Davey Tree Flipbooks

Cleveland East CLS Branch Manager Kent Winterhalter's employees stretch according to Davey guidelines before work- ing in the field for the day. Safe Stretching S TRETCH!'' Davey expects all employees to follow specific rules and guidelines to keep them safe and healthy, each and every day. In some cases, an early morning wake up call from head to toe sets the tone for safety, all day long. "Every morning at 7 a.m. sharp, our group gets together to stretch," says Kent Winterhalter, Cleveland East CLS branch manager. "We include field employees, supervisors, managers and myself." Winterhalter's crew, for example, practices the stretching routine recommended by the safety department. It usually takes five to seven minutes. "It's a good time to bring up issues and chat— the face-to-face communication is important," Winterhalter says. But the practice of stretching every morning also keeps the crews' overall health high. Winterhalter says the routine is "mainly directed to reduce back injuries," which supports his decision to continue the practice throughout his Davey career. "It's been done at Davey for years, and I've been doing it for about 15 years," Winterhalter says. "I'm glad our group utilizes it daily." '' One of these opportunities presents itself every three months in the form of a timed gaming competi- tion called "Game Jam." "It is an international social group that provides gaming challenges," Briggs says. "We vote for three weeks to determine the new gaming challenge. When it's announced (on a Friday), we have three days to publish the game." This fall's theme was "10 Seconds." "Im- mediately after I found out the theme, I headed to get coffee with the person who does my game art, Crystal Johnson, who recently started working at Davey as well," Briggs says. When developing games, Briggs' goal is to J immy Briggs, Business Applications CRM programmer, loves gaming. So much so he decided to embark on a career path that would help him grow in his programming skills to develop games. Although developing games isn't his full-time profession, he uses the majority of his spare time to better himself as a programmer, taking advantage of any learning opportunity. Jimmy Briggs shows off the game he developed called "Chicken Snatch," an "action platformer" or "2D platformer" game. try to take the theme and use it in a unique way. What he and Johnson came up with was Chicken Snatch, an "action platformer" game Briggs wrote in HTML5 and JavaScript. "In the beginning stages, I program a prototype without polished artwork," he says. "Having a prototype is key, so I don't get too far into programming and find a glitch." The objective of Chicken Snatch is to catch chickens in the game's level and return them to one of many fox dens located in the scene within 10 seconds, or before the fox's health runs out. Although he didn't win this competition, Briggs is still glad he did it because it continues to help him improve in his programming skills. "I only started developing games about three years ago, and my eyes have opened up a lot to how things work when you try to make a game," Briggs says. "It's like painting—you have much more appreciation when you actually work with the canvas." Play Briggs' game at http://devbriggs.com/ chickensnatch in Google Chrome. Programmer by Day, Game Developer by Night January/February 2014 | 15

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