Northern Web Master

Quick Facts - Nicky Daigneault, 21, was born in Beauval, and works in LaRonge as a Web site developer for Keewatin Career Development Corporation. If you don't find Nicky in LaRonge or Beauval, you can find him singing at the Voices of the North Show in Prince Albert

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Last year (2001) I was in the NORPAC program, and I needed a break from school. I didn't think I was going to get hired by KCDC. I was really nervous about the interview. I knew some people connected with KCDC, who were always talking about the Headwaters Project. At first I thought the Headwaters Project was bringing computers to school. I found out otherwise. The project was to be funded for three years by the Federal Government, and they were going to be doing distance education, have high speed internet connections in the north, and create web sites. The more I found out, the better the job looked. Besides talking to some of the people who worked there, I checked out their web site to get ready for the interview.

In high school my career choice was to go into computer programming. I started programming when I was 13 years old. I just got a brand new Pentium 64 computer, and I went on the internet. I met some people there, but my impression was that this was just a glorified chat line where you didn't have to meet people face to face. However, everyone was talking about going to check out their web page. I didn't know that you could make a web page. I only thought that was something big companies would do. I wondered how do you make a web page. Everyone said "It's easy, its easy." I said "OK. so how do you make a web page?" One day someone said " yeh, all you have to do is to go to browser", and there it was, the hard core code of the page. I couldn't at first believe that person made that page. That was cool. Now I fnally understood how a web page was made. At first I didn't know where to start. So I saw, I copied, and I saw results. I said to myself, "So that's how it works!" Cause and effect finally kicked in, and after that my knowledge just grew. I learned the technologies, I read books and found materials off the internet. I talked to a lot of people along the way and they helped me out as well.

Basically that's what I do now for KCDC - I am part of the team that builds web sites. There is still lots to learn. Just when you think you know something - boom- there is something new. Used to be you would be able to put some stuff on the web page along with some graphics and that was good enough. But now, wow! There are all these new applications coming out like Flash and Dreamweaver 4 for instance.Sometimes it feels that we are racing ahead of the technology, but sometimes we feel we are also trying to catch up. With my co-workers, we are constantly trying to do things that we can't do. As an example we would like to get our logo's spinning around, with characters doing a little dance - boom there's your site with your catchy introduction. Believe me, just to do that is a lot of work, but that's what production meetings are for.

Five years from now I will hopefully finished school, and I want to do more web programing. I want to try computer games. see how that is done. I have another interest and that is music. Once this project is over, I want to learn another instrument - maybe the fiddle. Everyone needs a fiddle player. Maybe me and Blaize can do dueling banjos.