I am looking for jobs, again, after two fulfilling years in my last job and school.
Graduation Date: June 2008
Desired Location: Boston, MA
Desired Job Level: Entry or intermediate
Desired Job Titles: Web/Java/.Net (Application) Developer
Resume: resume.pdf
Interests: I am specialized on front-end web development and it’s also what brings me the most enjoyment. I have gained sound understanding of JavaScript frameworks, especially Dojo, during my internship at IBM. I would evaluate my skills on it to be at least intermediate to advanced. However, I can also take on many other development tasks and would like to gain concrete experience on them.
Technical Skills:
- Proficiency in Java, C/C++, Python and C#.NET
- JavaScript, Ajax, Dojo framework, XHTML, CSS, SVG/VML
- PHP, JSP and Servlet, ASP.NET
- MySQL, DB2, database in general; certified for DB2 LUW8.1
- Graphics/Flash design and product prototyping; 3D Graphics, OpenGL
- Software Engineering: Requirement Engineering, Interaction Design, and Design Patterns
- Computation algorithms and complexity theories
- Linux, Windows
“… I am specialized on front-end web development …”
General Skills:
(These are probably too common and provide little insight, but I’ll put them here anyways, since I don’t have to worry about the length of a blog entry)
- Ability to work in teams or individually with minimum supervision
- Ability to pick up new technologies and concepts quickly
- Awareness of software development processes and models
- Awareness of latest technology trends and directions
- Good interpersonal communication skills, both written and verbal
- Interests in user experience design; ability to work with details
Workshop 2 - Social Computing, Best Practices
By computing, I thought they were to introduce some “algorithms” for computing/collecting users’ online behaviours. However, it turned out to be a general discussion about current status of the web. Maybe I am too much a “practicalist”.
One thing I found I can brag about is that I could finally get ideas on most of the issues being discussed…even though they’re mostly well-known news, the who acquried who with billions stories. Because of that, I didn’t learn a lot new from it, except that YouTube’s copyright headache, (now forwarded to Google), might not be as fatal as I thought. Instead of suing online video sharing services, the media corps. tend to take the advantage to market themselves via these platforms.
After the point I heard this, there was nothing notably important.
Lunch Buffet
There is lunch buffet every day. Some people went there around noon just to get a free lunch. But I don’t like it at all.
Whatelse
There is actually a lot more interesting workshops. There was an all-day long hands-on AJAX tutorial, covered both the basics and Dojo toolkit. However, most workshops were about IBM products/technology/concepts. They had some really nice one-day hands-on tutorials on most IBM software products. The only problems is that when I tried to register, they were full! Hmmm….next time, if ever, I’ll be an early bird.
CASCON 2006 had spanned 4 days of last week and I was able to attend two workshops, out of some dozens.
Like any conferences, I found it not that a fascinating event, but yet there is always something new you would find useful or inspirational to hear about. I did.
Workshop 1 - Writing for the web
The workshop introduced audience some “facts” about online user behaviours and I found those are good matches of myself.
Some examples/facts from the workshop hand-out
Characteristics of Web Readers
- Impatience
- Lack of time and leisure
- Purposefulness/Goal Orientation
Web users like
- Facts
- Well Designed sites
…dislike
- Marketing/overly hyped language
- Scrolling
How user approaches Web pages
- Flit from page to page, scan for content they found informative
- Scan in the page for microcontent (headers, titles, linktext, highlights, etc)
- Users scan in “E”/”F” patterns (focus on first few lines, eyeballing from left to right, then scroll down a bit and scan from left to right again)
A brief note
From these examples, we should have been able to summarize some useful techniques to facilitate readers’ scanning works.
For example I put a section title for each few paragraphs so that readers can briefly get an idea of what I’ve been covered. It’s not 100% effective but it would help.
Why should writers allow users to scan their articles (i.e. allowing users to bypass the “great entry I’ve written”)?
If you don’t provide readers a good scanning mechanism, they will skip the entire entry all together and move along. Again, users are “time-starved” (Gerry McGovern) and would not be loyal to every single entry you wrote.
User can “sniff out” the Scent of Information (Jared Pool)
This is the single most interesting term I’ve heard from the workshop. As user scan, they will stop at certain pages that they think has the “scent” they expected. Then as they drill down into each candidate pages, the pages that have “stronger scents” will be picked. However, if they lose the scent, they will go backwards (or quit).
It’s an abstract analog of how users find their information out of billions of pages, but you know what he is talking about once you hear it.
Some Sources
-End of Part 1-
Entry Top //
No Comments »