Erik is an industrious young man who works diligently and is dedicated to his creative craft. And I'm not just saying that so he keeps paying off his college loans that I co-signed for.....
I'm just the proud mom!
As it should be obvious by now, I am Manning’s productivity nerd. I am a lay member of the cult of Getting Things Done. I wanted to offer up a brief observation from my day-to-day work. Like the GTD project planning model, the GTD system consists of five discrete steps:
A couple exciting things happened yesterday. Nearly all my attention was focused on the launch of the new First Vehicle Services website. Meanwhile the rest of the world was focused on this. Steve Jobs said that it is “our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price.” Adam at Gizmod said it sucks. My wife said “maybe we could get an iPad instead of the netbooks we have been looking at,” (no link, she said it in real life.) Well, I still haven’t gotten a chance to read or watch anything about the device, so I will leave the opinion to others. However, I do know a couple things.
I’ve been following Román Cortés’ blog for some time now, as much for some reading en español as for the artistic and development-related content. I think the first post of his I saw was a reblogged copy of his CSS Homer, which shows Homer Simpson’s iconic face created entirely with textual and CSS elements. A nifty trick.
Recently, Román has continued his CSS explorations with some really fascinating, if not particularly practical, tricks and even forays into CSS2.
A new study validates the concepts that we have been employing to help clients connect with journalists using social media. Check out our post “Reinventing the Online Newsroom” which focuses on a project for the American Bar Association. This study by Cision reports that about two-thirds (65%) of journalists say they use blogs to research stories and more than half (52%) use microblogging sites like Twitter. The big issue for journalists is credibility, and companies and associations can enhance their own standing and outreach by using these tools to be a reliable source of fresh content.
We’ve posted a few times recently about one of our favorite projects, www.snowflakeworkshop.com. I stumbled across another similar site today: http://www.flurrious.com/. I’m not sure who is behind this site, but they took a very different visual and functional approach to making snowflakes. It’s pretty cool to see how someone else tackled a similar challenge. Additionally, they are claiming to donate to UNICEF for each shared flake– which if true is a really cool feature as well.
Last week we had a conference call with a client, one of the largest professional associations in the world. Twitter came up a few times and I couldn’t help be think of one of my favorite Twitter publishers, NASA. This led me to do some late night research on NASA’s Twitter strategy. What I found was interesting and thought others might find value in what I discovered. Continue Reading →
I thought Mitch’s recent post about his coffee making philosophy was a pretty interesting way to explore what he’s all about. So for the sake of comparison, I figured I’d also do a post that related my working style to food preparation. Suffice to say, there are some significant differences.
I have been highly impressed by the use of multimedia during the recent catastrophe in Haiti. News organizations and the public have relied on Twitter, blog posts, photo and video sharing sites for news and images from this earthquake ravaged country. CNN has compiled a list of organizations tweeting about the Haiti earthquake.
And social media has become a critical component of the international aid effort. The American Red Cross has set up a cell phone donation campaign, where individuals can text Haiti to 90999 to donate $10, which will then be included in their next cell phone bill
As a side note, the LA Times is featuring an interactive Flash earthquake feature that provides interesting background on the location of fault lines globally, the types of faults and the different types of earthquake waves
I am currently reading Ashley Friedlein’s book, Web Project Management . While not exactly up to the project management standards of the PMBOK, the book presents a complete web project management method. I will post a review once I finish reading and have had sometime to test the method. Meanwhile, the book offers little tips in addition to the method itself. One early tip: Do It Yourself accelerated learning. The author advocates that a web project manager try to create an entire site alone. This includes generating the idea, strategy, “costing”, design, programming, … The idea is to put yourself in the shoes of other members of your team to learn what challenges they face. The goal is to improve your client and team communication skills and learn empathy for your teammates.
I really like this idea, but I feel like the author missed a benefit: undertaking the entire process of creating a site will give you a better understanding of the big picture of production and project management. This exercise allows you to see parts of the process that you may not even know exist. Discovering holes at one point in the process will teach you what you should have done earlier and should implement in your daily work.
I have attempted similar exercises in the past, but mostly to learn new production skills. I would really like to try this someday on a new project to focus on the project management method.
I was a non-coffee drinker not too long ago. Then one day, in the middle of an intense project, we landed another intense job with a very short turn around. Conference calls with Europe before sunrise, some late nights, and a lot of stress led to my introduction to the bitter brew (I prefer mine iced [it was summer, but I also have a strange obsession with frozen water] with a kiss of French Vanilla Coffee-mate [okay, maybe a little more than a kiss]). In just a few months I have drank a lot of coffee.
I have learned that everyone makes coffee differently; some prefer it strong, some weak. Eventually I had to learn how to make it myself. So I approached this educational experience just like I approach cooking. I read the directions on the back of a pack of Starbucks grounds and grabbed the coffeemaker’s manual from the web. Then, I followed those directions; over, and over, and over making small adjustments as needed (turning down the carafe warming plate to avoid the burnt taste, making less coffee with the same ratio to avoid waste, moving to different machines and brewing methods, etc).
We are all creatures of habit. Some people haphazardly dump some amount of ground coffee and water. My habit is to research the heck out of something then repeat the same process time after time.
I have really started to enjoy cooking over the couple of years. But I do not cook like a lot of other people. I prefer cookbooks that are more encyclopedia than recipe repository. I have learned two thing about myself via cooking and coffee: I am a process oriented person, and very consistent. You may not like my coffee (it is strong) or my homemade gyro meat (ground turkey, not lamb; made meatloaf style) or granola; but it comes out nearly the same every time. Yes, this can be boring to some people, but I actually like it. This process/detail orientation drives my wife crazy some times, but she puts up with it because I make damn good coffee and cookies (baking is far more chemistry lab than cooking).
I know this recipe will never lead to a hip, innovate restaurant or the creation of an awe-inspiring piece of art. I am okay with that because I enjoy what I do and I think that it has merit and value.
UPDATE: Check out Patrick’s follow-up post about the art (direction) of chili cooking.
