My Last Day at Bonnier Corporation

January 11, 2013

Today marks my final day at Bonnier Corporation. It has been a great 2 years of working in this fast-paced environment where I have grown exponentially in my skills as a front end developer.

It has been gratifying to work within an agile process. The projects ship within days or weeks of the time that I have touched them.

I have appreciated working with so many smart, talented, and hard working people. I respect that our team cares about doing things right and coming up with solutions that are solid.

So Many to Thank

• James Winslow – I worked with him the longest. He has been an incredible teammate. We have made a lot of magic together for SAVEUR. It is hard to express appreciation for someone who you have worked so well with and helped bring out the best in you.
• Anique Halliday  (online producer of SAVEUR) – What a wonderful person to work for (with). She involved us in early in each project and valued the input that we brought to the table. She was also quick to give praise. She really created an environment that motivated my best work.
• Emily Jorgensen – I really liked working with Emily. She is a great project manager who empowers the team their best. She brings a lot of great insights into a project. And she makes things a whole lot more fun.
• Helen Rosner and everyone else on the SAVEUR team – You guys have built a great brand and it was a privilege to be a part of your success.
• Bridget Gigi, Kathy Allender, Melissa Wykle, Matt Law, and Kyle Plonchak – I have really enjoyed working with Parenting over this past year. This is a great team helping to build Bonnier’s most popular brand.
• Michellina Jones, Trey Dear, Carol Henry Lee, Rochelle Free, and Erika Relic – Our project managers rock. It has been a pleasure and a joy to work with all of you.
• Anne Easterling, for being my partner in crime and for fielding so many questions from me. I learned a lot working with Anne and always appreciated her professionalism.
• Cody Craven – Thanks for being such a great teammate. We made a great team working on projects for American Photo, PopPhoto.com, PopSci.com, and many others. I appreciated that he understood enough about what I need in the code in order to pull off my part. He set me up for success time and time again.
• Justin Wine, Keith Ort, Jim Elder, and Riad Kilani – I interviewed almost all of you and I am so glad that we added you to the team. I appreciate the hard work you put in day in and day out. Thanks for another pair of eyes to help me when I am stumped. And thanks for seeking me out so I could help you. Special thanks to Jim who has helped me improve my JavaScript skills.
• Bonnier designers – There have been a lot of different ones that I have worked with. I have really enjoyed implementing many of their designs, especially on SAVEUR.
• Sherilyn Keaton, Mary Jo Morelly, Rafael Sardina, and Chris Hill – I appreciate your leadership and thanks for giving me an opportunity to be part of this team. I appreciate the warm send off you have given me.
• Everyone else on the development team that I did not mention by name – It has been great working with you guys. I appreciate your hard work and commitment to doing it the best way possible.

Sampling of my work over last 2 years

SAVEUR

SAVEUR Video Festival – The last project I worked on for SAVEUR.

SAVEUR Cookie Advent Calendar – I wrote a post about this project a couple of weeks ago. Check out the 2011 version (recreation), which was also a lot of fun to work on.

SAVEUR Food Blog Awards –  I applied a CSS trick to make a more elegant solution on the voting page.

SAVEUR Mobile Site – I built this site using Mobify. The layout has a flexible foundation so it will work across a variety of devices although the scope of the project focused on iPhone, which is the largest audience on mobile for SAVEUR.

Parenting

I worked on a variety of different projects for Parenting this year.

Digital Days

Digital Days – The first site that I used Sass and modular CSS architecture.

American Photo

One of the projects I am most proud of. We built this site under an “extremely aggressive” timeline (words of my project manager). I built my part of the site in a week. It was a great job of teamwork from everyone involved.

Science Illustrated

This project stands out because of the rich visual design. I had a lot of fun executing it and making it happen. I applied a trick that I learned Roger Johansson for styling ordered list items.

Sound + Vision

This is the second big redesign project I was involved in at Bonnier. It was the first Bonnier site I used font embedding. And there were a lot of fun challenges to solve to make this one happen.

PopPhoto

This was my first major project at Bonnier. I really cut my teeth on this one. I enjoyed working with the development team on this one. It was a great team effort.

So What’s Next

Come back next week and I will share with my next great adventure is going to be.