i want to work for adobe

My hero of the day: Jim Sartain. He's the senior director of software quality at Adobe and was one of our keynote speakers. Wow! His talk was so inspiring! He talked about the processes he's using at Adobe to achieve significant increases in quality and decreases in rework (this is pretty much what this conference is about.) But his philosophy is coaching instead of mandating, and letting his teams choose which processes they want to adopt and then letting the teams hold themselves accountable. I would love to work for him!

What's more, when I introduced myself and told him I'd be taking pictures, he offered to get up onstage right then so that I could get a good shot. He's great--he seems really down to earth. I made sure to tell him how much I love Adobe products!

Planning My Days

While my job title is Writer/Editor, I'm a project manager at heart. I can manage a heavy workload without missing deadlines because I'm a planner.

But in this job--where I manage and implement marketing communications for three large conferences--I've been struggling with finding the best planning tools and strategies.

I always keep a master list of all my major project milestones sorted by priority, with descriptions and due dates. From that I create daily to-do lists in my Franklin Covey planner. But what's been missing is the big picture of seeing how work on all three conferences overlaps. I've toyed with MS Project (hate it!) and Excel, but they don't do the trick. I love MindManager for really going deep into a single project, but I wanted more of a calendar view. So I spent my morning creating this!
I used the calendar templates in Word to map out my days from now until mid-October. I noted major milestones and dates when I'm out of the office, and then made notes each week on what I'll be working on so I can see how everything overlaps.

This brought me great joy to see my workload for the next seven months at a glance. (OK, I realize I'm a geek.) I was able to shift project deadlines to accommodate deadlines with more priority, and also shared it with my supervisor to note where I think we'll need more help.

If you're looking for a tool to see a global picture of how big projects overlap, I'd recommend this simple strategy using Word's calendar templates.

PS: I also realize that the fact that I'm blogging about this makes me an even bigger geek.

Happy Fat Tuesday!

This morning a co-worker brought in three varieties of King Cakes from Oakmont Bakery to celebrate Fat Tuesday. Everything I've had from Oakmont Bakery is divine, but these King Cakes? Yum, yum, yum. Out of the plain, raspberry, and cinnamon varieties, the cinnamon was my favorite. What a nice way to start my day!

Elsie--My Personal Assistant

If there's one good thing about taking work home for the weekend, it's that the cats are always eager to help out. They lay on my papers to keep them warm, paw at the computer screen to make sure the cursor doesn't get away, swat those pesky pens off the table and onto the floor, and jump in my seat to keep it warm as soon as I get up. Here's Elsie, my good little helper. PS: Yes, that is a Mac. After all my moaning, I ended up with a Mac (on loan) anyway, for a project.

Talking About Twitter

See the article on Twitter in today's NYT? The gist: Use it however you want, whether to follow friends or get feedback or market your business.

The article prompted me to log into Twitter to review the dozen or so new people who are following me and to decide whether I want to follow them. I have pretty low standards. I won't follow anyone who defines themselves as religious or has different political views than mine. You get like 150 characters max to define yourself, so anyone who uses that small space to talk religion or politics isn't someone I want to follow. I also won't follow anyone who looks like a teenager in their picture and has no bio (they probably only just want to get their numbers up). Other than that, I'll follow you (which means that I subscribe to all your messages).

I also just followed the first person I know: the Animal Rescue League. Of course I want to hear about things like their pets of the week and how many animals adopted so far (514 this year)!

Anyone else giving Twitter a try?

The Lies That Mac People Tell

My company is getting me a laptop, so I've been researching what kind to get. The majority of the writers, designers, and web team I work with have Mac laptops. When I mention to any of them which laptop I'm thinking of getting (a very cute little Dell), they first look aghast and then insist that I should lobby the powers-that-be to get a Mac. When I tell them I actually prefer a PC, they look very puzzled...and some have proceeded to tell me lies about why I absolutely need to get a Mac! But first...here's why I prefer PCs.

1. Much of my college years was spent in the Mac Lab. I knew no other computer because I believed that creative and cool people used Macs and nerds and geeks used PCs. This actually did have some truth back then--design software was originally only available for Macs in the 80s or so. My first major purchase in my life was a Mac desktop. I remember how I saved up all my money for so long to get one, and how excited I was to have my own computer with the ubiquitous fish-in-an-aquarium screensaver. And then I got my first job and used a PC for the first time. I was astounded. I could not believe that a computer wasn't actually supposed to freeze up and die every 2.5 minutes! I couldn't believe that I wasn't losing my work every five minutes because of all the crashes! I couldn't believe that a computer didn't have to take five minutes to save a file! I felt really duped. I'd saved up my money to buy a computer that I'd always believed was the computer to buy, and only later did I realize it was a piece of shit. I'm sure that Mac performance has improved since the mid-90s, but if a company screws me on a major purchase, there is 0% chance that I'll give them another try. (This is the same reason why I'll never buy an American car.)

2. Performance aside, I think Mac popularity today is mainly the result of brilliant marketing. Like Harley Davidson, Apple has created a culture around its products. A Harley is a symbol of freedom to its followers. And a Mac is the symbol of coolness. If you, poor sap, buy a Mac, you'll be instantly cool! So much cooler than those dorky people who use PCs! You'll be part of the in-crowd! My issue is that I don't like to be marketed to. I want to buy a product based on its own merit, not because a corporation tells me I'll be cool if I use it.

So, back to work and the lies. My co-workers have told me that the fonts we use at my organization aren't available for a PC; that InDesign files can't be shared; and that (this is the best!) Adobe software isn't even available for a PC! All lies--I've checked.

Hey, isn't it interesting that the word cult is in culture? Thanks, but no thanks, Mac people: I don't want to join your cult!

PS: Dave feels the same way. He researched MP3 players for over a year because he absolutely refused to buy an iPod and finally bought a nice touchscreen MP3 player last weekend.

PSS: Sorry if I offended the 7.51% of viewers of this blog who use a Mac, but you should leave the cult now, before it's too late.