GHOP students 2007-2008/Chad Windnagle
From Joomla! Documentation
Country and region you are from:
Country: USA Region: Upstate NY
Home Page: http://www.s-go.net
A little bit about yourself and your interests
I am a 17 year old home schooled student, I graduated from high school nearly a year before I was supposed. I will be getting a diploma through a correspondence high school (NARHS). My interest in computers was peaked in 8th grade during the time when web 2.0 was beginning to take a grasp on the internet community. My interest still lies heavily on computers and web development. I enjoy playing drums, an instrument I've been learning for nearly 7 years now. I also love to listen to music (metal) and work on websites. I'm very active on several forums, most of which are religiously rooted, but I also have other alternatives such as the Joomla! forum where the conversations are purely "geek speak". My future plans involve continuing working for the best boss in the world, aka, the guy who taught me nearly everything I know about web development, and more specifically, Joomla! My boss, Steve Gorney owns a medium sized marketing company (s-go Consulting). Steve has been a huge influence on my career choice, as well as helping me to decide which fields I want to study at college. Those fields happen to be web development. I plan on starting towards an associates degree in web development starting in Fall 2008.
Why you decided to join the contest and why you choose Joomla!
Having started using Joomla! as soon as I got an internship at s-go Consulting, I became a fan of the open source software very quickly. I feel I know most of the ins and outs of basic Joomla! operation very well. When I saw that there was a contest being held for Joomla!, I knew that after a year of using, and developing websites in Joomla!, that this would be the perfect opportunity to not only give back to Joomla!, but as something that I could use on my resume in the future. Shortly before the contest was announced I attended Joomla!Day NYC. I met Louis Landry, a guy who made a lasting impression on me. I decided that GHOP would be an excellent way to spend some spare time, and that it'd be really cool to see thousands of other people using something I developed to make their life simpler.
Thoughts on your experience in GHOP
The GHOP contest has been quite frankly a once in a lifetime experience in my book. I've learned A LOT in just a few short weeks about programming, writing skills, software, Joomla! 1.5, and even better grammar ;). Working with some of the leaders of the GHOP contest has been an awesome experience, and one that I will personally always have affectionate feelings towards.
Ideas on how we might make this better in the future
Ohhhh. This is going to be interesting. Okay, here's what I think.
Better organization of tasks. The forum is great, but having the forum, and the GHOP page is so confusing. Its a pain to check both places to find out about a task before you can do anything.
More 'guidelines' on certain tasks. I felt a lot of things were kind of up in the air. I think that we can do better in making things, especially documentation and marketing materials (tri folds) tasks more integrated with each other and Joomla! Color schemes, fonts, screen shots, all these should have a more firm and specific presentation so that when printed they all look official and professional.
