About a month ago, I decided to take advantage of a few minutes between classes to hit the head. Upon walking inside, I found a friend of mine and one of my old professors, Professor Ormond, having a conversation. I said a quick hello, and then went about my business.
Listening in, I noticed that Ormond was telling my friend Nathan about the SkillsUSA contest, which is a nationwide contest that recognizes a variety of different technical skills at both high school and post-secondary levels. Ormond was trying to convince Nathan to sign up for the Web Design portion of the contest, as nobody had entered the competition at the university level, and whoever signed up would automatically be competing in the statewide competition.
After washing my hands (of course) and sliding past them toward the door, Nathan promptly said, "I don't know anything about web design...but Jeff does!" Ormond's face lit up, and before I knew what was going on, I was being dragged into his office, and was presented with numerous packets of information regarding the competition. Needless to say, I was about forty-five minutes late for my next class.
The contest involved designing a website from scratch for a client, who would be presenting the company's web design-related dilemma, and we would need to prepare and present a solution. This content was unique to many of the other IT-related competitions, as it required the participant to work with a partner.
Luckily for me, I work at a web hosting and design company called Marketecture now, at which I design and support websites on a daily basis. I entered this job, already possessing a pretty solid knowledge of web programming languages such as HTML and CSS, but my company actually paid for all of us to become certified with W3Schools in both languages.
Not only that, but I work with a fellow Utah Valley University student, Travis Harley, who is very skilled when it comes to the design aspect of websites, such as using tools like Photoshop and others to create magnificent-looking designs for clients. I asked him to be my partner in the competition, and he readily accepted.
Over the subsequent weeks, we prepared vigorously for the competition, studying up on our coding skills and gathering the equipment necessary to participate. For example, the rules instructed us that we would need to supply a hub or switch with two patch cables, in order to provide communication between our two laptops, which we also had to provide. I purchased a pretty nice switch on Amazon, but it ended up not making a difference, because the rules changed soon after, allowing us to have a WiFi connection during the competition.
This was a great relief to us, as it meant that we could draw upon the previous sites that we had created in designing the website for the competition itself.
The design portion of the contest took place at 8am on Thursday, March 29th at Salt Lake Community College. Travis lives in Saratoga Springs, which is on the way to the campus, so we carpooled up there together. Upon arriving, we were introduced to the client, who explained that he needed a blog site created. We were told that we just needed to design the home page of the website, depicting how it would be laid out, and not requiring us to create a functioning blog.
We were provided with some images from the company to use on the website, and commenced our work about an hour later. We immediately put our heads together to decide on a layout and wireframe of the website itself, which I drew out on a notebook that I had brought with me. I then began the coding of the actual site from scratch, using Microsoft's Web Expression 4 software, while Travis worked with Photoshop to design the background and banner images.
We worked extremely hard, continually modifying our designs to accommodate new ideas and concepts, and by the end of our time limit had a very professional website designed, complete with a JavaScript-powered animated main navigation menu, and an image rotator as the banner, which is Travis' specialty.
In essence, I was very proud of our work. When our time drew to a close, we placed the website on a thumb drive and copied it to the presentation laptop. We were then told to report the next day at the same time to present to the client, along with some other professionals in the web design field.
The presentation actually went quite well. Travis explained his reasoning behind the color scheme and designs that he chose, taking the role of web designer, while I assumed the role of web developer and described the coding behind the project. I also displayed the code itself, which I was very proud of, having placed many comments and indentations to make it very readable and understandable to any outsider.
Later that night was the award ceremony. We sat in an auditorium filled with people from high schools, colleges, and universities all over the state of Utah. At long last, our division was called, and we waited with bated breath to hear what our ranking would be.
To our surprise, we took second place in the competition, which to me was a tremendous accomplishment. We stood on a podium not unlike those used during the Olympics, and were presented with silver medals. We were then directed backstage, where we were presented with......a thumb drive.
Apparently each division had its own sponsor, and ours was Adobe. They had a prize, which was any Adobe software package of the winner's choice, but only for those that placed first. But, although I didn't receive any free software, I was still extremely grateful for the work that I had done, and felt very proud of our accomplishment. If nothing else, it proved that I was able to take a task that, at first, sounded impossible, or at least extremely daunting, and follow through with it until the end.
Overall, it was a great experience, and I'm glad that I was able to be a part of it.
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