Well, I’m back from my week in Florida and my week in Memphis and spent the last 2 weeks playing catch-up at work, at home, in my social life, etc. I had a complete blast during my vacation and the conference. It’s always so hard to come back to work and “the real world” after such a great time away. I’m already trying to plan my next vacation and use the free flight vouchers that we got for switching our flight. I’m thinking Vegas perhaps? Any recommendations are welcome.
Since I’ve been back from the conference, I have been writing session summaries for Tech Writer Today Magazine, so I apologize, but I haven’t been blogging as much. Things have been pretty crazy. We just launched a new software release at work and we are in the beginning stages of development in a new application. So much to do!
Since I am new to software, I am really enjoying seeing the entire product development life cycle. This project is the first one that I will see start-to-finish. I’m learning a lot about writing requirements and use cases, as well as doing wireframing (mockups) and designing the User Interface. I love that since I work for such a small company, I am an integral member of the UI design team and get to have a say and an impact on what the application will do and how it will look.
I started using the program Balsamiq to do the mockups of the UI. I’m finding the program to be incredibly easy and fun to use. It’s a simple interface with a ribbon at the top that contains all of the UI elements and you just drag and drop. It’s perfect for UI design because it isn’t so specific that developers will get hung up on the details of every little thing.
Aside from the fun new things I get to do at work, my husband and I have enjoyed some nice, unseasonably warm weather in Boston. We had a few days in the 70’s and even 80’s (gasp!) before things cooled back down to the 40’s. It’s given me hope that this Spring and Summer will be quite enjoyable here and will feel more like home to us.
Write, Edit, Repeat...Publish 
Oops…pressed send before I checked my rather original spelling of “summaries.”
Good to read your blog…wondered why you went dark the last week or so. Now I remember you were tagging your vacation to the end of the conference! And you managed to get free tickets out of all that, too. Most efficient! Would love to see the sumamrties of the conference you are writing as they may serve my fall class as good examples!