Anne-Gaelle Colom is one of 10 nominees in the Developer of the Year category at this year's net awards. She spoke to us about working in academia and her role with jQuery Mobile.
What are your main areas of expertise?
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery Mobile, jQuery, XML, XSLT, Mobile User Experience.
Give us a summary of your career so far.
I started as a part-time visiting lecturer in 1998, and was given a permanent teaching position at the University of Westminster in 2000. I am now a senior lecturer and teaching fellow. I teach mobile and web-related modules at all undergraduate levels, with class sizes ranging from 100 to 250 students. I got involved with the jQuery Mobile project when I started to teach adaptive web technologies in 2011, and I became the Documentation Lead for the project a few months later.
What have you been working on over the last year?
Over the past year I completed the first release of the jQuery Mobile API documentation, worked on the jQuery Mobile site, and carried out some major code example cleanup for the jQuery core API documentation. I abhor inconsistencies, so I have to fix them. All of this of course on top of my full-time academic position!
What have been the particular high points of your career?
Particular high points include each time I get students excited about web development, my award for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in 2009, joining the jQuery Mobile team, collecting the .net Award for Innovation of the Year in 2011 on behalf of the jQuery Mobile Team, being elected to the jQuery Board of Directors, and being nominated this year for 'Developer of the Year'. The game changer in my career also was when Todd Parker, who was the jQuery Mobile project lead at the time, gave me the project to create the jQuery Mobile API documentation.
What are you excited about at the moment?
At the moment, I'm excited about being able to share my passion for front-end web development with my students, and about developing great front-end for the current and next generation of mobile devices and interfaces.
Tell us about an important lesson you've learned in your career.
"Illegitimi non carborundum" [Don't let the bastards grind you down], and never stop learning.
Name an 'unsung hero', someone you admire who deserves more recognition for their work.
Rebecca Murphey. She's a JavaScript application developer and a frequent speaker who authored the learning site jQuery Fundamentals and created the TXJS conference.
