I was blessed with a wonderful team all throughout my college life. We were a tech team first, that was the stepping stone. Our projects attracted a lot of public attention. If there were praises, there were critics too. We heard the critics and worked on our limitations. We created documentries, websites and loads of other services. We always had a good start, good response to our work but that vanished very soon. We did not understand despite our best efforts we put in, our projects didn't serve the purpose for too long. We probably never thought in this area, but kept on making stuff that would be a show stopper! We liked the limelight so didn't care about the outcome.
When I started doing web development commercially for living, this issue popped up again. I prepared a few websites in my starting days and the clients demanded for maintenance. I was working on a software to find a solution. During my initial struggling days, I met medury sir in noida, he asked me to send a proposal for the 3 websites of the Jaypee Institutes. I sent him a proposal in a week. I did not get a response for a long time. He said, yes I read the proposal, give me some time to think. I started comtemplating, what are they actually looking for? I had made JUIT website in my college days and it occured to me... the most important thing is maintaining the website! I called up Dr. Medury and told him we have made a Content Management System! The response... Ok Pramir, Come to JUIT, we will strike a deal!
Everything came back to me in a flash. It was maintenance that was the key! We signed a contract and we were on it in a flash. We explored a new technology Adobe Air, which was a revolution in software development. It had beautiful interface which helped in cracking the deal. It is the simplicity in a system that sells! The website development took more than the time we quoted. But there was regular progress, so nobody complained.
It was the first fifteen days, when we had loads of ideas in the table. Some ideas went wayward, others we thought could be executed. Jaypee had a brand name in construction, so our website was aimed at highlighting these. Hence, came the SWF which starts with an animation of constructing the buildings. Then the colours had to be in sync with the logo and the colour Jaypee uses in most of its projects. We were here to sell our stuff... so the client was kept in mind all the time. Integration of Podacsts, Videos that we believed would communicate better and a Google Map to be updated with the technology.
But then something came up that stole all the limelight... the Virtual Tour. This Virtual Tour was a 360 degree view of the campus and finally became the USP. People talking about the website, talked about the virtual tour first.
The Content Mangement System was the reason I got the contract, so that was built with great care and dedication. This system came out very well, it made the content management very simple. The System was pretty complex in design but the interface came out nicely making it easy for a layman to update stuff. I do remember the numerous fights we had over perfection. Shivam, Lakshya and Me are perfectionists and thankfully the guys associate with us are too. We would fight on phone, gtalk or in face to achieve that. Sometime we lost interst in work, but the motivation was there inside everybody to prove a point, "If we are given a chance we wont let you down". Lots of hiccups came during this project, our files were lost, the computers crashed, we had to build the whole stuff again a couple of times. We started taking frequent backups because work was being done at a great pace.
I used to attend office in the morning, finish my daily work and then get home by 8:30. It was by 9'O clock our work started. And most of the time, continued all night till 5 in the morning. We loved the work we did, so there were no regrets about the routine. I was exhausted till november when I made a visit to the campus and installed Notice Management System which became a big hit! This relieved some fo the stress. By december I had interns, we started working rigorously all day on my original website. The nights were all for the Jaypee project. I had to sync things, keep the stuff in mind. Think about the deadline and making my team ready to meet that.
It was on 8th Jan '09 that we finished the Jaypee University website, uploaded, checked for errors and made it available. It might look a simple website when you browse through it. But do you remember those lines...
It is so simple to be happy, but so difficult to be simple!
It was simplicity that we were searching for, through our technical knowledge and our experience of working in this area for all these years. We achieved simplicity upto a level that we aimed for. But everytime we reach there, we set the bar higher and it has been set. We are all set too... to achieve that. We are ready for the next challenge!
The Link: http://www.juit.ac.in
