The ‘non’ year. Stepping stones. Grunt. James. Testing. 2011. A retrospective from my perspective.
Welcome
In January this year, the Brisbane River broke its banks amid dire predictions of the biggest floods to hit Queensland’s capital since 1974. A gentle reminder of how unforgiving mother nature can be. Living in a flood zone, we opted to ship out and shack up. In the warmth and safety of ma and pa’s house we watched our beautiful city drown at the mercy of a swollen river, with king tides on ongoing rain thrown in. We spent a week flipping between TV stations, keeping an eye on the weather radar and tracking updates on the social networks.
When the water receded, around 15,000 homes and business were affected. Luckily, although our street saw a meter of water, we were spared. ABC’s website has some great before and after photos showing the extent of damage through the city.
Set it off.
2 Years
It was ZHC’s second year in operation and proved to be the most challenging yet.
With optimism at an all time low, we were hit hard with an extremely slow start to the year, aka no work for January and February. This gave us the motivation check ourselves, pull our socks up, hit the think tank, re-invent and tap into new business. We emerged with a website redesign, a new mission statement and overall focus. Something must have worked, for within a month we were back to capacity workloads. Coming up Millhouse as it were.
Apps
We made a goal at ZHC to build products which give something back, promote efficiency and generally make the world better.
We set out to release 2 web applications in 2011. Both fit in the ‘productivity’ category and are used daily in our workflow. They are simple tools for people who want to get shit done.
Unfortunately it was not meant to be and neither were launched in 2011. While aware of the common pitfalls of not shipping and the rewards of failing often, we have a strong belief in quality and timing. The apps will see the day of light when we’re ready to give them the support and foundations they deserve. Stay tuned for 2012.
Grunt
Perhaps the biggest lesson learned for 2011 is sometimes you have to ‘take what you can get’ (sorry Seth). With a twist though, we believe you must make it work for you. In an effort to build new foundations for the company to grow we set firm budgets and goals for income. As long as this was met it was ok to be doing work that didn’t align with us 100%. This required constant evaluation on our leads, often comparing whether a job will be purely for the folio (no money) vs income (mo money), or a little from both. Looking back I’m proud to say we managed a good balance. 70% of work from 2011 won’t make it to the folio, the upside is we made budget every quarter as well as refining our processes.
The projects that will be featured in our folio are Talabgaon Castle’s luxury brand identity (preview) and relaunching Apartment for version 3.0.
And I have to say, peace out to Tre Bartel for another solid year. It’s amazing to work alongside someone who shares your views on many things while having their own reservations, sensibilities and ethics.
Grunt Space
It’s also worth noting that we managed to find ourselves a permanent residence this year. A place to call home. Another great milestone. Feels good.
James
Amidst the good times at the office, the Mackenzie’s added a new member to it’s clan. Proud as punch, on October 5th 2011, named after his great grandfather, James Mackenzie (benny b, jim-on-e-pa), was born. The raddest critter.
<cheese>Being a dad constantly grounds me. I’m super proud of my little ones and I’m thankful to have such a fantastic partner to create and share a family with. New beginnings are amazing and occasional late nights, smelly nappies and random crying don’t compare to the warmth in your heart a little earthling can bring.</cheese>
Still a Geek
Hitting the books again this year, I did some hard yards towards expanding my repertoire as a programmer.
Alongside the development of our internal web apps I dove head first into Ruby on Rails (again). I’ve never considered myself a Rails programmer as I mainly just tinkered with experimental apps, none of any real value. This time I had a clear agenda and outcome making each concept more real and tangible. I had to take many steps backward with Rails 3 before getting forward momentum. I kept with and to help me along the way, bought the Agile book (again) and signed up for CodeSchool. Both proved highly useful as did having set goals, and I now have no problem touting myself as a Rails programmer.
Additionally, as a personal hobby I’ve been tinkering with Xcode and Cocoa trying to get my head around iOS applications. It’s a realm I want to move into as I believe there’s a solid future in mobile applications. That said, iOS development is a whole new kettle of fish. Learning without any experience in a C type language has made it difficult, but I now have a fairly good idea of the makings of iOS applications and how various pieces fit together.
Synopsis
If there were an overarching concept I can take away from this year (and probably life in general), it’s that persistence and repetition works. The more you keep jumping into the same problems and experiences the better you’re equipped are to solve them.
2011 was a year of great steps forward and only a few backward (albeit big ones). It was a year marred by a false start, but I believe this was symbolic and set the tone. A year of testing, building, establishing, persisting, growing.
Heres to 2012.