Database:

Finally our database is ready! After weeks of building and tweaking, we now will manage all of your projects online. You can log in to give us your project outline, and then monitor the progress of your pages. You can view the URLs to your pages as they go up, and log back in to any previous project. You can reference what edu links we have placed, and when. You can leave us messages on your project blog.

And behind the scenes, I get to do the happy dance because it is managing all of our staff, keeping the project flowing and efficient with minimal interference on my part. I must give a plug to Victor Raff and RaffSoftware who built this system for us. His work is amazing, he somehow made creating a database a joyful experience. (this may be the first time someone referred to database creation as joyful??) I would ask for something that I just KNEW would be impossible or too expensive, and every time “Yes, Julie, we can do that. “ It was MAGIC. And he was so very patient in explaining everything to me, asking very detailed questions to be sure the system would operate exactly how we needed it to.

Have you ever built a database? Share your experience with me. I found it to be fun, challenging. Required a lot of brain scratching. Picturing of scenarios and what-ifs. I think in my next life I want to be Victor.

New Website:

Our new site will be ready soon, with a new logo and look. Another wonderful experience with a web professional, we are crazy about our new designer, Gary Leung. We are pretty sure he is psychic, because he continues to show us designs that we love on the first mockup. What is even  more special about Gary is that in addition to being talented, an amazing eye for design, but he is also a great communicator, and an organized worker. Anyone that has worked with designers and artists knows this is a rare combination.

Blogging software:

We recently finished a customization on our blogging software. This is pretty much behind the scenes stuff, but it manages the uploading of our content, backs up all of your edu pages, and gives us the ability to move or edit content very easily. Just one more way we are different from the rest, we are in this for the long haul. And as luck would have it, we are working with a third really amazing talented programmer. Three people in a row that just blow us away. We suspect that Bob is a robot alien, only here to observe human life, because he somehow produces what we ask for within hours. Or he may just be like us, glued to our screen day and night, working because we can’t help it. Bob, can you make it do this? And instead of replying “Yes” he replies “Yes, it is done.”

I re-read this entry, and it probably seems like we agreed to give a testimonial or plug for these guys, but really that did not come up. I am truly just that excited to have done work each of them, lucky to have found them.