Musings on design & other stuff jen's place

To my knowledge, there are only a few people from my graduate program who have published their work at either the ACM CHI conference or the UPA conference. Some of my friends from the program have asked me to give them advice, so here's what I have:

• Trying is the first part of doing. This is the mantra that I use with my daughter, and we find it very empowering. As the Maryland lottery tag line used to say, "You've got to play to win." You won't get published unless you write and submit.
• Get your article peer-reviewed before you submit. Ask people whom you know to review your article. They will point out where you are vague, where you need to provide specifics, and what other issues you need to address. I generally ask 3 or 4 people (colleagues, teachers, friends at other companies) to peer review the article, and to subsequently review changes that I've made based on their suggestions.
• Appreciate your reviewers. Ask the people who peer-reviewed your paper what is their favorite flavor of chocolate (white, dark, or milk?) or wine (red or white? which grape? Merlot? Pinot Nior? Zinfindel?). And then deliver -- I usually buy $5 or $10 of chocolate from the Lindt store or Godiva store, and when I buy a bottle of wine, I spend between $10 and $20 (and deliver it in a gift bag). The last time I dropped off a bottle of wine to say "thank you for reviewing an article" that had subsequently been rejected, the meeting led to a panel proposal that may take us to Florence, Italy, in April :)
• Well-written articles are more easily accepted. When I was working on my first paper for publication, my co-author had lots of publication experience. She admitted in frustration that a certain percentage of articles would be published not because they had remarkable findings, but because they were well written. I thought "Then this is going to be a very well-written paper!" -- organization, and clarity of thought count.
• Work with someone who has already published. This technique allows you to benefit from their experience, and to get some unofficial mentoring.
• Collaborate. I've always said that writing is best played as a team sport. It can sometimes be frustrating to work with co-authors, but I have always felt that the work benefited from their insights and input.
• Title your paper appropriately. A misleading title can take your reviewers down the wrong path, which we know leads to confusion, anxiety, and anger: three emotions that you don't want your reviewers to be feeling :) Likewise,
• Ensure that your abstract and conclusion sections are the best-written parts of the paper, because, as former graduate students, we know that often those sections are the only part of a paper that are read. And those sections determine whether a reader will look at the material in between them.
• Rejection does not equal failure. Clearly, it's not fun, but the more writing that you do, the more likely you are to get rejected. Take the comments that you receive seriously, consider that you may have written something that is more in line with another publication's audience or style, and try again. The world is full of stories of how innovators' disruptive ideas were rejected.
• Publication does not equal perfection. Don't wait for your article to be perfect. Write it. Have it reviewed. Revise it. And then submit it. Get out there, and do it -- trying is the first part of doing!

Good luck!

I'll be truthful -- I didn't really care for this song at first -- on the surface, it sounded like a Christmas carol meets an Ode to the Who. But over the last several weeks, it's been my favorite song, in large part because of the imagery that both the lyrics and music evoke. I'm referring to the song "Feel it turn", by Great big Sea.

Now, I'll preface the next few paragraphs with the confession that in college, the first major that I declared was English -- and I secretly wondered what the authors of the works we were studying would think of all that was being interpreted into their writing by scholars. What if the author didn't think that his characters were metaphors for anything? That he was just writing a story? This is the interpretive line that I now walk with GBS.

The first lyric in this song that I could visualize was "Cut steel wired into water; Fixed link, circumnavigate". It made me think of the longitude and latitude lines across a globe.

The next lyric that caught my visual attention was "I can see the earth below me; and I can feel it turn". I envisioned the author on a mountaintop, somewhere far North, say in Newfoundland or Greenland, with arms outstretched to his sides, head thrown back -- literally feeling on top of the world -- both invigorated and happy.

And most recently, I've seen something in the music -- the notes that open the song (what I'd previously thought of as the Christmas carol notes) struck me today as falling leaves, turning into falling snow. That's not hard to figure out; in my real world, it's Autumn in New England, and the trees are glorious reds, yellows, and oranges set against a blustery sky. So all around me, it looks and feels like Fall, but what it sounds like is Great Big Sea :)

I'm back home today, after 10 days on the road. To review -- we went to Aptos, CA for the innovation@Sun conference, then to Phoenix, AZ to visit family, and then to Las Vegas, NV for the CEC conference. We are all glad to be home, but it was tough getting up this morning, after 10 days in the Pacific time zone.

As I mentioned, I enjoyed Aptos and the innovation@Sun conference. One of the people I got to meet was Tim Bray ... I think we ended up at the same table for three meals. During our first conversation, we both discovered that we were going to be speaking at CEC in Las Vegas. He said that his talk was Tuesday the 9th, and I said that my talk was Tuesday, the 9th. I expected that his talk would be before mine, but he said that it was at 3:30 -- right after my talk, which was scheduled for 2:15.

Fast forward six days ... I get an email from the CEC conference committee that my talk has been moved from 2:15 Tuesday, to 3:30 Monday. So I email Tim to ask if his talk was moved too. It turns out that he got the days mixed up, and had booked travel for Tuesday, even though his talk was on Monday, so someone decided to swap his talk and mine. No problem, except that everyone at CEC had pre-registered for sessions, so now anyone who had registered for my talk now had a conflict. As a result, my husband had to rearrange his schedule and I had a poor turnout for my talk -- my husband was more put out than I was, but Tim offered to buy him a beer to make up for it.

We didn't care for Las Vegas -- too much cigarette smoke, we don't gamble, and we had a 7-year-old with us.

On the "good" side, we had sunny weather, enjoyed our time in Aptos, and were happy to be so close to family that we could drop in on. And we're glad to be home.

Today, we're in to Las Vegas for the annual Sun CEC conference. I'll be giving an hour-long version of the talk that I gave at Innovation@Sun -- to a very different audience. There will be 3,500 folks at CEC, who work in all parts of Global Sales and Service: nearly all the people who actually talk to customers. So I get to talk to people who work with customers about the value of customer research ... I'm hoping that this is going to be like preaching to the choir ... I'll let you know ...

So, here's my summary: the next time that you're invited to attend a conference with a bunch of Sun Fellows and Distinguished Engineers, accept :) They throw a good party.

I had a lot of fun getting to hang out with my colleague and co-author, Nalini. We ate good food, drank good wine, and gave good poster sessions :) We saw the milky way through a star-laden sky above the beach where dinner was served one night. We had warm days, and cool breezes, and hung out with more famous people than you can shake a stick at. I gave a presentation on the work that we had done -- it was not my finest delivery of a presentation, but the audience was intimidating. My presentation was on some persona development that we had done, and was not necessarily what they wanted to hear. I quit talking with more than 13 minutes left in the 45-minute time slot, and then I took questions until we'd used up that time plus a few minutes more. That was a lot more fun than going over the slides. And they were, in all, a very receptive audience to the message that I was trying to deliver.

I had to run right after my talk so that my family and I could catch our flight out on time. But before I got away, one director ran out after me and stopped me to chat. We talked for a few minutes, and then he asked if I was in a hurry -- so I told him that I was on my way to the airport. He laughed, and said, "Oh -- you're just going to drop a bomb like that, and then run before the fallout hits the ground?" ... That's good right?

Today, we are (yes Tom and Rachel are joining me) flying to San Jose, California, so I can attend the innovation@Sun conference, and give a talk on Wednesday afternoon. It's a little nerve-racking, because I'm giving the "soft" talk -- the one on user research and persona development -- not on chip-level multi-threading. I'm not giving this talk to my organization, but to the Sun Fellows and Distinguished Engineers -- Sun's technical leadership. People like Radia Perlman, and James Gosling ... there were only 10 talks accepted for this conference, and our (my colleague Nalini and my) abstract was one of them. Personas and user research hit the big time at Sun ... we'll see how we fare.

Wish me luck :)

You know, it's not like I have time on my hands -- I'm trying to attend to several hundred details that need to be addressed before our flights tomorrow morning at 7:00am, so I'm doing laundry, running dishes, gathering the recycling, and then ... what comes traipsing through my head, but a lyrical spoof on one of my favorite Great Big Sea Songs (which I'll share with you in a minute).

How does this happen? Why is my subconscious messing with me? Of course, I immediately break into song for my husband and daughter, who respond with peals of laughter. We are a strange family, but I like us this way. Neither Tom nor I remember the capacity to spoof lyrics before we met one another, but it is not unusual for us to break into song, whenever something spoken reminds us of something musical.

Usually, it's just a few words and the accompanying notes, but sometimes we go longer. Here's an example of a spoof that I wrote when Rachel was an infant, to the tune of "Breaking up is hard to do" -- it's called "Waking up is hard to do" -- and I'd sing it to her whenever she grumpily transitioned from a sleeping state into consciousness. It goes like this:

... 'Cause waking up is hard to do
They say that waking up is hard to do (do do)
Now I know, I know that it's true
Don't say my nap's at an end
Instead of waking up, I wish that I were dosing off again
I beg of you -- don't make me cry
Sing me one more little lullaby
Let me sleep, or I'll be blue
'Cause waking up is hard to do

So the lyrics that came into my head this morning reminded me of the Weird Al songs that Tom's sons from his first marriage so enjoy (they also love Great Big Sea, so I can't wait to sing this for them). It's to the refrain of "Beat the drum", and it's called "Eat the gum".

Eat the gum, eat the gum
Like a candy, but chewy and long
Eat the gum, eat the gum
Blow some bubbles, but make sure they're strong
Eat the gum

Okay, I'm sorry -- I know that wasn't really worth waiting for. Happy Sunday, anyway :)

Yeah, I know, that sounds a lot more salacious than it is :) But I need a good reason to move faster on the elliptical machine and the treadmill, and their music keeps me motivated.

Here's my workout playlist:

1. Goin' Up
2. The Chemical Worker's Song
3. French Perfume
4. Sea of No Cares
5. Ordinary Day
6. The River Driver
7. I'm a Rover
8. Everything Shines
9. Consequence Free
10. Boston and St. Johns
11. When I'm Up
12. Rant & Roar
13. Shines Right Through Me
14. When I am King
15. Beat the Drum
16. Somedays
17. Let it Go
18. Sally Ann

Now that I've been using that playlist for a few weeks, I think I'll change it up a bit. Fortunately, they've recorded a lot of music for me to choose from. Speaking of which, I heard that they were in the studio recently. My "source" asked Bob, if this album was going to be very mainstream, like Something Beautiful or very traditional, like The Hard and the Easy. Bob's response was, "It's going to be very Great Big Sea."

:)

I can't wait :)

I said in my first post on mentoring that I'd talk about how to deal with difficult people. But I've been putting it off, because it's such a big topic. I tend to put the people that I work with into a few categories:

• Peers
• People who I can help (generally more junior people)
• People who can help me (generally more senior people)
• Managers up my chain of command
• Managers in another chain of command

I'm not sure that those are all of the distinctions, but those are some rough categories to start. The goal with each of them is the same, however: to get the work accomplished, efficiently, effectively, and in such a way that the person you are working with really wants to work with you again. When people are being difficult or playing games, it's hard to keep that goal in mind, but it's important.

Here's a game that senior people like to play with me, when something that I've said moves them out of their comfort zone (please pardon the language, but this is how I think of this kind of conflict)... the game is called, "mine's bigger than yours is". It's great to recognize when this game is started, because it means that they are feeling threatened or insecure. You'll know you're a player in this game when the subject of conversation moves from the thing that you wanted to talk about, to a topic that they know they can "beat" you at; a place where they know they can win. This almost always happens in a large group setting, frequently over email.

Sometimes, just acknowledging that I've done something to make them defensive will diffuse the situation, and then I try to redirect them back on course. I'll say something like, "My intent was not to put you on the defensive. I'm sorry to have done so. Your last point was the one that that I'd originally wanted to discuss ..." or some such thing. But what about when they really want to get into a conflict? I have a couple of tactics:

• Take the discussion offline -- posturing is less interesting to the person when they don't have an audience, and most people are very reasonable 1:1
• Look for areas of agreement or convergence between your points of view and then play them up -- acknowledge when and where the two of you agreee, and then refer back to that agreement at least once
• Stay calm -- emotion is your enemy -- if you can't respond without getting angry, then wait until you can. If you can't wait, have a colleague review your response.
• Ask open-ended questions and listen to the answers -- try to discover what it is that this person really wants, and then use that to find more points of agreement
• Pick up the phone -- some people are just more comfortable voice-to-voice than in email. Once you've had your discussion, send a email to the person (not the larger group) that summarizes your discussion and invite them to edit and respond to what you thought you heard on the call. Once you have their agreement in email, you can return to the large forum with a summary of your new-found convergence.
• Don't dig in your heels -- as much as you want the other person to come around to your way of thinking, you need to be able to acknowledge when they have a good point, and then move forward from there.
• Don't make an enemy if you can help it -- by using the tactics above, I've converted many people that I've been in conflict with into strong supporters of mine.

Again, your goal is to get the work done, efficiently, effectively, and in such a way that the person you are working with really wants to work with you again. Generally, people just want to be treated with respect and have their points heard and acknowledged. If you can do that, it won't matter whose intellect is bigger ;)

I found out last week that the talk I'll be giving in Aptos, CA (on the Monterrey Bay) for the Innovation@Sun (IAS) conference was also accepted as a talk for Sun Service's annual technical conference, CEC (Customer Engineering Conference).

CEC is a much larger conference, because Sun Service is a bigger group than our population of Distinguished Engineers, Technical Directors, and Sun Fellows. CEC used to be hosted every year out of San Francisco, but this year, it's being run in Las Vegas. I've never been to Las Vegas, but the reviews I've heard so far are all good.

CEC is only a few days after IAS, so we'll likely stay out West in the interim. We have family to visit, so the three of us will go on the lecture circuit together. Truth be told, we were doing that anyway, because my husband will be attending CEC this year. Now we have to wait to find out when my talk is scheduled to see if Tom can take Rachel during my talk, or whether we need my mom to join us for a day or two ... logistics ... I was impressed when I got all the flights worked out (4 legs, none of which are round trip, for 3 people, one using frequent flyer miles, all sitting together), so now we just need a little more info and we can figure out the rest.

I just hope that the reviewers for the ACM CHI conference are as interested in this work as Sun has been, and that the paper we submitted yesterday gets accepted ... please keep your fingers crossed for me!

The second paper that I wanted to write for the ACM CHI conference doesn't have the basis in the literature that I was hoping for, so the bad news is that I won't be writing another paper for this year's conference, but the good news is that I'm feeling a lot less pressure today :)

And speaking of today, I turned 40 a little while ago ... sometime around 6:30am in Austin, TX. My mom says that there were three tornadoes over the hospital at the time, as a result of a hurricane off the coast — I suppose that's like me, to want to make an entrance :)

This morning, I was greeted by my almost-8-year-old and my husband singing a round of Happy Birthday, which they delivered with seven birthday cards (5 from Rachel, 2 from Tom). What a fantastic way to start a new decade ...

Here's my problem — I'm a sprinter. I'm either on or off. Stopped or running full speed ahead. The good news is that I'm making progress. One of the conference papers I wanted to write is nearly done — good thing, because it's due Wednesday.

The other paper, I've had researched for months, and now it's time to put words on paper. I'm ready. It's in my head, and it wants out. It's also due Wednesday, so I'm running out of time.

And that's the push I need; an immutable deadline. Sprint to the finish line ... or fail. Most times I make it, but sometimes I don't. When I was in Grad School (like that was so long ago ;), once a semester, I'd rush to the finish and come in a little late to class. Everyone assumed that I'd gotten stuck at work, but the reality was that I was still typing when class started. So, we'll have to wait until Wednesday night to see how the story ends. I don't want to fail. But sometimes, I just do it to myself.

I've admitted that I'm getting old. It's true — 4 days and counting, and I'll have crossed the threshold into (I'm feeling queasy, just trying to type it ... ) middle age. And maybe that's why I just don't get facebook.

I totally see the value proposition of LinkedIn — professional networking, that's cool. And recently, I even started posting my own photos on Flickr, not just linking to and viewing my friends' pictures. And, of course, I'm blogging. But facebook ...

When Manya first invited me to be her friend on facebook, I admitted, "Okay — I signed up, but I don't get facebook. It's like a yearbook ... but what am I supposed to *do* with it? I'm embarrassed to ask Andrew, since he's got, like, 300 friends. Is it a way to keep in touch with people as they move around? Like an address book that updates itself?" She replied with some version of "yes", and I felt okay about it.

But recently, colleagues (you know who you are) have been "poke"ing me, and you know, my profiles says I'm married so, I assume that it's like elbowing a person. And then Manya and Andrew "wrote on my wall". Oh god. What wall? I look at what my other friends have written on their walls, and I wonder ... how well do I really know them?

So I suppose that one use case is that I can find people that I've been out of touch with for years, and even people in bands that I like, but whom I don't know. But there is facebook, asking if I want to send this person a message or if I want to poke him ...

I must be getting old, because that just does not sound appropriate.

It's been a very tough week at work, but Great Big Sea (GBS) music has been getting me through. The tune that I've been playing in a loop over the last few days is an Irish jig, that by their title, must go by several names: "Eavesdropper's Jig"/"Both Meat & Drink"/"Off We Go". What it sounds like to me is: late morning, when the dew is just coming off the grass; Spring time; new love; blue-sky happiness; and optimism — when all things are possible.

Since the concert a month ago, I've been listening to all of the GBS albums with which I was hitherto unfamiliar. Before the concert, mostly I'd just listened to their 2004 CD, Something Beautiful, which is still my favorite. Since the concert, I've downloaded ~40 songs from iTunes, and purchased CD's, DVD's, and a T-shirt from the GBS store, as my birthday gift to myself (now, just 6 days away, if you're still shopping :)

My other favorites by GBS change weekly, but here they are as recommendations, for your listening pleasure:

• The River Driver
• Sea of No Cares
• Boston and St. Johns
• When I'm Up
• I'm a Rover
• Everything Shines
• Consequence Free
• Ordinary Day
• Time Brings
• Captain Kidd
• Stumbling In
• French Perfume
• Shines Right Through Me
• When I am King
• Beat the Drum
• Something Beautiful
• Helmethead
• Summer
• Sally Ann
• Let it Go
• John Barbour
• Lucky Me
• Can't Stop Falling
• Feel it Turn
• Jack Hinks
• Goin' Up
• The Chemical Worker's Song
• Eavesdropper's Jig/Both Meat & Drink/Off We Go

But now that I'm going through iTunes to create this list, I see that I haven't listened to all their songs, so while this list is comprehensive, it may not be complete :)

I know, it's a shock, but I'm more designer than one blog can handle. No, no — don't say anything — just let me talk.

It started a few weeks ago ... at first, it was nothing. An interview here, an editorial there, but today ... today, I did something I've never done before. I blogged about Jakob Nielsen as he was giving a talk. While people were asking questions, I was linking to content. And, once the talk was over, I posted it. There. I've said it.

Really, it's ... it's not like I'm proud of the way I behaved. I just thought you should know ...

A couple years ago, a colleague and I hosted an afternoon "tea" in Sun Labs. Essentially, volunteers bring in snacks one afternoon a week, which gives everyone a good reason to come out of their offices and informally chat. That day, I'd made guacamole from scratch. It was awesome, and I was asked to share the recipe. I was a bit nervous, because, as a writer, I knew I'd have to give proper attribution to the author of the recipe (Al Roker, in his Big Bad Book of Barbecue), but it seemed somehow incongruous with the gourmet minds of Labs. As a result, when I posted the recipe on the Labs twiki, I added this disclaimer: "you should be able to find wisdom, or a very good guacamole recipe where ever it happens to be."

Which is exactly how I feel about fortune cookies :) Opportunistic wisdom and inspiration. Here are my favorites — they are all easy to recall, because they are taped to my computer monitor:

• "Not all the best days are sunny."
• "Your determination will bring you much success."
• "Every truly great accomplishment is at first impossible."
• "Every person is the creation of himself, the image of his own thinking or believing."
• "Do not follow where the path may lead. Go where there is no path ... and leave a trail."
• "Don't be afraid to take a big step. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps."
• "Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the conquest of it."
• "The secret of getting ahead is getting started."
• "Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence."
• "You are ready to take on the world."

You bet I am :)

Happy Monday!

Barry Schwartz, the author of the Paradox of Choice, describes our anticipation of our experience with a thing as "expected utility" and the actual use of the thing as the "experienced utility". I'm really tired of trying to buy things that I think will yield a good user experience, only to find that regardless of how much research I've done, there's no way to evaluate the darn things until I've bought and used them. I'll give you some examples of what I mean by that, from my kitchen.

In the manufacturer's photo of my kitchen faucet, the handle is on the right. My husband and I are both right handed, so we thought, "Here's a really beautiful faucet, that will work well for us" (expected utility). Once we had it installed, we realized that right-handed people hold pots and pans and glasses with their right hands, and turn on the faucet with their left hands (at least we do). So we had to have the plumber back out to turn the faucet around, which is not really the same, because there's a black button on the "back" of the faucet, which now faces front. Every time I see that black dot, I grimace. It's interfering with my enjoyment of the beauty of the faucet (experienced utility).

Another example: my coffee pot. When we installed granite counter tops in our kitchen last summer, I decided to treat myself to a new coffee pot. The old one wasn't broken, but it was 3 or 4 years old, and pre-dated our getting the whole-house water filter, so it made God-awful noises when the coffee was brewing. I've been a die-hard fan of one particular brand of coffee makers, for about 20 years. They have all sorts of models, but I prefer the ones with clocks, so we can set up the coffee the night before, and then have it brew the coffee in the morning, right before we get up. On this new model, it does those things, but the little dial that they used to have to set the clock, has been replaced by a sequence of 7 button presses (across 3 separate buttons, none of which are dedicated to setting the time). I can never remember the key sequence, so I keep the manual close by. When the power goes out, I dread having to re-program the thing. Does it hamper my enthusiasm for the product and the manufacturer? You bet.

Last example: we recently replaced our dishwasher with a new one. We spent a LOT of time selecting it: we chose it for the completely configurable racks, the fact that it's very quiet, the top rack can be moved up and down, the stainless steel interior, and lots of other features. What we didn't know until it was installed and we used it, is that we need to use special soap that is less environmentally friendly the the soap we were using before -- otherwise the dishes don't get clean. And some things will never get dry, no matter how long you leave them in the washer. And the icons on the display aren't documented anywhere -- not in the manual or anywhere online. And it takes 30 - 60 minutes longer to wash a load of dishes than our old model. So, the features that we bought it for are all there, and it looks great. But are we really happy with it? Not so much. Because the user experience was not what we had expected.

There are a number of aspects to effective communication — I mentioned how and when you ask for a promotion in an earlier post — but there are many more dimensions to communicating effectively than just timing and voice. Probably the one aspect of effective communication that I spend the most time talking about with my mentees is understanding your audience: who are they and what is their communication style?

I've found that I use several techniques to learn about communication style and adjust how I communicate, as a result:

• Introvert or Extrovert?
• Other Myers-Briggs letters
• Birth order & family life

If you don't already know if the person is an introvert or extrovert, here are some questions that will help you figure it out: does the person think out loud (E) or prefer to get information in writing so they have time to reflect on it before responding (I)? When you have a meeting with the person, do they frequently have an agenda that they use to guide the discussion (I) or do the wing it (E)? When they do have an agenda, are they comfortable discussing other things (E), or do they prefer to stick to the agenda (I)? Obviously, the line along which we fall as an Extrovert or an Introvert is a continuum, but most people fall to one side or the other as their comfort zone or default style of communication. I'm pretty much on the line between I and E, but when all is said and done, I am definitely an Extrovert, so I consciously adapt my communication style when I need to work with Introverts.

The other Myers-Briggs letters are important, as well. For example, my last letter is a P, which means that I perceive time as flexible or expandable, and as a result, I tend to procrastinate. I'm also more of a thinker than a feeler, which means that I err on the side of logic more often than not. If you're a feeler, then you need to adapt your style to give me data on which to base a decision, not just what you feel.

Another aspect is birth order & family life. I had a boss who came from a family where his father drank and was verbally abusive. As a result, he'd only communicate with people to reprimand them — if you were doing well, he wouldn't say a word to you, so we frequently didn't talk for weeks at a time. A colleague of mine was asking for resources on how to manage up — I had to be honest with her that, as an only child, I'd never had a problem managing up, because my whole childhood had been spent trying to get my parents to interact with me.

Lastly, and I mention this with some reluctance, sometimes birthdays can be helpful in understanding a person's communication style. I'm a Virgo and my life is filled with Pisceans, Sagittarians, and Cancers. Why that happens, I won't guess, but it's a pattern nonetheless.

I received news a few weeks back that an abstract I'd submitted to the Innovation@Sun conference had been accepted. This is particularly cool, because it gives me a chance to present the work that a colleague and I did to all of the Sun Fellows and Distinguished Engineers.

In late 2006, we conducted user research to develop personas for Sun Learning Services. Along the way, we came up with a new technique to develop personas that is faster and more reliable than traditional methods.

With any luck, we'll also get to present the ACM conference paper that I'm writing about the method next Spring.

I have two conference papers in my head. One has been percolating for nearly a year, and the other is going on six months. I've done all of the research, and written up most of the bibliography on one. I've reviewed the literature for that paper, and even made some notes. I've downloaded the Word template from the conference web site.

The submission deadlines are only 3 weeks away, and in that time, I need to draft, have my co-authors add to the papers, have the papers peer reviewed, and make the resulting changes.

Deep breath...

I don't have any trouble blogging, but there's not a trip to Florence, Italy on the line when I blog.

There's a quote on Katy Dickinson's internal web site that always comes to mind at times like this: "Done is better than perfect." And then there's the fortune cookie fortune I have taped to my monitor at work: "The secret to getting ahead is getting started".

Here I go -- really...