Posting about Posting

October 18, 2008

I scrolled down my home page today and saw at the beginning of the summer I wrote that I would write more.  So much for that.  I’ve been waiting for my life to ’slow down’ in order to have time to write.  I see that is a flawed thought process; I need to build writing time into my life, because life isn’t slowing down. 

It’s been a busy couple months work-wise.  I have some great clients right now with some challenging (in a good way) work.  I finished a project this summer where I was traveling across the Midwest visiting farmers for a project.  This project was a classic example of the value of personas and the value of going to visit your customers.  It brought a level of understanding about how the farmers are using computers and the context in which they are using them. 

This, however, involved a great deal of travel for about six weeks.
I can tell you a couple things I’ve learned doing this much traveling, mainly by car:
- I could never travel that much for a living.  
- Audio books are a gift from God
- In small towns, look for the library.  I had a plenty of down-time between visits, and I discovered that, even in cities with a population of a few thousand, the library has incredibly friendly people, and free wifi.
- If you can swing it logistically, a "home base" is best.  I couldn’t always pull this off, but when I could stay at the same hotel for more than a night, I was more comfortable.  That could just be me and my love of some routine. 
- If hotels are booked, Bed & Breakfasts are a great substitute, sometimes even preferable.  I stayed at a B&B in North Dakota and it was fantastic.

I’m currently working on two projects, both of which are internal applications.  I wrote a post about the benefits of user experience for internal applications over on my work blog. 

I had some bad news this fall.  My wife’s grandmother passed away.  Then a week later we found out my uncle has cancer.  It is quite traumatic when an illness like this hits a close family member.  It is dramatically different than thinking about cancer in the abstract than thinking about it impacting a family member who is close to you.  I hope to see my uncle as often as I can the rest of the year. 

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