Katy Dickinson

Mentoring Success Metrics

Every quarter, the SEED (and PreSEED) mentoring program announces a web-based survey for current participants (mentees), mentors, and managers. Tanya Jankot just finished her analysis of the April 2008 reports. The results and comments are very similar to previous quarters. Satisfaction remains high, and the most frequent request from participants is for more opportunity (and financial support) for face-to-face contact with their mentor and other participants. Once again, there was no significant difference in satisfaction between participants co-located with their mentor and those working at-a-distance.

The purpose of SEED's quarterly report is to measure the success of the program. It also gives participants, and their mentors and managers, a chance to voice their opinion of the program and share their thoughts and experiences with fellow participants and the SEED program team. These reports are published with the full knowledge of the participants; we encourage participants to submit more private comments in a separate email. We measure the program's success through participants' reported satisfaction and learning, plus the more objective annual measures of promotions, retention, performance rating, etc. The success of the individual participant is due to their own capabilities and hard work (plus available opportunities and good management!). Increased success of the participants as a group may be attributable in part to the SEED program.

Here are some of report highlights:

• This quarterly report was for 4 terms (3 SEED terms, plus 1 PreSEED term).
• 92 people responded to the survey: 53 participants, 29 mentors, and 10 managers answered. There were 149 eligible participants (36% response rate).
• Participant respondents report that participation in the program positively influenced the following:
• Better career direction: 58% of respondents
• Greater understanding of Sun's overall architecture, strategy, or business direction: 55% of respondents
• Broader network of contacts (peer or executive): 45% of respondents
• Increased visibility, within or outside work group: 42% of respondents
• Participant satisfaction with the program:
• 92% reported being satisfied
• 98% thought that the meetings with their mentor were worthwhile
• Mentor satisfaction with the program:
• 79% believe their Mentee's participation has made them more valuable to Sun
• 89% would want to be a mentor again in the SEED program in the future
• Several Mentors noted that their partnership had just begun and they were not yet able to assess the program's impact.
• As with past quarterly reports, analysis does not show significant difference in responses to "Q15 Overall Worth of Meetings with Mentor" and "Q24 Overall Satisfaction with Program" between participants at-a-distance from their mentor and those co-located with their mentor. A full 76% of participants who responded to this quarterly report were at-a-distance from their mentor. This is a positive indication that SEED mentoring partnerships are beneficial to participants whether or not the mentoring pair is able to meet in person.

For information on some of SEED's survey techniques, see my 16 April 2008 blog How to Survey and my 1 May 2008 blog How to Survey, Part 2 (Best Practices).

PreSEED is a pilot of the SEED worldwide Engineering mentoring program. More information on SEED is available at http://research.sun.com/SEED/

Posted at 05:33PM Apr 30, 2008 by katysblog in Mentoring & Other Business  | 

Bougainvillea in Bondage (update)

You may remember my March 18, 2008 blog entry called "Bougainvillea in Bondage". Here is an update photo from my project to turn a red Barbara Karst Bougainvillea vine sprawled across a low fence into a small tree.

Vine on Fence 2007

Vine in Bondage March 2008

Happily Blooming Now

Images Copyright 2007-2008 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 05:23PM Apr 29, 2008 by katysblog in Home & Family  | 

Creating a Cactus Garden, Part 3 (Creating an Arroyito)

Last weekend, I continued creating the little dry creek or arroyito, that runs through the new cactus garden beside WP668, our backyard caboose. I have many sizes of stones and three colors of gravel with which to create the illusion of a natural creek bed. Picking through the stones for those of the best shape and color and then fitting them together takes time. Pictures follow.

John and I have also been hunting contractors to work on WP668. I can tell that our local housing industry is in trouble because I am getting calls back from my messages and estimators will come out to give us a bid within just a few days even though ours is a small job. (To give you a comparison, it took 8 years to find someone who would put a fancy stucco finish on our cabana because the job was too small.) This week, we have finally found a metal roofing supplier plus someone to install the linoleum floor. Those projects should be done within a month. The stained glass should also be completed and installed before June. We are still looking for a woodworker to build 8' x 16' of floor to ceiling glassed bookcases and a window seat. We found someone who agreed to do the work but then he got too busy.

Arroyito photos:

Partly done

Arroyito overview

Work in Progress

Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 04:45PM Apr 29, 2008 by katysblog in Caboose Project and Other Trains  | 

Cottonwood Fairy Fuzz

The female Cottonwood polar trees along the Guadalupe River behind our house are now filling the air with fuzzy seeds. Sometimes when the wind blows, it looks like a snow storm or a great invasion of tiny white fairies. We know where all of the spider webs are on the house, garden, and our backyard caboose, WP668, because they are full of cottonwood seeds. This happens every year but the volume of seeds is still awesome. Some photos:

Windowsill with seeds

Seeds in window web

Seeds in caboose web

Seeds in Aloe Web

Seeds in cactus web

Seeds on geranium buds

Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 04:12PM Apr 29, 2008 by katysblog in News & Reviews  | 

52 PreSEED Participants Selected

On 25 April, we selected the 52 participants in the PreSEED Engineering mentoring program for the June - December 2008 term. There were 65 applicants to the term from Sun's Software Division worldwide but not all applicants were eligible because of incomplete applications, or a mismatch with the scope of the program.

Tanya Jankot and I are now preparing for next month's announcement of the 2008-2009 Recent Hire and Established Staff terms of the SEED mentoring program. Because of PreSEED's success, we are redesigning the scope of all three mentoring groups (PreSEED, SEED Recent Hires, and SEED Established Staff) to fit together better. We have a flow chart already and will be announcing the new scope's details soon.

The next steps for new PreSEED participants are:

1. Participants will create their 10 name Mentor Wish Lists due on 5 May 2008 (9 a.m. Pacific time) by way of the internal web site.
2. Participants will work with Tanya Jankot to personalize the participant web pages she will create.

About the New Participants

65 Applicants
52 PreSEED Participants Selected

Work Locations: China, Czech Republic, Germany, India, Ireland,
Japan, Russia, USA

Division: 100% Sun Software Group

Gender of Participants:
    * female: 8  [ 15% ]
    * male: 44  [ 85% ]

Grade Level: all Members of the Technical Staff, levels two to four (MTS 2-4)

14 Previously Applied to SEED, 27%

Countries of origin this term include: Austria, China,
Czech Republic, El Salvador, Estonia, Germany, India, Iran,
Ireland, Japan, Korea, Russia, Slovakia, UK, USA, Viet Nam

Software Chief Technologists Bob Brewin (Distinguished Engineer and Vice President) and Tim Marsland (Fellow and Vice President) are PreSEED's pilot term Champions. Greg Papadopoulos (Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Research and Development) is the SEED program executive sponsor.

PreSEED is a pilot of the SEED worldwide Engineering mentoring program. More information on SEED is available at http://research.sun.com/SEED/

Posted at 03:37PM Apr 29, 2008 by katysblog in Mentoring & Other Business  | 

Caboose Party

There are still many projects to finish the restoration of WP668, our backyard caboose, but it is beginning to be usable. Once the new floor surface goes in, it will look much better. Our daughter Jessica gets credit for holding the first party in the caboose, on New Year's Eve 2007. She invited a hoard of teenagers over for a dance. They didn't care that it was cold, the bay window wasn't in, the floor was covered in plywood sheets, and there was no paint! All that mattered was that they could play their music loud and hang out with each other.

Our second party was last Sunday, when John and I invited our Agape dinner group over. St. Andrew's Episcopal Church has a program for parishioners to get to know each other better by meeting for dinner once a month at each other's homes. It was our turn to host last Sunday. We moved in the old iron stove and some train lanterns for atmosphere, plus the three area rugs we bought for the caboose at Fabindia while we were working in India a year ago. We had wine, crackers, and cheese in WP668 and then moved back into the house for dinner. It went very well.

John and I are moving up to hosting the Caboose Brunch next month and then a Caboose warming party this summer. Here are some photos:

New Year's 2007

New Year's 2007

New Year's 2007

Almost Ready to Party

Iron stove, lanterns

Ready for Guests

Images Copyright 2007-2008 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 02:34PM Apr 22, 2008 by katysblog in Caboose Project and Other Trains  | 

WP668 Caboose in the news

We just received the current issue of The Western Pacific Headlight (Issue 35, Spring 2008). This is the official publication of the Feather River Rail Society (FRRS) and the Western Pacific Railroad Historical Society (WPRRHS), based in Portola, California. The back pages 22-23 of this issue show six black and white photos of "WP Wooden Caboose Photos" taken in 1973-1975 by Peter Arnold. Our own WP668 is one of them. This is the same WP668 14 September 1974 photo also published on p. 122: Western Pacific Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment by Jim Eager, 2001 (Publisher: Morning Sun Books; ISBN-10: 158248063X, ISBN-13: 978-1582480633)

Here it is in color (published with permission of Morning Sun Books):

All six photos in the current Western Pacific Headlight issue are of steel strapped wooden bay window WP cabooses. This group was originally built as boxcars around 1916 and converted to caboose service around 1943 (for World War II). They are numbers 643, 645, 668, 679, 680, and 683. Looking at the Central California Rails Caboose Index W, at least three cabooses pictured (645, 668, and 679) still exist. WP645 and WP679 are in Portola and, of course, WP668 is in our San Jose backyard.

Posted at 08:38PM Apr 21, 2008 by katysblog in Caboose Project and Other Trains  | 

Creating a Cactus Garden, Part 3 (interviewing rocks)

I have been interviewing rocks. That is to say, I have hundreds of garden rocks of sizes from the diameter of my fist to twice the size of my head, plus many smaller and a few boulders even larger. Most of these are in use but all are being considered for relocation to my new cactus garden. The size, color, and texture patterns of each rock determine whether it gets relocated. Also, if it is still needed where I had it originally. For example, the rosemary border between the house and driveway has overgrown its rock edging so all of those are being wiggled out and moved either to the cactus garden or to replace rocks now in the cactus garden. My son Paul helped me move 40 rocks on Saturday. He said he would rather lift weights.

Some of the rocks came with our Willow Glen house and I moved others from our old house. Still more were collected in our driving trips around California and Nevada each summer. The yellow quartz stone below came from Jake's Creek behind my Great-Grandparents' Elkmont cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. Below are photos of some of my favorite rocks, plus work-in-progress images of the cactus garden.

My neighbor came by to see what was happening. She said that the caboose in the cactus garden looked like Disneyland. I hadn't been thinking of Disneyland as a source of garden design inspiration but I include two photos from Splash Mountain's small cactus garden below for comparison. As you can read in my blog, my daughter Jessica and visited Disney World - Magic Kingdom after participating in the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in October 2007.

Buying more gravel

Dark gravel in arroyito

Starting to place stones

Moving stones

Silver Torch blooms

Trichocereus Carmarguensis Crest

Cactus without nametag

Last barrel cactus

Top gravel placed

Making progress...

Splash Mountain garden 1

Splash Mountain garden 2

Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 03:49PM Apr 21, 2008 by katysblog in Caboose Project and Other Trains  | 

65 PreSEED-2 Mentoring Applications

The PreSEED-2 application web pages were open between 14 April and noon today. We received 65 submissions by today's deadline, 57 of which are complete.

Once the application period was closed, the program staff started evaluating which applications are complete and meet the selection criteria: these are the eligible applications. Part of this evaluation is verification by Sun Human Resources (HR) of each applicant's recent performance ratings, hire date, etc. Applications which are substantially incomplete or are found to contain deliberate misrepresentations are eliminated from consideration. Another part of this evaluation is whether the applicant's manager strongly supports the application. Verification takes time and can't start until after the deadline. In a regular SEED term, 15% to 20% of applicants are disqualified for one reason or another.

The PreSEED-2 pilot mentoring term for Sun Software Members of the Technical Staff will accept up to 50 participants; it will run from June-December 2008. We will not know until after the verification review which submissions will be accepted. I will announce the participants accepted into PreSEED-2 on or before 25 April.

On 3 April, we announced PreSEED-2, the second pilot mentoring term aimed at helping Sun Engineering staff who have been getting almost all "Sun Standard" (2 or Standard-level) performance ratings onto a path which may lead them to higher engagement. The first PreSEED pilot term is currently under way, running from March-September 2008. The PreSEED-1 metrics and feedback so far are good and the same or better than metrics of a regular SEED worldwide mentoring term. We are now collecting the first formal feedback from PreSEED-1 mentees, managers, and mentors.

Software Chief Technologists Bob Brewin (Distinguished Engineer and Vice President) and Tim Marsland (Fellow and Vice President) are PreSEED's pilot term Champions. Greg Papadopoulos (Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Research and Development) is the SEED program executive sponsor.

PreSEED is a pilot of the SEED worldwide Engineering mentoring program. More information on SEED is available at http://research.sun.com/SEED/

Posted at 02:37PM Apr 21, 2008 by katysblog in Mentoring & Other Business  | 

More LOL Cats

Now that I have my own LOL cat entry, I want to share some of the reasons why I find http://icanhascheezburger.com/ so funny. OK, cat pictures with phonetic captions with are at best silly (and if you hate cats, probably really stupid), but I like them anyway.

see more crazy cat pics

Posted at 09:21PM Apr 18, 2008 by katysblog in News & Reviews  | 

My First LOL Cat

My favorite funny website is http://icanhascheezburger.com/. As the owner of one of the prettiest cats in the world*, I have long been trying to take a funny photo of Tino which I could post to ICHC. Most of the time, Tino just looks like a fuzzball and he avoids the camera because he does not like the red focus light.

* an entirely objective opinion

However! I finally distracted him with his feather toy, took a Tino picture I like, and today submitted my first LOL Cat picture:

The ICHC "Kitteh Commission of Teh Funny" may or may not select my picture for display and voting. According to their FAQ: "We get far far moar submissions than we can promote to the voting page. We’re working on ways to show more pictures for voting. (Really? Yes.) Soon my dear. Soon. Only 5-6 make it to the homepage on any given day."

Posted at 02:34PM Apr 18, 2008 by katysblog in News & Reviews  | 

46 PreSEED-2 Applications

Since the application web pages opened for use on 14 April, we have received 46 submissions, 28 of which are complete. The due date for application submission is 21 April. Preference is given to applications which are completed earlier.

The PreSEED-2 pilot mentoring term for Sun Software Members of the Technical Staff will accept up to 50 participants; it will run from June-December 2008. We will not know until after the 21 April deadline which submissions will be completed by the applicant then verified by Sun Human Resources (HR). The initial applicant group is remarkably diverse geographically. We have submissions so far from China, Czech Republic, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Russia, Switzerland and the USA. Only 40% of the applicants so far are working in the USA.

On 3 April, we announced PreSEED-2, the second pilot mentoring term aimed at helping Sun Engineering staff who have been getting almost all "Sun Standard" (2 or Standard-level) performance ratings onto a path which may lead them to higher engagement. The first PreSEED pilot term is currently under way, running from March-September 2008. The PreSEED-1 metrics and feedback so far are good and the same or better than metrics of a regular SEED worldwide mentoring term. We are now collecting the first formal feedback from PreSEED-1 mentees, managers, and mentors.

Software Chief Technologists Bob Brewin (Distinguished Engineer and Vice President) and Tim Marsland (Fellow and Vice President) are PreSEED's pilot term Champions. Greg Papadopoulos (Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Research and Development) is the SEED program executive sponsor.

PreSEED is a pilot of the SEED worldwide Engineering mentoring program. More information on SEED is available at http://research.sun.com/SEED/

Posted at 10:58AM Apr 18, 2008 by katysblog in Mentoring & Other Business  | 

Caboose Brunch

One of the items auctioned off by SAMA (St. Andrew's Medical Assistance) at last Sunday's charity event was brunch on WP668, our backyard caboose:

Our brunch sold for $225 and we are now in the process of scheduling the event with the winning bidders, probably for next month. I plan to finish setting out the rocks in the arroyito of the cactus garden this weekend. I hope to get the stained glass and new floor surface installed beforehand as well. No pressure!

Image Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson, Certificate by Sami Asfour

Posted at 10:59AM Apr 17, 2008 by katysblog in Caboose Project and Other Trains  | 

How to Survey

Introduction

This is an updated external-to-Sun version of a web page I first created five years ago to bring together in one location key information and resources for how to conduct surveys. The initial audience for this information was the Sun Sigma (Six Sigma) professional community.

How do I know about surveys and data collection? I was certified as a Sun Sigma Black Belt in 2002 and have been serving as a Master Black Belt since 2002. I was also in one of the last classes that Dr. Deming taught on statistical management methods, in 1993.

Key Questions

1. Why survey?

A survey is one of many good ways to collect information from customers. It may or may not be the best way for your situation. Have you considered other options such as field studies, baseline research, interviews, and focus groups? Many customer groups get surveyed over and over and get very tired of questions: what do you know about the data already collected from the target group?

2. What are the rules?

Information protection, security, and privacy are some policy and legal areas to consider before developing your survey. Local laws about sweepstakes and contests also need to be considered for some survey incentives. If you work for a company, there may be different policies for internal corporate surveys and external customer surveys.

3. What questions?

Developing survey content is as much an art as it is a science. How do you form questions so that the results can be usefully analyzed? What will you do with the answer to each question? How many questions will your target audience answer before abandoning the survey? Is the way you ask the question clear to people from other contexts and countries? An excellent survey takes time and testing to perfect. If you are new to surveying, consider asking a consultant expert for support.

4. What tool?

If you are not having someone else create your survey, there are a number of tools available to you, details are available below under Tools and Services.

Tools and Services

• Sample Size Calculator, Creative Research Systems web site tool
"This Sample Size Calculator is presented as a public service of Creative Research Systems. You can use it to determine how many people you need to interview in order to get results that reflect the target population as precisely as needed. You can also find the level of precision you have in an existing sample."
• 3-way Percent Calculators
• Web-based surveys are a best practice. When I create a web based survey, I do not use a third party survey tool. I work with a Sun Engineer to create and test my survey using HTML, PERL, and CGI scripts. For those to whom these are not easily available, here are three survey tool companies which have been recommended to me. Before starting to use a third party survey tool, be sure to consider who owns your survey data, how the privacy of your data is protected, and whether the tool company charges for larger numbers of responses.
• Zoomerang "Create custom web-based surveys and get rapid results. Start using the #1 online survey tool today!"
• VTSurvey "A web-based tool which enables end users to autonomously create and run online surveys, feedback or registration forms."
• SurveyMonkey.com "Intelligent survey software for primates of all species. SurveyMonkey has a single purpose: to enable anyone to create professional online surveys quickly and easily."

Reading

• "Ask Them Yourself" - How to survey your customers on the cheap, By Ellyn Spragins, FORTUNE - Small Business - Innovation, From the Dec. 2005 Issue of FSB
• "Keep Online Surveys Short" by (former Sun Distinguished Engineer) Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox, February 2, 2004
  "To ensure high response rates and avoid misleading survey results, keep your surveys short and ensure that your questions are well written and easy to answer."
• "Raising Your Return on Innovation Investment" By Alexander Kandybin and Martin Kihn, Booz Allen Hamilton, 2004
  "There is also is a flaw in the methods by which most companies go about developing new products. Focus groups and surveys elicit consumer opinions, but people can't know what they don't know."
• "Listening to the Voice of the Customer" by Mark Federman, Chief Strategist, McLuhan Management Studies, McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology, University of Toronto - November 28, 2001 (9 pages, PDF format)
• "Getting the truth into workplace surveys" by Palmer Morrell-Samuels, "Harvard Business Review", February 2002 - Reprint R0202K
• How to Conduct Your Own Survey by Priscilla Salant, Don A. Dillman. John Wiley & Sons (1994) ISBN: 0471012734
• An alternative to the survey:
  • "Field Studies: The Best Tool to Discover User Needs" by Jared M. Spool, Originally published: March 13, 2007
    "While techniques, such as focus groups, usability tests, and surveys, can lead to valuable insights, the most powerful tool in the toolbox is the 'field study'. Field studies get the team immersed in the environment of their users and allow them to observe critical details for which there is no other way of discovering."
  • "Risks of Quantitative Studies" by (former Sun Distinguished Engineer) Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox, March 1, 2004
    "Number fetishism leads usability studies astray by focusing on statistical analyses that are often false, biased, misleading, or overly narrow. Better to emphasize insights and qualitative research."

See my 1 May 2008 blog entry How to Survey, Part 2 (Best Practices) for more.

Posted at 04:00PM Apr 16, 2008 by katysblog in Mentoring & Other Business  | 

PreSEED-2 Application Status

Since the application web pages opened for use on 14 April, we have received 25 submissions, 19 of which are complete. The PreSEED-2 pilot mentoring term for Sun Software Members of the Technical Staff will accept up to 50 participants; it will run from June-December 2008. The initial applicant group is remarkably diverse geographically. We have submissions so far from China, Czech Republic, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Russia, and the USA. The due date for application submission is 21 April.

On 3 April, we announced PreSEED-2, the second pilot mentoring term aimed at helping Sun Engineering staff who have been getting almost all "Sun Standard" (2 or Standard-level) performance ratings onto a path which may lead them to higher engagement. The first PreSEED pilot term is currently under way, running from March-September 2008. The PreSEED-1 metrics and feedback so far are good and the same or better than metrics of a regular SEED worldwide mentoring term. We are now collecting the first formal feedback from PreSEED-1 mentees, managers, and mentors.

Software Chief Technologists Bob Brewin (Distinguished Engineer and Vice President) and Tim Marsland (Fellow and Vice President) are PreSEED's pilot term Champions. Greg Papadopoulos (Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Research and Development) is the SEED program executive sponsor.

PreSEED is a pilot of the SEED worldwide Engineering mentoring program. More information on SEED is available at http://research.sun.com/SEED/

Posted at 02:30PM Apr 16, 2008 by katysblog in Mentoring & Other Business  |