Born Weird

Got some professional news for everyone. First, a new addition to my portfolio. Working as lead designer/coder in conjunction with my former Free Press coworker Ira as project manager, I’m pleased to announce the launch of the brand-new AustinTheatre.org website.  The site is powered by Convio’s CRM platform, including PageBuilder for the static pages and the events and donations modules for, ahem, events and donations. The coolest part (IMHO) is the Upcoming Events dropdown, which actually utilizes Convio’s Events API and jQuery to populate the menu AJAXically. Note that today was just the soft launch; we’ll be working the kinks out over the next few days before making any big announcements.

Speaking of big announcements, though, it’s high time I expanded upon my tweet from a few weeks ago. Astute readers will have no doubt noticed that several of the portfolio items I’ve posted lately are publicly credited to Firefly Partners and not yours truly, which is because I’ve been working with Firefly as a contractor.

But that will be changing. A month from today, I’ll officially be joining Firefly as a full-time employee.

This is more evolutionary than revolutionary; I’ve been talking about my going FT practically since I started working with them last December, and I’ve been putting in a pretty significant chunk of time on a regular basis already. But now we’re going from dating to making a commitment (in Maureen’s terms). My job title will be “Design & Development Lead,” though I’m lobbying to get that changed to the more commonly used “Dungeon Master.” (If that joke made no sense to you, that’s probably a good thing.)

My responsibilities will be similar to what they have been in the past as a contractor — I’ll be their main in-house designer, but will also be doing a good chunk of coding, project management, and other production work as needed.

I’m really excited about this gig. Jen, Maureen, Ira and the other fireflies are great people and fun to work with. Their clients are all nonprofits, which is cool (though I’d love to see some more politically-engaged progressive clients). I get to keep working from home, which is awesome, but I’ll be collecting a regular paycheck. I get paid vacation — something I’ve sorely missed since become a freelancer! And to answer the Grosse Pointe Blank question: yes, I get dental.

October 15 is still a ways away, of course. But it’s necessary to have such a late start date so that I can wrap up several ongoing freelance projects that would interfere with my full-time work.

Does this mean I’m no longer doing any freelance work? Mostly, yes. While I hope to still take on the occasional small project for those who need my services but don’t fit the Firefly client profile, full-time employment (combined with fatherhood) means I won’t have a lot of extra time for such work. Fortunately, a lot of the clients I’ve worked with over the past year or so actually fit into the Firefly mold, and I hope they (you?) will continue to work with me through Firefly (it’ll cost a bit more than it did in the past, but the extra $ will be worth it — things like dedicated project managers are worthwhile, trust me).

If you have any questions about my new gig, please post ‘em in the comments thread and I’ll answer them to the best of my abilities. Thanks!