The office is looking a little empty this Monday morning – undoubtedly many are still recovering from yesterday’s Sun Run. Like good Vancouverites we participated in this 10K mass event. We’ve been part of the Sun Run for 7 years now, this time with a team of 12.

This year’s Sun Run was themed blue and yellow to show support for Boston
(Source: Vancouver Sun)

Walking around this green and active City, it’s no surprise that the Sun Run has been characterized the largest 10k road race in Canada since its inception 28 years ago. It’s hard to catch a time of the day not seeing anyone running, biking, or walking around this beautiful city. This year the run attracted about 48,000 participants who took the challenge to run the “beautiful scenic course”.

The Sun Run has become a nice tradition here at Gossamer Threads, although always takes some of us by surprise (“What? The Sun Run is this Sunday? I better start training!”). This year’s record holder of our own little league is Michael with a time of 48:49.

As always the run brought out the best of our small team and “So, how fast did I run?” was everyone’s first question after reuniting at our downtown office. 6 of us crossed the finish line in less than an hour and we are pretty curious about the results of the other teams!

And as the best is saved for last, we rounded out the afternoon with a well-deserved menu at The Butcher & Bullock on West Pender Street. What a great way to spend a Sunday!

Enjoying Lunch With the Sun Run Crew

Bao Phan is one of the longest-standing developers here at Gossamer Threads, having lent his Perl experience to large portions of our software suite, as well as countless development projects over the years. Although Bao’s been part of the Gossamer family for over a decade, his story’s about more than Perl development or his contributions to this company…

Bao At Work

Gossamer Threads was undergoing some serious expansion in the early ’00s. There was a large market for the Perl scripts we were developing, and we had plenty of ideas for new programs, but not enough qualified Perl developers to meet that need. The niche nature of Perl development made it difficult to find the right developers within Canada, so we began to look further afield.

Bao was working for a Vietnamese tech company we’d worked with in the past. He was looking for a change of scenery and his skills seemed like a great fit for GT, and so in 2001 he made the trip from Ho Chi Minh City to Vancouver.

As one of our core Perl developers, Bao started work on two key programs in the software suite we were developing at the time: DBMan SQL and FileMan. More recently, he’s been a key part in Gossamer projects for clients like CNN Radio, Summerwood, and StartLocal.

Bao at work. Note the maple leaf sweater & flag signed by co-workers.

Finding A New Home

Bao wasn’t just settling into a new job at Gossamer, he was also settling into a new life in Canada. Bao began taking English language classes after work, initially to help with communication at the office, but later to help connect with the new friends he was making here in Vancouver. For Bao, life in Canada was coming to be about much more than where he worked, and in 2005 he began the process of becoming a Canadian citizen, and in 2007 took the Oath of Citizenship.

On His Own Time

You can’t keep a developer away from the computer even when they’re not in the office, and Bao’s no exception. He’s been developing some mobile apps in his spare time lately, but he’s also been putting time aside for some cooking classes. He’s done Asian fusion and French classes in the past, and most recently tried his hand at Thai cooking with some classes at Dirty Apron (and has been pretty happy with the chicken curry he’s been whipping up ever since).

A morass of humanity at Coachella. Bao’s in there somewhere…we think.

Bao’s also a pretty rabid music fan, having made the trek to sunny Indio, California for Coachella for the past two years. Other shows he’s caught and dug lately include Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, James Blake, The National, and Cat Power (he also has Neil Young tickets).

Working At GT

We’re always looking for passionate, motivated folk to join Bao and the rest of us here at Gossamer Threads. Interested in working for a forward-thinking IT company in the heart of Vancouver? Check out our careers page!

It’s been a while since we got up close and personal with one of our fellow Gossamer Threadians on the blog to find out a bit more about them and what they do around the office, so allow us to introduce Sydney, one of our web designers who’s been here at the office for about a year and a half.

Name: Sydney Hake
Reason for being: Web Designer
Quote to live by: “Life is too short to be self-conscious.”

Everyone in Sydney’s corner of the office insisted that she be photographed wearing her Snuggie. She’s been pining for one (quite vocally) for months and it just arrived this week.

Sydney At Work

Sydney heard about GT through the company she was doing her BCIT practicum with, Base-10. Base-10 are fellow Perl-loving folks, and even have a few former GTers in their ranks. Sydney says “they emphasized the all around awesomeness of the place, and encouraged me to apply for a design job here. It was basically a dream come true when I got the call to come in for an interview, couldn’t contain my excitement. There was lots of flailing and jumping.” Jack and Alex confirm the jumping. Thankfully, she’d already gotten the job.

Sydney and our lead designer Ian take on web design jobs as a team, and work closely to keep projects flowing and progressing. In addition to pure web design, Sydney also works on a large amount of front end development, primarily HTML and CSS, before passing templates over to our developers who add functionality (“but sometimes I get to sprinkle in a little bit of JavaScript or PHP”).

New Platforms, New Designs

A new technique Sydney’s been using a lot lately is responsive design. A responsive web site is designed to respond to the various screen sizes that exist today due to the growing number of mobile devices (cell phones, tablets, netbooks, laptops, etc). The idea is to use a single site template, and code it so that the layout would be optimally displayed on each device.

Responsive Design adjusts to browser type and size.

For example, mobile devices require larger fonts and buttons for finger interactivity, but don’t always require every single element that would be displayed normally on a full monitor. If you resize your browser window on a responsive site, you should be able to see the triggers and changes within the page for different screen resolutions. You can take a look at some responsive websites in action here.

Sydney At Play

While not at work Sydney’s usually out and about with friends or watching movies and eating popcorn. Sydney loves popcorn. While a bit of a couch potato (c’mon, you saw the Snuggie), Sydney tries to hit the gym or do yoga a couple times a week (“although I would rather be on the couch in all honesty”). She’s a big reader, and recently powered through all of the Song Of Fire And Ice books in a couple months. Said voraciousness has paid big dividends at the semi-regular Game of Thrones board games sessions which happen after work at the office, where Sydney’s been kicking Lannister keister and taking names. Winter may be coming, but with her Snuggie, Sydney’s ready.

Sydney keeps her cards close to her chest during a lunchtime game of Dominion.

Working At GT

We’re always looking for passionate, motivated folk to join Sydney and the rest of us here at Gossamer Threads. Interested in working for a forward-thinking IT company in the heart of Vancouver? Check out our careers page!