This is part 5 of a series of blogs about my career change.
Things at work were going great. I had learned a lot about ASP and our team was being approached for help by others in the organization more and more.
Now one thing I had always wanted to do but never really had the opportunity was to travel. Working for GSA provided a lot of opportunity for travel. My first trip was to Washington D.C. to participate in discussions regarding a national Web site (www.gsa.gov). I was only there a couple of days but I stayed in a very nice hotel and had plenty of time to see quite a few tourist attractions. The picture to the right has always been one of my favorites; my reflection on the Vietnam Memorial.
After Washington D.C., I was sent on a trip to Virginia, after that it was Kansas City, followed by Chicago and Atlanta. The purpose of these work trips varied. Some were for training, others were for meetings. One thing was always the same, I enjoyed being in a new place and having the opportunity to work with new people.
Finally, in 2004, I worked on a project that would take me to some very special places.
The year before, I had worked with Jess (marketing specialist) and Ann Marie (realty specialist) on a survey management application. We built this application from the ground up using Lotus Notes. The application worked very well, but we thought the functionality could be improved by switching to a different technology (yeah, ASP). GSA at the time was running a program where individuals within the organization could pitch different solutions to organizational challenges. We thought our survey management tool (known as the Customer Satisfaction Survey Tool or CSST) would be a great candidate. We put together a proposal and submitted our idea.
The committee loved our idea and asked us to meet with them in New Orleans to do a formal presentation. We flew to New Orleans and did a couple of presentations over a few days. The trip was a big success, but mostly, I remember the fun we had there. The committee approved our proposal with one caveat. We had to partner with two other regions and help them improve their survey scores using our application. No problem. It meant even more travel as we partnered with an office in Seattle and an office in New York City.
Over the next six months, I made a few trips to New York City to work with their Oracle Administrator on the database portion of the application. The work days were long, but I still made plenty of time to visit Times Square, the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center and a lot more. Even today, I still have thoughts of selling my house and car and moving to New York. Fortunately, the astronomical cost of living there prevents such thoughts from becoming reality.