT.
#5 matthew Smith
Well done man. What a fantastic office space. I dream of being able to set up something like that for Squared Eye one day.
I’ve seen people do large white boards like that, but personally my favorite instance is a white wall covered in large panes of glass. It cleans more easily.
I hope this ends up being a longer stint for you than the last scenario with Viewzi. These are interesting times. Glad we serve a BIG God. ;)
#6 Matt Donovan
Congrats on the new gig! I know you’ll do great things there.
#7 Geof Harries
Well, this post truthfully caught me by surprise, but I know you will excel at anything you do job-wise. Sounds like a very cool organization and with a greater purpose to boot, congrats.
#8 Nate Klaiber
All of this sounds awesome. Their setup looks beautiful, and it sounds like you will be working within an awesome team. I look forward to hearing more about some of your projects.
Congrats on the move and the new position, seems like a great way to roll into the new year!
#9 Ryan Hargrave
Nathan, BIG congrats bro. Sounds like you have lots of works ahead of you and lots of fun challenges! Can’t wait to hear more!
#10 Shane Eubanks
Congrats, Nathan! Looks and sounds like a great place for you. Sounds like December is going to be quite the month for you! Isn’t that when you’re “new addition” is due?
God Bless!
#11 Ben Carlson
Nathan, awesome! Hope you enjoy this position, it’s neat to always hear about the cool things you’re working on and see where they go and what your views on things are. Pretty cool looking place, too. =)
#12 Michael Montgomery
Congratulations, Nathan! Good news for you & your (growing) family.
This bit was funny:
Indeed:
#13 Carolyn Wood
Hey, Nathan!
Congratulations! I was surprised by the news. Sounds like you found a great team, or a great team found you. ;)
#14 Josh Cramer
Congratulations – that sounds like an exciting move.
#15 Jason Beaird
Congrats on the new gig, Nathan! It looks like it’ll be a fun and inspiring space to work in. As everyone else said already, I’m looking forward to hearing how things go.
#16 David Hemphill
Congrats are in order, Nathan. As a daily user of F1, I’m looking forward to seeing your magic touch on it.
#17 Joshua Blankenship
We’ve been an F1 customer for years now, and it’s only been in the last few months of meeting with them and seeing some new hires that I’ve been given any hope that I won’t hate working with it everyday. I’m looking forward to some UX that makes sense.
#18 Dustin
Congrats Nathan, cool workspace. Looking forward to hearing your experiences while at F1, particularly your insights on .NET as a more viable solution that we once thought before (with some massaging of course).
#19 Jared Hawkins
Congratulations! The church I was on staff with used F1 and found it far above other solutions at the time. I’m sure it’s only going to get better now.
#20 Erik
Wow man, congrats! Another exciting chapter in your life. Keep us posted about the awesome things you do there.
#21 Nathan Smith
Thanks for all the congrats everyone. To answer a few of your questions:
1. Yes, our baby is due at the end of this month. Yikes! Though, I’m really looking forward to it, despite feeling some anxiety as a new parent.
2. Viewzi was a cool place to work. Though, as I am nearing the completion of my MDiv, I’ve been thinking / wondering / praying about how to use my web related skill-set with my theological training. When the unexpected opportunity arose with Fellowship Tech, it seemed like a natural fit.
3. I’ll try to blog more, about the advancements we’ll be making at FT.
#22 Chris J. Davis
Very nice digs indeed Nathan. I am very happy that you are settling in well there, although we do miss you around the Viewzi offices.
Who’s nose will be like thunder now man?
#23 Deborah
Congrats Nathan! Sounds like a great place to work, and the environment looks wonderful. Do let us know how everything goes at the new job. I’m also interested in hearing more about working with .NET.
#24 Luis Garcia
Congrats man! If you are new to the Scrum methodology, I think you’ll like it. As someone who knows how you work, I think you’ll embrace it primarily for its flexibility. If you ever want any Scrum tips or have any questions, I always like talking about PM methodologies.
#25 Nathan Smith
Chris: I’ll just have to record you an MP3 of me blowing my nose, so that the office tranquility won’t be deafening. Almost like nature sounds, on tape!
Yannick / Dustin / Deborah: I’ll be sure to share my thoughts on .NET once I’ve been able to really dig in and learn the intricacies of the framework.
Luis: So far, scrum has been awesome. We used it a bit when I was still at EMC. I’ll probably be hitting you up for some pointers though, thanks.
#26 Josh Read
Wow Nathan. Congratulations on several fronts (new baby, new job, almost mDiv). Keep Going! May the Lord’s favor continue to pour out on you. I pray that your hands would be anointed and everything you code / touch / pray over would be blessed!
#27 Daniel Marino
I’m glad that you’ll be able to use your talents to further the kingdom of God. Seems like it will be a great place for you. I wish you the best!
#28 Jessica Wilson
Nathan- I’m so excited for you and the guys over at Fellowship. I just knew it was a perfect fit. And thanks for the compliment, I like to think I know what I’m talking about, most of the time! If anyone else is looking for help for your company, or a new position, I’d love to talk to you! jessicaw@rowland-group.com or 214-635-3471 (Just had to throw in the shameless plug…) :)
#29 David Brooks
Awesome stuff man, congratulations. I can’t wait to see what you guys continue to come up with.