I work on the web every day. My job title is “Web Project Coordinator” and while this implies that I’m focused on the web I find myself both professionally and personally doing so much more.

On some days I shoot and edit video, others have me designing a layout for a site or coding some JavaScript. I even manage a few servers and help edit objective-c for an iPhone app! Not to mention my past IT support role has perpetuated my title as ‘computer guy’ around the office and at home.

I freely admit this is a 1st world problem and there are far greater difficulties facing the universe, but on an individual level I find the feeling of not being proficient in one particular area to be a serious mental drain. Why do I feel like a jack of all trades and a master of none?

Some days I feel like a fraud, that everyone I work with (and for) have been duped by smoke and mirrors. That if they ever found out how little I actually know I’d be branded as a fluke, a huckster. Part of me knows this isn’t true. That I’m smart and well received by those I work with, but man because of the Internet I feel like such a moron. Why is this?

It’s because I read. I read a lot.

I pursue Twitter and Google Reader to find out what’s going on all over the world. I read about Adam Lisagor and his awesome video work or Neven Mrgan and his splendid design chops. Boing Boing fills me with oddities to delight the senses and bizarre people I would love to meet.

Guys like Merlin Mann and Jeffery Zeldman make me feel like a sloth with their intelligent and witty writing. Don’t even get me started on Mike Matas‘ photography or Brent Simmons‘ helpful articles on coding. How about Michael Lopp’s awesome guide to being a better geek?

I digress, but you can see how after daily observances of a plethora of cool things one can start comparing themselves and asking, “Why am I not that successful? Why are these people so awesome?”

But I think I’ve figured it out.

I was having a discussion bitching to my wife on the ride home from work. I was withering in fake pain about how I don’t feel like I’m strong in any particular area and how I worry about my future. My wife, as smart as always, pointed out an obvious fact.

I’m comparing myself to 5 different people – of course I’m not going to be as good in each profession as these folks have chosen. I’ve been trying to stretch myself in so many different ways because I’m excited! I want to do everything I read about because it all sounds so interesting.

I realize now that I can’t try to do what 5 separate people have accomplished. I can dabble here, and try something over here, but at the end of the day I need to relax.

My wife reminded me that what is important is that the people I work with enjoy what I can do for them and that I continue to develop as an individual without the pressure to be as good as everyone on the Internet. I often forget that these folks are great at what they do and that what each one of them does is diverse and specific. People rarely blog about their shortcomings – about topics that they’re not proficient in. They talk about their successes, their passions and what cool things they’re doing.

So anytime I’m down in a funk, that I feel like no one would hire me and that I’m some sort of goober, I just need to remember that even thought the Internet can bring so much information to my fingertips that it does nothing to filter – to remind me that I need to take things in one at a time. Admire these things I see and hear, enjoy them, but ultimately be at peace with who I am and where I’m going.

At work we just wrapped up a 12 week walking program called “Walk to Madrid“. The goal of the program was to encourage employees to take a more active role in their physical health. Departments and individuals formed teams of 5 to 10 people and kept track of how many steps they took each week using the provided pedometers.

Teams would select a captain to keep track of their steps and submit them to HQ every week. The program had both a competitive and collaborative set of goals. The first was each team competing to see who could walk the farthest toward our Madrid Campus and the second was to see how far we as a university could walk toward Madrid.

We also setup bi-weekly awards and milestones along the way to encourage teams to go just a little further.

We set out with the idea of maybe getting 200 people involved with about 20 teams total. We purchased water bottles and pedometers and prepared for people to sign up.

After a few weeks (with only really one simple article in our university-wide newsletter) we had over 900 people say they were interested. It total we had around 95 teams – 75 of which actually completed the entire 3 month program.

Entire departments signed up – causing us to split 30-40 member teams in to more manageable chunks. We even had 3 teams from our Madrid campus sign up!*

My role was helping to manage the data from each team and to update the website weekly with the most current results. I created a Google form for each team that was shared with the team captain. Since teams could be between 5 and 10 members we averaged the progress for each team to even things out.**

Each week I calculated the average into miles and updated a chart that used a Google Spreadsheet as a database. It was quite the undertaking and while I could have automated the entire process I felt that it was necessary to at least glance over the incoming steps.

Let me share some stats with you.

• 95 teams and over 900 people
• ~75 of which finished
• Average weekly miles per team - 28.9 miles
• Total Miles walked to (and past) Madrid –  28,287.13 miles
• Total in Steps –  56,574,275.3
• As an entire organization we traveled between St. Louis and Madrid 6 times.
• The total distance traveled is greater than the circumference of the Earth at the equator.

During the weekly updates I would also check to see which teams were the first to past a given milestone. Each week I would unveil a new milestone ‘badge’ I created. We had planned out over more than 20 milestones between St. Louis and Madrid, but only had the chance to use about half.

The 1st place team got as far as the Atlantic Ocean (off the tip of Delaware). I made more graphics that never got used for milestones out past the coast.  Here’s a few of them:

At the end of this crazy experiment we hosted a simple celebration in the recreation center. Around 75 people stopped by and the Vice President of Human Resources spoke a few words.*** We gave out medals to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th place teams. First place got snazzy little runner-topped trophies and took the “Stanley Cup” trophy back to their office to proudly display – until we crown a new 1st place team!

I made a little slide show that ran in the background of the festivities highlighting some of the awards and milestones reached. You can view a Quicktime version here.

It was quite the success and I got to take part in something that helped people become more aware of their physical health and the reflective nature of walking. I’m looking forward to doing it again next year – bigger and better.

Addendum: As I was writing this I discovered that our student newspaper covered the program. Sweet.

*Three of which made it into the top 5 teams. Those Europeans walk A LOT!
**Which means, potentially, that we walked further than the publicized distance.
***And publicly committed us to doing this again next summer!

Nearly a year ago I hired a bright young man by the name of Will Sutton. Over the course of the following months Will and I made this – the official Saint Louis University iPhone App. (Which you are most welcome to download at iphone.slu.edu)

Will initially started from scratch, learning Objective-C and his way around XCode. Even more impressive was the fact that he really never used a Mac much before.

Like a fish to water he quickly had a rough prototype up and running. It was serviceable, but very, shall we say, rickety.

Then we were alerted to the existence of a great open-source app framework created at West Virgina University by then student Jared Crawford.

Will set about updating the framework with SLU specific data sources. We had to meet with legal, create icons and vet our data sources for reliability. With Jared’s awesome framework we were able to quickly turn around a tight first release of what I’m sure will be a vital asset to any SLU student.

Meanwhile the IT department was preparing to launch a mobile portal for some of the very same services. Like some superhero wonder group we joined forces and released our apps simultaneously. Being web-based their app has a much larger reach, but our app allows us to perform some hardware specific feats.

Our next step is to squash a few 1.0 bugs, update the app for the new Retina display and start adding additional features like dining information and athletic reports.

You can read more about the apps from this nice press release.

It’s been a crazy past few weeks. I meant to write about this sooner, but haven’t found the time.

The site not only looks a thousand times better (Bryce!) but the slick new navigation (Mark and Robert!) and the awesome content (Amy!) make this something I’m really proud to have worked on.

Here’s some of my personal favorite things we’ve added:

Consistent Left-hand Navigation – We now have highlighting of the current page you’re on (the little red arrow) and a nestled view of sub-pages. This looks much cleaner and is also a lot easier to navigate.

On the content creation side our users now have a clear understanding of how their site is organized and how to manage their content.

More space (wider layout)

We increased the width of the site by 25% giving us more space for content. Video can now be embedded at full SD resolution and pictures can now be much larger to boot. Along with a consistent placement of our navigation we no longer have to munge content around the right-hand navigation found in the previous design.

Flexible framework – We can now develop new interactive elements

We’re already starting to add new ‘widgets’ to the content of our page. Things like what you see in the screenshot above. News tickers, embedded video carousels, instant response polls, you name it. All due to the new framework we’re using to display our content.

We’re not done adding additional features; like a new search engine, custom departmental banners and a mobile stylesheet!

Thanks again to everyone involved and for those who let me be a part of it. It feels good to be proud of one’s work.

They kept the site running for all of Lent with over 5,000 visitors and daily updates. The project was a success and something that I’m proud of.

As it was nearing it’s end I started studying the analytics and noticed a trend.  It quickly became apparent that the length of time on the site was exceptionally long due to the type of content being written.  The average time on site was over four and a half minutes. Longer than any other site I’ve maintained.

I thought to myself, “Wow, these daily reflections would be about a page and a half if printed.”

And in fact I was correct.

Interested in brushing up my InDesign skills* I looked into self-publishing options and found Lulu.

Learning a bit about how to format my document, page numeration, margins and all the other fun elements of layout I created a 91 page soft cover edition of the Lent website.  All 45 daily reflections seperated by the approprate weekly reflections. The end of the book even contains a list of all the Lenten pledeges that users submitted to the website.

I printed off 4 of these at about $6 a pop. Having enjoyed the professionalism and dedication during this project I gave them as gifts to the key members involved. I think they all liked them – as much as I did while creating it.

*The last time I used InDesign it was called Pagemaker.

A poster for a project I’m working on at work.  A simple design, but I think it came together well.

Created in Illustrator CS4 using Rockwell Bold with a simple fill and some existing photography from the archives. 11×17 prints on matte.

The project hasn’t launched yet, it will tomorrow. So if you’re a SLUser this is a sneak peak!

I’ve returned from Portland, intact if not a little tired.  Portland is a beautiful city, with a lot to see and do.  Their downtown area is about the same size as ours.  Two things struck me as very interesting.

First, the city is by far the cleanest city I’ve ever visited.  I don’t recall seeing any trash on the street.  It actually appeared as thought everyone in the city pitches in to keep the place looking nice.  Yes that is a homeless man walking around in a sleeping bag.  They all stayed to themselves in the city and didn’t bother me at all.  In fact I was quite impressed by their age.  Most of them were younger people.

Second, everything is larger than here in STL.  The sidewalks are twice as wide, the buildings go right up to the edge of each block, and speaking of city blocks, they seem to be larger as well. I think this has to do with the city being so far west. They just have more space to spread out!

The conference went well, we were the last presentation to go (for the day and the entire conference!)  We had a good turn out of about 50 people, all of them were paying attention to us the entire time.  

The next Fall SIGUCCS conference will be next year in St. Louis.  I encourage anyone working in higher education & technology to attend.  I plan on writing another paper for next year myself.

I’d talk more but I’m tired and need to get caught up.  The rest of my photos are embedded below and can be found on my flickr set.  Josh has some photos up on his flickr as well. His take on our adventure can be found on his blog (Parts 1,2,3,4,5)

Today is the Friday before classes start.  Remember to stay in the present and be mindful.

UPDATE: See the post How to Zen an Intel Mac Part III

All credit goes to Jeff Abernathy, Ameer Abdelmalek, Corey Webb and Queanna Jones. I just sat around and watched HD Movie Trailers in a Parallels Virtual Machine.