portfolios

[Miki Magyar <MDM0857 -at- MCDATA -dot- COM>]

David Hailey suggested a 'satellite' portfolio, which seems like a good
idea for those jobs that are worth the expense. Since I do a fair bit of
contract work, I needed something good enough to get the work, flexible
enough to tailor for each potential client, and easy to maintain. David is
spot on about keeping a morgue file! That's my raw material. BUT, I
include both the before and after versions of each major piece.
Sometimes it's just a sample page or two, sometimes the whole thing,
depending on what looks good and shows off what I've done.

The portfolio is a 3-ring binder, the cover of which I designed for a
conference some years ago. It has pocket thingys (that is the right
technical term for them, isn't it?) that hold the samples - the before on the
left side, the after on the right. Some of them are in the plastic sheet
protectors, but since some of the examples are more than one page, it's
easier to use the pockets for those, since I can pull out the set of pages
to display.

The response to this format has been very positive. Anyone can show
off a polished piece of finished work, but when they see the scrawled
programmer's notes that I started with, they're impressed. Especially
since they know that's what I'll have to deal with at their place!

I encourage students to use this format, since novices often don't have a
large number of samples. It's an effective way to demonstrate skills.

Miki
mikim -at- mcdata -dot- com

"You could live a perfectly normal life if you were only willing to live a
normal life!"   Q

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