So far, May has been busy balancing lots of deadlines, but we managed to write a few blog posts in the midst of our client work.
A big aspect of what we do here is work on finding the right folks to join Viget. Emily describes how she finds balance in recruiting; particularly in distinguishing personality and professionalism in the cover letters, resumes, and portfolios we receive. She encourages, "Be confident, but above all, be real." Great advice.
Want more advice and insights? We've got 'em in our blogs this week.
Continue reading "VigeWeekly: Balance in Our Blogs"
Does it surprise you when I confess that there are lots of balancing acts behind the scenes of a successful company like Viget? As someone who helps with recruiting, I often find myself balancing priorities and expectations. I’ve written about our approach to recruiting before; we try to be creative in our efforts and we expect applicants to do the same, but we also prioritize some very traditional values like integrity and hard work.
Our colleagues at OnWired recently pulled back the curtain a little on their recruiting process. It’s interesting - and in this case fun - to see what other companies are doing and what their results are. They share snippets of responses from design applicants to their request for "The World’s Greatest Cover Letter." I love OnWired’s playful tone and it is clear that a lot of applicants love it, too. I know they do great work, so I assume OnWired’s recruiting strategies are paying off.
I’ll admit that at Viget I sometimes struggle to peel back the layers of "personality" from applicants’ cover letters and find their “real” professional identity. Out of this struggle comes my evolving expertise at balancing expectations for professionalism with expectations for enthusiasm and creative energy. With practice, I’ve honed a pretty nuanced sense of what “works” and what doesn’t when I review an applicant’s materials. I’ve also come to feel some camaraderie with candidates when I can tell he or she is walking the same careful line; just last week someone ended a very professional cover letter that may have otherwise been lacking personality with, “P.S. I didn’t think it was appropriate to add to my resume, but my Wii bowling skills are out of this world! Thanks again for your time.”
Viget really is what we describe it to be. My coworkers and I work hard to live up to the company’s reputation, maintain a good sense of humor, and achieve ambitious professional goals. But the truth is that all of those things are balanced by a lot of hours spent working very hard in a sort of quiet way. I encourage potential Viget applicants to write a strong cover letter, but I challenge you not just to be creative or to show some personality; I challenge you to be authentic and honest when you tell us about your skills, interests, and experience. Balance the description of your unbridled personal ambitions with some humility and plans for growth or improvement. Be confident, but above all, be real.
We have continued to write as much as we can for our new fangled blogs here at Viget, but we're proud to say that this week, one of us went old school. Ben authored his first book entitled, Practical REST on Rails 2 Projects, which is now available on Amazon and would be a great selection for any Rails developer (not that I'm biased ...). Congrats, Ben!
Also, while we were chatting up the Tech Cocktail DC crowd last Thursday, Viget South was attending the jQuery discussion at the sixth meeting of Refresh the Triangle.
Now, let's get back on track with what's been happening in our blogs this week.
Continue reading "VigeWeekly: From Candy to Capistrano"
Ben's a proud papa -- both to his first baby (girl), and now (officially) to his first book, Practical REST on Rails 2 Projects, which recently started shipping from Amazon and will be in bookstores starting next week. He's spoken nationally and internationally in the Rails community, and has been authoring the book since October 2007.
Practical REST on Rails 2 Projects is a guide to joining the burgeoning world of open web applications. It argues that opening up your application can provide significant benefits and involves you in the entire process—from setting up your application, to creating clients for it, to handling success and all its attendant problems.
- This book is the essential resource for anyone who wants to make their web application a full participant in the new Internet.
- This book is intended for intermediate–to–advanced Rails developers—people who use Rails regularly for sites and applications more complicated than the prototypical roll–your–own blog.
- In particular, it’s targeted at Rails developers who want to be good Web 2.0 citizens—sharing the functionality of their app with other sites to the betterment of everyone.
- Application projects include iPhone, Facebook, and REST for the enterprise.
This past Thursday night saw the sixth meeting of Refresh the Triangle, the local chapter of the Refresh tech network that Viget’s helping to organize. Nathan Huening from OnWired gave a great talk called “Dr. jQuery (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the DOM),” and his passion for the material was evident. In a series of increasingly complex examples, Nathan showed off the power and simplicity of the jQuery JavaScript library. He demonstrated that most of jQuery can be reduced to “grab things, do stuff,” starting with simple CSS modifications and moving to AJAX, animation, and custom functionality.
To get a good taste of the presentation, you can use FireBug to run Nathan’s sample code against the demo page he set up. You’ll want to be running FireFox 2, as FF3 Beta 5 gave me a lot of grief while I tried to follow Nathan’s examples.
Big thanks to Nathan and to Duke’s Blackwell Interactive for hosting the event, as well as to everyone who came out; maybe we’ve got you pictured on our Flickr page.
Hope to see you next month.
We were super busy this past week in our blogs and in the DC scene, too, when we visited Refresh and Tech Cocktail 2 last week. Plus, we all headed to a ranch—which included horses, jeeps, and skeet shooting—to celebrate Viget’s birthday last Friday.
Now we’re taking a breath just long enough to recap the week in blogs.
Continue reading "VigeWeekly: We Can’t Stop Talking"
Brian on Wednesday will contribute to a discussion at RefreshDC on the challenges and strategies associated with starting a business. This month’s “The World of Startups"-themed meeting will be held at Strategic Analysis, Inc. (3601 Wilson Blvd, Suite 600, in Arlington) beginning at 7 pm.
Other speakers include Andrew Lee of Publi.us, Sean Greene of LaunchBox Digital, and Eddie Frederick of Hungry Machine, among others.
Learn more or sign up to attend (free) on the the registration page.
As usual, we’ve had another busy week here at the Lab. We’ve been reading the latest books and blogs, playing with the latest tools, and attending some cool events. Plus, we’re happy to have launched the BlogPotomac site in support of the social media event that’s going down on Friday the 13th of June. Hope you can make it.
Without further adieu…
Steph’s post touched on Sonia Simone’s Copyblogger article that highlights how users are more easily called to take action with decisive content. Steph is all about having copywriters involved when trying to entice readers to take action, but she adds that clients must first decide on just a few calls to action for users, saying, “Ultimately, it’s better to make some assumptions that can be corrected later about what users want rather than slapping seventeen callouts in the right sidebar and hoping one sticks. And when it comes to getting from Point A to Point B, who wants to find a fork—or seven—in the road?”
Samantha reviews Ellen Lupton’s new book, Graphic Design: The New Basics, which she says is now her “new design fundamentals go-to guide.” She says the book is refreshingly simple amid other design books out there that are overly complex or dated, so she thinks designers of all skill levels would find it a valuable resource. P.S. See what else is on Samantha’s bookshelf.
Clinton tells us Why Google App Engine (GAE) matters, saying, “I can run web applications on Google’s grid and have access to their authentication and back-end data store? Sign me right up!” He notes that critics won’t jump onboard because of GAE’s limitations, but says those restrictions can provoke creativity and inspire enhancements. We’re interested in provoking creativity and enhancing our own work here at Viget, which SP discusses in his post, “Open Source, Take Two.” We’re aiming, kind of like Google, to facilitate creative discussion by pulling back the curtain and making some of our code publicly available and asking other to contribute to what we’re working on; that way, we can all learn something while we collectively contribute to the progress of the larger Rails community.
Trace reviewed the Potomac Tech Wire Internet Outlook Conference he attended on Thursday morning. Speakers like Scott Frederick of Valhalla Partners, Laurence Hooper of Loladex (one of our clients), and Chris McGill of Mixx all contributed to a positive discussion about the growing tech community in the DC area, from how to obtain venture funding to how to grow and implement an idea in today’s technology market.
Thanks for all the super dialog in our blogs, and we hope to see you next Thursday at DC’s Tech Cocktail 2. Have a great weekend!
Ben will briefly tear himself away from his new parenting duties tomorrow when he presents “Domain Modeling with REST” at 7 p.m. to more than 20 confirmed attendees at the Raleigh-area Ruby Brigade (raleigh.rb).
For some time now, REST has been the One True Way to build Rails applications. Unfortunately, though, RESTful design is often easier to aim for than it is to achieve. Complex domain modeling with resources can be a challenge, and the implementation of REST in Rails itself can cause unexpected problems. In this talk, I’ll be discussing these issues and more. By the time we’re done, you’ll be ready to build the RESTful systems you’ve always dreamed of—or, at least, make your applications simpler to build, maintain, and integrate with the rest of the web.
On June 13th, little old Falls Church will host a nice big one-day conference right down the street from Viget at the always-engaging State Theater.
BlogPotomac is this year’s premiere social media marketing event for greater Washington DC. Attendees can expect a one-day event with nationally renowned speakers and advanced discussion of best social media marketing practices.
Speakers include Lionel Menchaca of Direct2Dell, Frank Gruber of AOL and Somewhat Frank, and Dan Beyers of The Washington Post’s WashBiz blog, among a growing list of others. Tickets are $75—just register through eventbrite, or follow updates on Twitter.
We’re glad we have the chance to coordinate and sponsor the event, and we’ll have a few folks from our Marketing Lab in attendance. Kudos to co-chairs Geoff and Debbie for all their hard work pulling it together.
