August 11, 2003
Updates
So upgrading to OSX wasn't the most significant thing that's happened to me this month. If you've read down on the left collumn there, you might have noticed I've got a full-time job. I'm just starting my third week with Fusion Learning Systems.
My title is "Information Architect" although I'm going to be doing a little bit of writing, a little bit of design, a little bit of production work, a little bit of client work, and probably a little bit of whatever's left over, which suits me fine.
I feel very lucky. I haven't had a full-time job for real since May 2001. Since then I've been freelancing, sometimes with sucess, sometimes not (and of course some of that time living in Berlin, where even most Germans are unemployed.) Although I've really liked some of the projects I've worked on, it's just too hard to find freelance work, and I was happy to run into an old boss who was interested in hiring me.
Fusion's an educational technology shop. This is no the third job I've had in that field, after Top Drawer Productions and UT's Center for Instructional Technology. In all honesty, I'm fairly skeptical of the value of technology in education, although I'm much more interested in the sensible and interesting applications of it currently going on around blogging and collaborative work (check out eLearningPost)
than I was in building yet another Director-based quiz application. And I would love to teach another class using Maeda's Design by Numbers; basic programming skills still seems to me a really valuable thing to teach.
So far, I've been on a project mostly by myself at Fusion. But the people (a few of whom I already know from other places) seem smart and talented and glad to come to work. I can learn a lot here, which is probably the best thing I can say about a job. It doesn't hurt that the office is nice and backs up to a park with a hiking trail. I get health insurance with dental and vision, an unbelievable luxury anymore.
Posted by Andrew at August 11, 2003 04:53 PM