Yesterday was a Thank You dinner from the marketing and sales department to the Tech department for all the work we have done on a project for one of our clients. We received invitations via company email, so the dinner could be placed directly into our schedules. I was looking forward to it, until I realized -- I was only listed as an "Optional" attendee. Optional. Apparently it is not felt that I did enough work on this project to warrant being Thanked for it, despite creating pages, fine-tuning forms, and taking part in Usability studies. I decided that I would rather dig out my left eye with a citrus reamer than go to the dinner -- especially after my boss asked me if I was going, I said yes, and then ten minutes later he asked again, as if to say, "Are you sure?"
So. I was feeling a little underappreciated. Then, I got the following in the mail today. It was a cover letter accompanying an HTML/CSS/web programmey reference card I ordered last week. I cannot help but be a little more enthusiastic about my job this morning -- at least someone appreciates me.
Dear Customer,
Thank you! What an incomparable joy to have the honor of your business. I hope you're pleased with these tools and find them useful in your work. VisiBone is a small company, about as small as you can imagine, dedicated to visualization technology for web designers, online and in print. There are now reference cards, charts, foldouts and mouse pads for web design color, HTML, and JavaScript.
I cannot imagine what wonders you will create on the web, what new forms of online usefulness you will define, what bright visions you will arrest into pixels.
The tools and technologies available for this job are numbingly, embarrassingly difficult. The design software, the formatting standards, the codes and symbols. Using them is like building a ship in a bottle with buttery boxing gloves. In brave spite of this, you're going to construct some stunning online material.
I want to help. I want to expose structure and pattern, diagram intricacies and boundaries. I want to portray the mental models that one pieces together from twisted scraps on the hard embattled road to expertise. I love untangling order out of practical chaos and serving it up for your intuition. Like a nurse to a surgeon, I want to assist you, arranging the facts and figures and forgettable arcana, placing them at mental fingertip reach.
As you create and invent and heroically wrestle electronic civilization into being, I hope you'll find the things I'll be making useful. I also hope you'll think of them as honor and tribute to what you will do. I'd like to hear what you end up doing, and what you dream you could be doing.
Drop me a line and let me know what's on your mind.
Bob Stein, VisiBone.
(emphasis added)
I doubt that commentary on this letter is even necessary -- I will just say this: I freaking LOVE this guy! "I cannot imagine what bright visions you will arrest into pixels" ?!? Oh. Yes. Neither can I, Bob Stein of Visibone. Neither can I.