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What happened in 2009 stays in 2009
OK, the title is a bit foreboding. "What happened in 2009 stays in 2009"
I have to say that 2009 ROCKED!
When I look back at my old blogpost that reflects on 2008 I realize quickly that it keeps getting better and better. We end the year with TYLER at age 13, Chloe at 11, Avery at 10, and Alexa at 9!
Tyler as a teenager is SO different from the preteen guy we used to know. With God's blessings it will only get better though. :-) He played Mr. Salt in the Belfrey JR Production of "Willy Wonka." He wore a suit WAY too big for him and acted snobby and rich. IT WAS A RIOT!
Chloe continues to excel in the Indianapolis Children's Choir. This year she sang in the Choir that backed up the Butler University orchestra for the Butler Ballet production of Nutcracker.
Avery got brace$ and i$ being a very good boy about the frequent vi$it$ and tightening of the expander. The deci$ion for brace$ wa$ made becau$e he didn't have enough room for the adult teeth coming in.
Alexa continues to grow and grow. She continues to enjoy dance lessons and is considering joining the Indianapolis Children's Choir next year. Her youthful zeal keeps the whole house young! Her love for animals has her wanting to be a vet.
The whole family has been pretty healthy this year. We had a few casts on wrists/hands. Tyler got a multi-tool for Christmas and within 30hours had 5 stitches in one finger. :-) He's fine though now.
For Christmas we all went to Great Wolf Lodge in Cincinnati OH. We absolutely wore ourselves out on the many water slides and pools. Mom and dad REALLY enjoyed the hot-tub!
When the snow comes to stay, we look VERY forward to using our PARK-PASS to visit Ft. Ben Park. They have a lovely sledding hill that can handle a lot of traffic.
Employment:
I started the year off at SlingShotSEO. We learned a great deal from each other for 5 months.
Then I returned to independent work and completed a large project with www.BrazenCareerist.com
After that I accepted a full time position with Duo Consulting inc. In Chicago. I work remotely from home and I travel to Chicago about every other week for a few days. We just launched a giant site for a 4 office law firm. It was my 1st project with DUO and the client is very pleased. I also do a lot of training at Duo; both for internal and for the community. My position is equal parts development and marketing/biz-dev. 2010 will be a blast with DUO!
Training:
This year I delivered Drupal presentations all over the country:
DrupalCamps::: in Madison WI, LosAngeles CA, Atlanta GA, Chicago IL.
The CMS Expo::: in Evanston IL
The Ohio Linux Fest::: in Columbus OH.
Do It With Drupal::: in New Orleans
This year I also delivered 6 online training sessions to recipients including University IT staff, private individuals, corporate IT staff.
For next year I'm expecting to revisit the events of 2009 AND add the SouthEast LinuxFest and DrupalCamps in Orlando FL and Nashville TN, and DrupalCon in San Francisco CA.
SEE YOU NEXT YEAR!!
Family
Mrs. Vann [aka Michelle] continues to homeschool our 4 children. We all crackup everytime she has to explain that she "doesn't work" yet we all know that raising the 4 Vann kids is more than a full time job. Oh yah... She takes pretty good care of Mr. Vann as well. THAT's her 2nd fulltime job! She totally supports my travels and shares in my excitement over the fact that I have a career that is in high-demand AND that I actually love! What a blessing she is!Tyler as a teenager is SO different from the preteen guy we used to know. With God's blessings it will only get better though. :-) He played Mr. Salt in the Belfrey JR Production of "Willy Wonka." He wore a suit WAY too big for him and acted snobby and rich. IT WAS A RIOT!
Chloe continues to excel in the Indianapolis Children's Choir. This year she sang in the Choir that backed up the Butler University orchestra for the Butler Ballet production of Nutcracker.
Avery got brace$ and i$ being a very good boy about the frequent vi$it$ and tightening of the expander. The deci$ion for brace$ wa$ made becau$e he didn't have enough room for the adult teeth coming in.
Alexa continues to grow and grow. She continues to enjoy dance lessons and is considering joining the Indianapolis Children's Choir next year. Her youthful zeal keeps the whole house young! Her love for animals has her wanting to be a vet.
The whole family has been pretty healthy this year. We had a few casts on wrists/hands. Tyler got a multi-tool for Christmas and within 30hours had 5 stitches in one finger. :-) He's fine though now.
For Christmas we all went to Great Wolf Lodge in Cincinnati OH. We absolutely wore ourselves out on the many water slides and pools. Mom and dad REALLY enjoyed the hot-tub!
When the snow comes to stay, we look VERY forward to using our PARK-PASS to visit Ft. Ben Park. They have a lovely sledding hill that can handle a lot of traffic.
Church
We continue to fellowship at Horizon Christian Fellowship North. With all my travels I haven't been involved in any of the ministries. I haven't played electric guitar in a worship band in over 3 years. It's been about 2 years since I ran a sound board. I pray that 2010 sees me more involved even though it will likely be in new ways.Work
What can I say? besides.... DRUPAL DRUPAL DRUPAL DRUPAL DRUPAL!!!Employment:
I started the year off at SlingShotSEO. We learned a great deal from each other for 5 months.
Then I returned to independent work and completed a large project with www.BrazenCareerist.com
After that I accepted a full time position with Duo Consulting inc. In Chicago. I work remotely from home and I travel to Chicago about every other week for a few days. We just launched a giant site for a 4 office law firm. It was my 1st project with DUO and the client is very pleased. I also do a lot of training at Duo; both for internal and for the community. My position is equal parts development and marketing/biz-dev. 2010 will be a blast with DUO!
Training:
This year I delivered Drupal presentations all over the country:
DrupalCamps::: in Madison WI, LosAngeles CA, Atlanta GA, Chicago IL.
The CMS Expo::: in Evanston IL
The Ohio Linux Fest::: in Columbus OH.
Do It With Drupal::: in New Orleans
This year I also delivered 6 online training sessions to recipients including University IT staff, private individuals, corporate IT staff.
For next year I'm expecting to revisit the events of 2009 AND add the SouthEast LinuxFest and DrupalCamps in Orlando FL and Nashville TN, and DrupalCon in San Francisco CA.
New Year's Prayer
Lord, I am SO thankful for 2009 being so good to my whole family. I could never count all the blessings of career, family, friends, health etc. I pray for the continued health of my family and for the success of my employer, and safety in my travels. Amen.SEE YOU NEXT YEAR!!
Who is Doug Vann
My blogsite has been up since April 2008 and I'm finaly adding a page to explain who I am...
BIO
Born 1971 and raised in Indianapolis Indiana. Graduated Warren Central 1990. Married my beautiful wife in 1996 now we have 4 children aged 8 to 13.
GEEK STORY
Got a Commodore64 in 1983. Taught myself to program in BASIC. Wrote a database app for my church in 1984 and a "what color is your parachute" app for my highschool in 1986. Took Fortran and Pascal classes in highschool.
INTERRUPTION
In 1987 I joined the StageCrew at my highscool. They had a $6 Million theatre that was 4 yrs old. I ran lights and sound and a/v equipment and loved it. It fed my inner-nerd just fine. In 1988 I was chosen to stage-manage the highschool children's production of Wind in the Willows It was a success and only increased my desire to keep doing it. Months later I was also managing the highscool musical production of WestSide Story. I enjoyed all aspects of theatre; Opera, Ballet, touring musicals, kids productions, recitals, choirs, orchestras, ALL of it!
ENTER THE UNION
IN 1997 I joined the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Motion Picture Operators and Allied Crafts. Now I'm a journeyman member. While I'm a nerdy-techy type, much of the work we do is brute force lifting, pushing, pulling, etc. Once the show is built by dozens of people it's time for a select few to engage their brains and operate the spotlights or electronic equipment that make the show a success. Infrequent, sporadic work had me looking elsewhere which lead me back to programming!
ENTER THE "DRUPAL!"
In 2007 I was working for the largest tanning bed manufacturer in the world. I answered calls from private owners, salon owners, and servicers from across the nation. I complained about the intranet and website and was granted permission to buildout some fun and useful projects in PHP and MySQL.
When the company got purchased many were shown the door. I received my happy news 2yrs ago from the day that I am writing this page!
I was looking for a job and I saw a puzzling ad on CraigsList for an OpenSource Developer. I took the job and turned an ASP project into a JOOMLA project, but when JOOMLA proved inadequate I accepted a bid from a DRUPAL development firm.
Also at this time the financier of the project was sending me to Lullabot DRUPAL training sessions in Portland Oregon, LA California, and Boston MA. I quickly learned how to use DRUPAL myself. When the large project we were on ended I moved on to develop websites in Drupal full time.
Working at Duo Consulting
On Friday July 24th 2009 I received a call from the CEO of www.DuoConsulting.com He saw some posts a few months earlier where I was asking for work and wanted to know if I was looking for PT, FT, Contract, or what.
LONG STORY SHORT....
After speaking with him, his CTO, and driving out the next day to their 15th floor office over looking Lake Michigan poor into the river... I took the job.
I get to develop and TRAIN in Drupal full time and I'm loving it.
Doug Vann the DRUPAL TRAINER
Within weeks of discovering Drupal I started a local Indiana Drupal Users Group.Some where along the way I became a goto guy for Drupal training. Honestly, I just love doing it. I guess it shows. My first time ever delivering a Drupal presentation in front of a group was at a Lullabot workshop in Minneapolis MN. The next month I did it again at another Lullabot workshop in Toronto Canada. Three months later I was asked to present at the Chicago DrupalCamp 2008. I wound up presenting 6 sessions and LOVED it!. In 2009 I was invited to the CMS Expo. Followed by Drupal Camps in Wisconsin, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and a fun filled weekend at the Ohio Linux Fest. Coming up in December I will be speaking at Do It With Drupal in New Olreans followed by my 2nd Chicago Drupal Camp.
Thanks for reading!
- Doug Vann - Twitter Me - LinkedIn - FaceBook
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Been busy with Drupal training
Just a quick blog post today.
All is well at the not-so-new job. I've been with www.DuoConsulting.com a little over 2 months and they have sent me to LA, Atlanta, and Ohio to deliver Drupal training.
Drupal Camp Atlanta
Two weekends ago I enjoyed the 1st ever Atlanta Drupal Camp.
Dave Terry and the gang at Media Current did a phenomenal job. The one day event was at the beautiful Kennesaw State University. The floods weren't there but the rain had definitely started. Addison Berry gave an amazing keynote address. The videos will be available in a few weeks. You can find links to some of the slides at the #drupalatl twitter stream.
Ohio Linux Fest
This previous weekend was the Ohio Linux Fest We celebrated 40 years of UNIX and 16 years of Linux. My Drupal Kickstart session was the biggest audience I've ever had. I was so stoked! The session was only audio recorded so I recommend that you check out the same session I gave in LA. You can see and hear all of the LA sessions here. My two are the intro-drupal and intro-CCK.
More training to come
I have 2 weeks off before I deliver a 3 hour Drupal program on October 13th at the www.DuoConsulting.com Offices in Chicago. Learn more about it.
Presenting at the Chicago Drupal MeetUp Group
October 15th finds me again at the Duo Consulting office as we play host to the monthly Chicago Drupal MeetUp Group. I will be show casing a site that we at Duo are building. It's a large, feature rich site that uses Ubercart and integrates SalesForce. Once we're finished with it it will be a site to support the operations of BizyBizy, a company that seeks to offer all kinds of services for busy people. Need your dog walked, cat watched, kids sat, clothes dry cleaned, or groceries delivered? It's a very complicated site that will be fun to show off.
Tomorrow at the Indiana Drupal Users Group
Aaron Dudenhofer will be presenting a case-study of the site he built for Jillians-Indianapolis http://jilliansindianapolis.com/ More details at our group site and our meetup.com site.
By the way! Don't forget to check out the quality Drupal instructional videos available at the Lullabot Store
- Doug Vann
- www.dougvann.com
- www.twitter.com/dougvann
I like the new Theme!
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 10/05/2009 - 18:35.
It looks great!
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