mindgraffiti

I have always like writing, be it poetry, blogging, or writing a letter longhand. As far back as I can remember, my teachers often lectured about the importance and great benefits reaped by from a well written [insert writing assignment here].

While I do not engage in formal correspondence with the Web Services customers on a daily basis, I am required to write proposal letters to my boss when requesting new software, hardware or research materials. I must admit, I am more motivated to write a proposal letter now (when the threat of a “no” stands in the way) than I was in college (when the threat was only a “C”).

Here are a couple of the letters - okay, e-mails in truth - I have written and their results. This first one I wrote after less than two weeks of working there. While our network administrator does an excellent job keeping our main resources (hardware and software) up-to-date, I found the reference resources severely lacking.

Hi Rich,

Ray’s old Flash books are too out of date to be of use, so I would like to request these resources:

Flash MX 2004 ActionScript Bible by Robert Reinhardt and Joey Lott
This guide allows to me to quickly reference code in a pinch, so I don’t spend half an hour trying to find it on the message boards.

Flash MX 2004 Bible by Robert Reinhardt and Snow Dowd
This one will help me with optimizing my Flash projects and build more sophisticated animations. Our clients will already notice the faster downloads for the pages with the Flash banner ads I have recently built, but with this book I can continue to meet their growing expectations.

Essential ActionScript 2.0 by Colin Moock
Higher level coding so we can build some of the web applications we were discussing today. (Like the live-edit photo slideshow!)

Object Oriented Programming for Actionscript by Hall et al.
Developer’s book. Will help me combine Flash with XML, so the applications’ variables built will cooperate with the web.

Thanks,
Thuy

Since I was still known as “the new girl,” I expected my requests would not be a priority, and the web department would buy perhaps one or two of these, eventually. So I listed them by order of importance and explained why I would benefit immediately from their use.

Thinking about my request from my boss’s standpoint, I considered the pros and cons. Con: these books are not cheap. So I referenced links from Amazon in an effort to keep the cost down for our company. Usually when books are requested, they are bought from Borders or the local bookstore. Pro: each book lists immediate ways they will be put to use. One will enhance my productivity, another help fulfill customer demands and expectations, and the third and fourth were primers to help me with future projects we had already discussed.

Because they were less expensive on Amazon and each one was a reasonable, relevant request, Rich ordered all four. They arrived about a week after I had asked for them.

While it was easy to write an informal request to my boss, the next request was more involved. It was a request for both Tim and me. I didn’t know if he would make the final decision on this one or pass it along up the chain. I wrote a formal request and attached it to my e-mail. Sending it as an attachment served two purposes: it would make it easier to pass along the request, and if/when forwarded, the body copy would remain clean. (No forward arrows, no editing required to change who it addresses, etc.) My audience could be just my boss, or it could be his supervisor and the company president. Because of this, I wrote it with full explanations rather than assuming my audience knew what technology I was speaking about.

With a new year comes new and updated web technologies. As I’m sure you are aware, one of the most important announcements for the upcoming year in the web services industry is the update to Cascading Style Sheets version 2.

Currently, Cascading Style Sheets version 1 can be used only to format the text on our customers’ web pages. It keeps the text clean, neat and easy to read. Consequently, it keeps our customers web sites looking professional.

Sonic Training is holding several workshops in order to teach web service developers how to use the newest features available in Version 2. This training will allow us to offer our customers updated features and the best service possible.

How does version 2 help our customers?

• Version 2 will allow us to build layouts quickly. Right now we must use tables to build layouts. After learning Version 2, it will help us build the customer’s layout in less than half an hour. That is 8 times faster than today!
• Updates will be more efficient. Once we understand the concepts, changing a web site design using Version 2 will take approximately 1/5th the time compared to using traditional tables.
• Web pages designed using Version 2 will load 2 times faster than traditional tables - this is very important for our dial-up customers.
• Web pages made with Version 2 are more accessible to people with disabilities (color blindness, poor vision, etc)

Who would see an immediate benefit from this style of Web site building?

• TC Ranch
• Gardiner Angus Ranch
• Champion Hill
• Schaff Angus Valley
• Cotton & Associates
• All Association sites

This is just a sample of the Web sites that would benefit from us learning this procedure. With time we would plan to move them all into this new manner of design, so that all of our customers can enjoy the best service the Web Services team has to offer.

Workshop Information:
Company: Sonic Training
Price: $595 per person for an intensive, 2-day course with hands-on training
Location: Kansas City, MO
Dates: November 28-29, 2006 and January 23-24, 2007

I spent two days double-checking my research, sweating the grammar and tone of the letter. These were high stakes for the web team: in the past five years, none from this department had been sent to training sessions. While this workshop was fairly cheap when compared to other departments’ training sessions, I was not sure of the outcome. I addressed every resistance I could think of: 1) “She’s fresh out of college and he’s an experienced web developer. Can’t they learn this on their own? Why doesn’t she already know this stuff?” Because it was just released; because it deals with something new and unfamiliar - neither of us have ever built CSS layouts before. 2) “Is there an immediate benefit? Who benefits?” This is not just some random technology that would be cool to play with. Yes, the company has to pay for the workshop, but the people who truly benefit from us learning it is our customers.

As a newbie who did not understand how things worked at this particular company, there were things I just could not forsee. After my boss read the proposal, he caught some important details I missed. Busy season for the company starts in December and ends close to May. I had to go back and find dates that it would be possible for the both of us to be gone and not cripple the web department (we are the only two developers in the web department). Lucky for Tim and me, Rich wanted us to learn CSS2, and said November was a reasonable, possible time. Late November was the earliest available date, and January was the next, so he had me include it too, just in case. He was also familiar with each of our customers and their websites. He knew who would gain the most from this new technology, and helped me write the list of customers to use as examples.

After adding his insights, Rich sent the e-mail along to his supervisor with his seal of approval and a strong recommendation for the workshop. Although I do not know what exactly was said, I know he explained how he would manage the work orders while both of us were absent for two days.

Two weeks later a decision was e-mailed to Rich. The workshop was approved. We have been updating our 200+ websites to CSS layouts ever since.

The most recent request I have written was not as significant as the workshop proposal, but still important in its own right. I was growing frustrated with GoLive!’s built-in FTP manager, and Tim had suggested I try the 30 day trial of Transmit. I was really impressed with its performance. While we had licenses to use Fetch, I was really biased towards Transmit. Knowing Tim had worked with Fetch as well, I asked which he preferred, hoping to balance out my bias. He had used both before and in his experience found Transmit the better of the two.

Rich,

I’d like to request some software: Transmit 3, an FTP manager application. We have been using GoLive!’s FTP manager to send our files for some time now, and I noticed GoLive! can’t handle the large number of files sent to our server.

GoLive! tends to crash when I have to send Gardiner Angus Ranch files to the server, or slows down to a crawl. Also, I cannot use my computer while GoLive! sends files or it crashes. Since we are acquiring more and more sites (new and takeover sites) that have lots of files, I thought Transmit 3 would be a good idea. It uploads very quickly, does not crash when I handle large file sizes, runs in the background so I can continue to work, and is recommended by other web service professionals.

I know we have user licenses for Fetch, but it will not provide the features we need, nor will it send our files as quickly. With Transmit 3, Tim and I will no longer be sitting and waiting for 10 minutes for all the files to transfer, and can move on to our next packet with ease.

Thanks for considering it.

Thuy

What made this letter different from the other two was the fact that Transmit was not a true necessity like the reference books or a training session. It was simply a preference. I could continue to use GoLive! or adopt Fetch, but Transmit really makes our work easier to complete. Two days later the e-mail arrived with license codes to unlock Transmit. Very nice.