Ich habe in der letzten Woche die Prüfung zum Adobe Certified Expert in Acrobat 9 Professional bestanden. Eigentlich kenne ich Acrobat ganz gut, doch die Prüfung war viel, viel schwerer, als ich zunächst angenommen hatte. Am meisten habe ich mit Bereichen zu kämpfen gehabt, mit denen ich in meinem täglichen Leben selten oder nie in Kontakt komme: Druck und Geo-Gedönse. Aber letztendlich wurde alles gut, und ich habe die Prüfung bestanden. Jetzt ist Kai nicht mehr der alleinige ACE (Adobe Certified Expert) in diesem Haushalt, yay!

I’m an expert

Now that 30 Days of me is over, I can get back to the usual order of languages in this blog. Nice.

Last week I sat the exam to become an Adobe Certified Expert in Acrobat 9 Professional. I know Acrobat quite well, but the exam was much harder than I had anticipated. I really struggled with some of the areas I don’t usually get in contact in my daily life, especially print production and geospatial stuff. But in the end all was good, and I passed the exam. Now Kai is no longer the only ACE (Adobe Certified Expert) in this household, yay!

Holiday in Blenheim

The good thing about being self-employed is the enormous flexibility. At least on days I’m not onsite with a client I can organise my working day the way I want. Since I often do some work on the weekends (especially at the moment, while the evil winter weather doesn’t encourage us to go outside), I don’t even feel guilty when I take some time off during the week. Last Monday for example I jumped onto a ferry to Picton, where Helen picked me up for three days of mini-vacation in Blenheim. We had a great time with heaps of geocaching, a visit to the Centre of New Zealand, chatting, eating, buying old books and magazines, and the best winery tour ever (lead by Helen’s dad, who’s a winemaker at one of the largest wineries). On Wednesday I flew back with Soundsair, where I was allowed to sit in the co-pilots seat. Very exiting and a bit creepy to fly right into massive amounts of clouds when it’s pitch-dark outside…

I’ve quit my job. For a couple of weeks now I’m working full-time for Ventego Creative. It is very nice to be able to sleep a little bit longer in the mornings and not having to get out into the dark and and rainy winter weather. Instead I can enjoy  a coffee with Kai before we start working. Additionally I can deal with private matters in a less stressful way. But despite all of that, I’m working in a more efficient and productive way than I ever did in a previous employment. There aren’t countless phones ringing all day long and no one is discussing the newspaper quiz in a loud voice. I can focus on my work as long as I like, and when I need a break I can fill it with useful things, which have used up treasured leisure time until now (laundry, cooking, baking, writing blog posts). I work on exciting projects, which I really enjoy. Not all of my work is paid work yet, I’ll still have to learn heaps and Kai’s expectations are very high. But at the moment it just feels like the right thing to do. And I’m so motivated that even today, on a public holiday in New Zealand, I sit down at my computer and communicate with a client in Australia – and it feels good. We’ll see what the future brings. Maybe this is a model that works for us in the long term, or maybe we’ll decide that it would be better for me to work for a company we don’t own. We’ll see…

Tamiflu wasn’t the only thing that impressed me last week. There was the super-genius electrical Bubbles-Elephant, that I got in Sydney for my colleagues (that’s Helen in the picture playing with it, with Simon in the background) and the cheeky Kaka, that sat on my head at Nga Manu Nature Reserve but refused to turn around for the photo…

Earlier this week my colleague Channa and I did some interviews with people on the South Island for our website redesign. We started with a meeting in Christchurch on Monday and went further South to Dunedin later that day. I had never been there before, so we took the chance and visited the area – we went geocaching, drove around the peninsular and checked out the brand new Chinese Garden. This was a bit bizarre, as it is located in the middle of the city and surrounded by Scottish influenced buildings. It feels a bit strange if you’re standing at the Chinese pavillion and can see a Scottish cathedral pretty close…

Am Donnerstag ging es dann gleich frueh morgens mit der Konferenz los. Im Gegensatz zu den Anfangsjahren ist webDU heute nicht mehr nur ausschliesslich an Developer gerichtet, auch Themen aus dem Bereich User Experience, Usability und Accessibility wird inzwischen viel Raum gegeben. Kais Vortrag lag auch in diesem Bereich und es war sehr witzig, in seiner Veranstaltung zu sitzen. Ich bin von einigen Speakern wahnsinnig inspiriert worden, und auch motiviert mich mit meinen Ansichten mehr durchzusetzen – auch wenn das in einer Regierungsorganisation manchmal langwierig sein kann. Doch nicht nur inhaltlich waren die beiden Konferenztage toll, auch das Wiedersehen mit Freunden, die sonst ueberall auf der Welt verstreut sind, hat gut getan. Am Freitag habe ich zwei Veranstaltungen geschwaenzt und bin Shoppen und Zocken gegangen (Mac Store in Sydney und Casino im Konferenzhotel). Trotz schlechten Wetters (Regen, keine Kaelte) hatten wir ein paar super Tage, schade, dass es am Samstag fuer mich schon wieder ins kalte Wellington zurueck ging.

Last week webDU, the conference that brought us to Australia for the first time in 2003 and made us fall in love with the southern hemisphere, took place in Sydney. Kai had to fly up a day earlier than me to hold a workshop, but I followed him on Wednesday, spending the first day geocaching while he had to work. On that first night Kai and his team (WANZAC – Western Australia New Zealand Awesome Coders) entered a competition calle Code Wars, but they didn’t even make it through the first round.

On Thursday the main conference started and other than in the early years, when it was focussed on pure development, topics around UX, usability and accessibility were given more room. Kai’s session was part of this range and I felt funny listening to him talking about stuff we could as well discuss at the breakfast table at home. Some of the speakers inspired me enormously and they’ve motivated me to stick to my opinion and to keep fighting – even knowing that withing a government organisation it might take a bit longer to see the first signs of success. But not only the conference content was good – it was great to see lots of friends that are usually spread around the world again and there was a lot to talk about during the breaks and at nights. On Friday I skipped two sessions and went shopping and gambling (Mac store in Sydney and casino at the conference hotel). Despite the bad weather (well, rain, not cold) we had a couple of great days, sad that I had to head back to cold, cold Wellington so early.

In this picture you can see Stefan and Kai. I’m not sure if they are working on an article or on their book. But whatever they are doing, they are so focussed that I was able to shoot eight photos without them realising. That’s astonishing, isn’t it?

Fuer mich begann das Abenteuer mit einem Workshop-Tag: Heather Champ (Community Manager bei Flickr) und Derek Powazek (Fray Magazine) inspirierten mich durch Designing and Sustaining Creative Communities. Danach folgten zwei Tage mit spannenden Vortraegen und interessanten Speakern aus Neuseeland und dem Rest der Welt. Doch der aufregendste Aspekt der Konferenz fuer Kai und mich war das Webstock Tradingcard Game. Gemeinsam mit unseren Freunden Minty und Bek von Nectarine haben wir ein Kartenspiel entwickelt, bei dem Interaktion der Teilnehmer und logisches Denken gefragt waren. Fuer jeden Speaker gab es eine Karte mit seinem Profil, die es in eine Reihenfolge zu bringen galt, mit der moeglichst viele Punkte erreicht wurden. Neue Karten kamen regelmaessig in Umlauf und zwischendurch gab es immer wieder Tipps und Hinweise per Twitter. Das Spiel hat Kai und seine fleissigen Helfer ziemlich auf Trab gehalten, waehrend ich die Konferenz die meiste Zeit geniessen konnte und lediglich bei den Vorbereitungen eingespannt wurde. Das Wochenende vor der Konferenz bestand fuer uns hauptsaechlich daraus, Kartendecks zusammenzustellen. Es gab tolle Preise zu gewinnen und so mussten Kai und Minty klarstellen, dass die punktbesten Kandidaten auch bis zur Preisverleihung auf der Party am letzten Konferenztag feststanden. Mehr Details zum Trading Card Game gibt es in den Nachbetrachtungen in Kais Blog und Mintys Blog (dort gibt es auch mehr Fotos vom Kartenspiel und den -spielern. Das coolste ist, dass der zweite Preis, ein Pleo, an meinen Kollegen Simon ging, und seither als Bueromaskottchen namens Henry dient.

Last month Wellington saw Webstock 2009 happening – it’s the largest web conference in New Zealand. Webstock isn’t very technology focussed, it’s more about Design, User Experience, Web Standards, Content, Community, Innovation and Inspiration. You’re not going to Webstock to learn about new technologies, you rather go there for new visions and networking. Most of my team members at MAF attended the conference with me ,and Kai and other friends from around Wellington met in the Town Hall during Webstock week as well.

For me personally Webstock began with a Workshop-day: Heather Champ (Community Manager at Flickr) and Derek Powazek (Fray Magazine) inspired me with Designing and Sustaining Creative Communities. Then two days of exciting talks and interesting speakers from New Zealand and all around the world followed. But the most exciting aspect of the conference for me and Kai was the Webstock Trading Card Game. Together with our friends Minty and Bek from Nectarine we developed a card game which saw players interacting and using their brain to reach as many points as possible. Every speaker had a card with their own profile, and the goal for the players was to collect them and bring them into an order which provided them with a good score. New cards were spread out regularly and every now and then the players got new clues and hints via Twitter. Kai and his supporters were quite busy during the whole conference, while I had the chance to relax and just enjoy what was going on. Only on the weekend before the conference I got quite involved in putting the card decks together and distributing them to the conference organisers. They had awesome prizes for the winners of the game, and luckily my colleague Simon won the second prize – a Pleo, now named Henry, who is now our mascot at MAF. More information about the Trading Card Game can be found on Kai’s Blog und Minty’s Blog (with more photos of the card game and the players).

In my last week with TIASA I’m trying not to get too stressed anymore. My office is almost empty and my work laptop is already in Rotorua, therefor I’m working from home most of the time. After coming home so late from Australia last night, I slept until 9 am and only crawled from my bed to my Mac. Most of my members now know that I’ll be leaving soon, so my main duty is currently to organise last meetings and coffee catch-ups. Today I wanted to get some moving boxes, but I had to find out that the concept of a proper German moving box with advanced flapp-flapp-technology is unheard of in New Zealand. The closest I could get was some document storage box from the Warehouse Stationery, all other boxes have to be taped. While searching for the perfect box I did a coffee stop on the way to Kilbirnie, those who read Sarah’s Blog might recognise the photo… :-) Yeah, I like working like this…

Last week I spent two days in New Plymouth, dealing with collective agreement negotiations. New Plymouth is on the upper left of Wellington, a 40 minutes flight from here. The people there are either farmers (sheep or dairy) or involved in the oil industry, a strange mix. They have one mountain (a former volcano) and nothing else – boring place. In my spare time I went hunting for geocaches and had dinner with my boss. I don’t like New Plymouth that much, but it could be that this is because we weren’t successful with our negotiation, maybe this added to the strange impression New Plymouth always gives me…