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Let me first apologize for the oversized picture of my head on this post...

Whenever I visit a new city, I love to get up early before I have to meet with clients or colleagues and take a stroll to get a good look around. With some headphones and a cup of coffee on a brisk spring morning in Portland, I am ready to to tackle the day. Worship music turned on full blast as I sing walking through the streets is a precious time spent with God. I lift up prayers for keeping my family safe while away and for the oppurtinity to plant some seeds in the hearts of whoever I  may meet this week.

These past few weeks, I have been repeating this thought in my head to many colleagues and clients on several different projects. A lot of sites that I have been working with have been very flat sites with very little interaction. By "flat" I mean that the most exciting interaction you get on the site is that when you hover over the navigation links, they turn from blue to black. You click on a link from a static page and it takes you to another static page. No glitz, no glam, no nothing just the content. Yes, this might be effective and has minimal usability issues, which is extremely important. 

There has been a lot of discussions over the years about which open source Content Management System is the best. The 3 in question, are always Drupal, WordPress, and Joomla. As if there is one system that is truly better than another. By better, we are talking about performance, usability, UI, integration, modules or plugins, customization, flexibility, and probably coolest logo. Well...coolest logo has to go to Drupal with no question.

One thing I love about my job is that I get to consistently work with diferent people (stakeholders/customers) on projects. It satisfies my constant urge to meet new people and discover new ways of doing things. Over the years I noticed that during the information architecture phase, I consitently hear the question "Can't we write text that tells people how to do something on the site?" This is a fair question because it seems very logical to write text that gives people instruction. Like an instruction manual for the Web page. It's helpful, right? 

My company (Room 316 Studios) created new features and added new sections of the Dr. Seuss site using Drupal CMS. We worked with an amazing company called Big Bad Tomato who originally built the site and created all of the flash movies. It was a pleasure working with them on this project.

Check out the Room 316 Studios blog to get more information on how we did it using Drupal.

Thanks for all the activity and discussions on LinkedIn regarding my post on Drupal Panels. My e-mail just about blew up!

If you missed it, you can see the blog post on my company site here I just want to Get Panel Crazy.

I do most of my development and design work on a Macbook Pro, but I also work on a Dell Precision M4600.

Here is a list of the various apps that I use.

As 2011 comes to a close, I want to thank everyone who has been a help with juggling all the craziness with me. This year has been a wild one. Yet God has done some amazing things. This year, I find myself wearing many hats, all of which are fairly new to me. For instance, I am a husband, a father of 1 year-old McKayla, a Web Project Manger at Esri in Redlands, a student at The Rock Bible College, a volunteer minister at The Rock, a guitarist and singer of the Christian punk band "The Rekoning", and a business owner of Room 316 Studios, a Web design and consulting firm (http://www.room316studios.com). God is good and has blessed me with an amazing family and support system of friends. I love you all. Josh