My Blue Heaven

Italy Trip 2006 : Part 2

10:36 am Mon, 16th October 2006

And the saga continues with Part 2 – arrival in Milano! Enjoy. 🙂

Updates

So I haven’t really blogged any real updates in a while. Life has been busily chugging along. The biggest news of the moment (that I think I only hinted at before) is that I’ve resigned my current job (about 2 weeks ago) because I had a job offer with a very cool creative digital agency. Yep, I finally got that greatly pursued job at a digital agency, after many interviews (and many knock-backs) for many months, at many different digital agencies. For those who have no clue what on earth a digital agency is, and what the fuss is about. Here’s a quoted explanation from the Brand Republic website, which is kinda a news and information hub in the digital agency industry:

“Before defining what a new-media [or creative digital / interactive media] agency is, you really need to distinguish between agency and consultancy. At its most basic, you could say that an agency does things for you — such as build you a website according to your specifications — while a consultancy advises you on the right way to go about something, ie whether you should have a website in the first place. A good analogy comes from the analogue world, where the advertising agency occupies the space between the clientÂ’s business and the clientÂ’s consumers. Selling superior knowledge of the consumer, the client and the immediate competitive environment in which they exist, an ad agency aims to deliver appropriate messaging through appropriate channels. The new-media marketplace has bred a new business model. It is a model that is essentially a fusion between consultancy services, marketing services and production output. ….[New-media agencies] undertake to facilitate and mediate the entire business process, from the conception of an idea or product, to the launch of a digital property (which may be a website) and its appropriate support services. ….There are a myriad of specialisms that the new-media consultancies must embrace and each requires its own set of skills, from business consulting and database management, through to building online brands and website construction.”

So hopefully that is an accurate description of the industry I’m entering into. It is a highly sort after industry for web designers & developers because the type of work is very client project based and highly creative (since we are usually dealing with brands and advertising in the online world). And the environment at these type of companies is always fun, casual, highly energetic and close-knit (totally different from the banking industry, which is usually quite boring for a designer/developer, tho you do get paid more in banking). But there are usually heaps of cool perks like more holidays (eg 24 days), private health insurance, annual bonuses – some agencies I’ve seen do things like company breakfasts or lunches.. free donuts.. massages.. onsite gym.. onsite xbox 360 or pool table or similar fun activity.. onsite subsidised bar.. day off for your birthday.. etc. But they are also usually fairly demanding jobs because they deal with clients.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to this new role – hopefully it’ll be good and I’ll fit in well with the company (it’s a really really small company of only about 13 people.. so far)! It’s kinda a senior web developer role in asp.Net (as well as some front end stuff) – so it’s not a front-end-only role which I’d been going for in all my other interviews. I’m a bit nervous about it because asp.Net is not my strongest skill and I’m not that experienced in it. The interview was kinda funny actually, I only had one interview with them, which kinda went like:

Me: “Honestly, I’m not sure if my asp.Net skills are good enough for this role”

CEO: “Well I think they are”

Me: “Oh.. er ok then”

They are planning on expanding with more permanent staff, and less contractors – so hopefully they’ll bring in more (better) asp.Net developers than me, so I can perhaps concentrate on more front-end stuff.. we’ll see how things go. (Strangely they don’t have a dedicated front-end developers team like all the other agencies seem to – the designer also does the html/css which is rare I’ve found). Anyway I will also be able to have client interaction, which is a big bonus for me because I want to gain experience in that side of things. Perhaps even move to that side, away from technical. We’ll see if I’m good at it first! The only down point is that they’re not located in London.. they are down in Edenbridge, just outside the M25 – which is like, in Kent!!! From Croydon, its not too bad, only abt 1/2 hour train (with only 2 trains an hour). But to get to central london takes full hour train journey.. ouch. Oh well, I think it’s worth it with higher salary, more perks/holidays and less working hours!! (9 – 5:30pm.. woohoo!)

Ok enough about work! Ooh I went shopping on the weekend. I pretty much spent my entire winter clothes budget on a beeeeautiful cream autumn/winter coat from Mango and 3 autumn/winter skirts from Topshop. Pics to come. 🙂

My official statement on MySpace

In response to the exploded phenomenon of myspace – with every pop artist, band, model, actress, actor, man, woman, child and their dog now having a myspace page:

“Myspace sucks. From a web developers viewpoint (and myspace member since early 2004) myspace is a poorly designed site (who on earth came up with their page designs??) with little functional benefit and runs at a snails pace. It’s full of noobs who “pimp” their profile pages with extremely poorly designed hacked code that will crash ones browser at any given time (way too much power in the wrong hands). ItÂ’s a pure waste of web space and an eye sore to look at most of the time. If you want a blog, use blogger or other similar sites. If you want a web site, make your own (it’s really not that hard). If you want a photo gallery, use Flickr. If you want a video host, use Youtube. The community thing doesnÂ’t work either – everyone has about a 1000 friends, most of whom are scanity clad members of the opposite sex. So in summary.. the functionality sucks, the design sucks (both profile and admin pages), and the community sucks. Did I leave anything out?”

TheWineKone sums it up nicely in this amusing video blog. 😀

Current listening :: “Milestones” – Miles Davis

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