I’ll be the first to admit it: I’m not the best dynamit developer. My work is a derivative of the great Bobby Whitman, whose ability to figure this stuff out is nothing short of legendary. But hey, we stand on the shoulders of giants. I just happen to stand on the shoulders of my longtime business partner. Although I could go on for ages talking about Bobby’s wit, I’ll stick to his work for now. One particular piece of note is a series of implementations we’ve completed with the Google Calendar Application Programmer Interface (API). These calendars rock. They’re AJAX-fueled pieces of magic which provide to the visitor a bunch of ways to search and sort all sorts of calendar information. We can leverage the best technology in the business (Google) to roll out sophisticated calendar implementations in a matter of hours (not days).

A little context: in 2009, dynamit introduced a new web site for the Columbus College of Art & Design (CCAD).

The web strategy we prepared with CCAD is fairly complex, a major tactic of which is the focus on the numerous events that occur at the college. The technical requirements can be summed up as the ability to conditionally display, filter and search a multi-threaded calendar of news and events in locations throughout the site. Like most academic institutions, CCAD is involved in hundreds of events per year. These events include student work exhibitions, faculty events, the academic calendar, student groups, continuing education, and many others.

It’s a familiar challenge: people rely on web sites to learn about what’s going on with an organization. A major element of this challenge is creating an interface which is both easy for the administrators to update and intuitive for users to find exactly the information they seek. Rather than re-create the wheel by creating a custom database and interface to handle the problem, we opted to use the Google Calendar API.

The basic idea is that we can leverage existing, mature technology created by Google to meet the particular needs of the client. The benefits to the client are reduced development time, a time-tested administrative interface, a fully customized user experience, no recurring software fees and a host of features provided by Google.

You’d never know by looking at the interface that it’s running on the power of Google, but the features provided by the API (including searching, filtering by thread and filtering by date range) provide a high-value solution with massively reduced development time.

So how does it work?

Once the client web site is set up to talk directly with Google (via Zend libraries, for those of you who are interested), you can rather easily submit a query to Google to retrieve events with particular parameters. Want events from a certain thread? In a certain time range? With particular tags attached to it? Ask ye of Google and ye shall find.

Once you ask Google for a certain set of information, it spits back at you a rather lengthy response with a bunch of information. After that, it’s a matter of parsing out the information to get and display only what you need. The trick, however, is in displaying it properly.

The way we do it is that we ask Google for a particular set of calendars (aka ‘threads’) that match the need of the visitor. For example, we may ask Google to show us all the threads of type “News” (Alumni News, Student News, Faculty News, etc) in 2009 that mention the word “art” in either the title or description of the event. Google spits back an answer. Our task is to then take the results from each of the disparate threads and combine them into a set of results that’s ordered by date — all of this without refreshing the page (there’s the fancy AJAX part of it). The events are color coded by calendar type so that the user can easily show/hide particular threads to continue to narrow the search. The icing on the cake is that the interface is fully customized to fit the needs of the client. No more ugly calendars that don’t meet the branding standadrs of the clients or are so modular that you can’t gracefully interface them with existing site functionality.

For example, if a client wants to conditionally display a rich description (loaded via AJAX) to accompany a news item, the software can display the additional information. Or, if plain text will meet their needs, we can show a brief blurb to give some context to the event. The calendar has unlimited potential for customization, just as if it was written from the ground up.

The developer’s time can then be focused on creating an excellent and appropriate user interface, instead of meddling with the behind-the-scenes details of assembling a working calendar. The implementation of the dynamit Google Calendar libraries can be accomplished with Javascript and XHTML, without the usual dependency of on a large number of database and server-side-scripting hours.

The end result is a calendar which is straightforward for the developer to deploy, easy for the content administrator to manage and intuitive for the visitor to browse. Awesome.

Dynamit was honored as one of the “Best Places to Work” in 2010 & 2011 by Columbus Business First newspaper and Interactive Agency of the Year. Times are even better in 2012 and we’re hiring a Web/Graphic Designer for our aggressively growing team.

This is an exciting opportunity to work on cutting edge projects for well-known brands in a dynamic, entrepreneurial and highly creative environment. Please email resumes/cover letters and portfolio information (documents or links to online examples) to Gary Moneysmith via gmoney@dynamit.us.

A web/graphic designer on the Dynamit team will:

• Be well versed with Adobe Creative Suite: Strong knowledge of Photoshop, experience with Illustrator and InDesign.
• Have a strong understanding of Usability & Web Trends: Experience with user interface design, knowledge of best practices & examples of this in a portfolio or live site/application design. They will also be up-to-date on web trends and design tactics with examples.
• Have experience in user experience design (UXD) designing application and system interfaces. This experience is crucial for this position.
• Have Basic Programming Knowledge: We’re not looking for a developer here, but the designer should have the ability to design for web with a knowledge of the boundaries and how to design for execution by a programmer.
• Have a Strong Portfolio: We’d like to see much more web work than print.
• Be eager to learn, with a passion for design & the web. The designer should have a strong internal drive for industry knowledge and be committed to furthering the craft.

Experience is important, but personality is key. Our culture is what drives us, and we’re looking to build our team with someone who both fits and contributes to it.

The position is full time at our office in the Arena District in Columbus, Ohio. We offer a competitive salary and benefits package as well as a fun, high-energy, intellectually-stimulating work environment.

Benefits Include

• Competitive salary (compensation will be based on skills and experience)
• Fully paid medical/dental insurance for employees
• Paid parking
• Unlimited vacation time (within reason)
• Office bar + climbing wall — not recommended together

Don’t sit back. If you want to work in a fast paced work environment with great people who love what they do, apply today.

About Dynamit
Dynamit is a digital agency based in the Arena District in Columbus, Ohio. We work with clients and brands on digital initiatives that include strategy, design, user experience and development. We influence communication and commerce. Client work includes Hilton Worldwide, Charley's Grilled Subs, McGraw-Hill, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), E-Z-GO, American Electric Power (AEP), Columbus College of Art & Design and the Ohio State Medical Center (OSUMC) to name but a few.