Archive for Good Experiences
Filed under Bad Experiences, Good Experiences
May 6, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Being part of the privileged few that are overwhelmed by social networks (contrary from friends’ popular belief that everyone has that problem), I’ve started to experience level of noise as I use various systems that was not there before.
I have always jumped on the alpha and beta band-wagons and am the first in line of coming soon lists, so I join stuff just to see what it’s like left and right. While that has always generated a volume of username and passwords I couldn’t possibly keep track off, it’s sort of a non-issue as some of these services become uninteresting and whiter.
Recently, though, a lot of the these services have started to become more of connectors of existing services than anything else. While openness and sociability have long been attributes of these systems, it’s only been in the last few months that I’ve seen it realized in the sense of function reuse and content cross-pollination.
Jott is a really nice service that allows you to call in and leave notes to self and others. It also allows you to automagically have your notes transfered to I Want Sandy, which is another service with similar intention but different approach. I Want Sandy allows me to interact with it via Twitter, which serves an entirely different purpose, but which has a very good input method that’s omnipresent in my life.
As you can imagine, this results in triplication of information — which totally works in these three instances because things only get divulged to the connected services to the extent that I want (as defined by my preferences). Not all systems play nicely like that though. And it becomes increasingly difficult to remember which systems I can count on and rely on to get to what I have gathered.
Last week I was in Chicago and I took this photo at Midway airport as I proceeded to the TSA line. I captured that with the intention to share it with Jared, who loves TSA as a metaphor in his presentations. I snapped the photo with my phone and uploaded directly to Flickr. Then I sent Jared a public message via twitter about it. Jared is connected to me on Flickr, so he probably also saw it on his friend feed. Because my message was public, Bill followed the link (he is also connected to me on Flickr so he’d get it eventually anyway) and added a comment asking if he could use the photo for a presentation. I immediately went to Twitter and told him he could. Then I thought maybe I should post that comment on Flickr as well in case anyone else wanted to use that photo. Two minutes later I checked my email and Bill had asked me the same question in a message (probably thinking I would not see his comment on Flickr soon enough). I wrote him back in confirmation.
Then I stopped and realized a) the sheer amount of content produced throughout this story b) the amount of interactions across and within different systems that allowed this to happen and c) the convoluted duplicated and triplicated content that came out of it as a result.
What this will mean for the non-hardcore early adopters of tomorrow? Will any of these products even reach such audiences? Will these things also wither and die for me because of the cumulative effect of these small duplicative efforts? How long until this social noise gets in the way of the conversations I actually want to have?
Filed under Good Experiences, Information Architecture, Management, Me, me, me!
February 11, 2008 at 11:30 am
Today I have the great pleasure to announce I’m concluding an extremely important phase in my life, managing the Information Architecture and Usability for Comcast Interactive Media, and starting a new one, as Principal of Information Architecture for the same Comcast Interactive Media.
Yes, you read that right: I’m not going anywhere, yet, I’m going forward!
Coming to Comcast was a great opportunity for me - I wanted to work for a large organization and experience the trials and tribulations that my clients expressed when I worked as a consultant. I also wanted to manage a larger team and experience the challenges of long-term people management. Comcast welcomed me with an opportunity to do all that and more. Not only to manage people, but to start and build a team from scratch; not to just be in a large corporate environment, but establishing a new competency (information architecture and usability) across a very large organization.
This was a very enriching experience and I’m extremely satisfied with the outcome. What a learning experience! Fortunately for me, realizing that I reached this point didn’t mean I’d come across a dead-end at Comcast. Comcast Interactive Media is continuing to grow and so we came up with the Principal position, allowing me to keep growing and focus on new strategic challenges.
As Principal of Information Architecture I’ll be responsible for evolving the vision and establishing UX best practices across Comcast Interactive Media properties. Those include Comcast.net, Fancast, Ziddio.com, GameInvasion, Chill and all Comcast Cable, High-Speed Internet and Voice services.
I couldn’t possibly do that without passing on the baton of managing team and practice to someone else. That is a hard call to make given that this is “my baby” and I want the very best. Which is why I’m THRILLED that my dear friend Dennis Schleicher stepped in to take on the Director of IA role. Dennis is one of the nicest people I know. I’m not just saying that because we share a love of cheese. He’s also very talented and inspiring to be around - nothing seems impossible or hard when you discuss it with Dennis - you know you are talking to an anthropologist when you start answering your own questions. Welcome Dennis!
I’m very excited about all this so I’ll try and blog a little more frequently to talk about what I’m up to. The last I’ll add today is really the only reason I decided to write this post, to say thanks to the absolutely fantastic team that made this possible for me. Crystal Kubitsky, Eddie James, Austin Govella, Aparna Ramchandran, Paul Kali, Cynthia Hoffa and David Fiorito. You all rock. I hope I have reminded you of that frequently enough and I hope you are as proud of this team as I am. I can’t wait to continue working with you.
Filed under Food, Good Experiences, Me, me, me!
June 17, 2007 at 2:34 pm
I’m thinking that a popular sentence in blogs is “I haven’t posted anything in ages” (or some variant). Actually, Google tells me “I haven’t posted” occurs 1,160,000 times. It doesn’t imply we are all procrastinators, just that we feel guilty for not posting when we get back to doing it. Silliness.
I’ve been buying a house and working hard so I decided blogging was not a priority right now. I will make it a priority again after I move into my lovely new place (next week) and things start to settle down. Meanwhile, I’m sharing my brisket recipe because yesterday I cooked the most delicious brisket I have every a) cooked and b) eaten.
I don’t cook with recipes and don’t like following instructions so consider these ‘guidelines’ for a yummy saucy brisket. Be creative!
Liv’s No-Fuss Brisket
Effort: 15 minutes preparing, ~3 hours cooking (unattended)
Ingredients:
- 1 3lb Thin Cut Brisket (check this if you don’t know the difference between brisket cuts)
- 2 large white onions
- 2 tablets of beef bouillon
- 5 table spoons of Dijon Mustard (I recommend Maille)
- 2 tea spoons of powdered cumin
- 1/4 cup sea salt
- your preferred spices
Preparation:
Wash and clean the fat off the brisket. Recipes usually recommend leaving some fat on the brisket to add to the flavor and prevent it from drying. I agree with that but my tip is that it is hard enough to take it all off, so the amount you can’t remove will be more than enough to keep the fat flavoring you need. Poke holes with the tip of your knife on both sides so it can absorb the juices well.
Slice two onions (0.5cm - 1/6 in slices) and place as much of it as you can fit at the bottom of your baking pan. Coat it with powdered cumin. Grab a handful of sea salt and rub all around the brisket. If you’re a fan of garlic, stick whole cloves into the holes you poked (don’t overdo it, use no more than 3-4 cloves for 1 lb of beef). Place the brisket in the baking pan over the onions.
Pre-heat the oven at 450F - 230C.
In a separate dish, dissolve 2 tablets of beef bouillon into 1.5 cups of hot water. I prefer Carne-de-sol bouillon, but that’s not easy to find outside Brazil. Beef will do just fine (that’s what I used last night) and you can use other bouillons to vary flavor. Add 4-5 table spoons of Dijon mustard and mix until it’s uniform.
Coat the brisket in the pan with the sauce and add any spices you like - I recommend some more cumin, freshly grated white pepper and a few bay leaves, but I believe people should spice their dishes with their preferred spices, specially when they are cooking hearty comfort-food meals. Don’t add more salt, remember you have sea-salt and concentrated beef bouillon in there!
Place the remainder of onions on top of the brisket and wrap the pan in aluminum foil. Make sure it’s tightly sealed and place it in the oven, bringing it up to 500F - 260C. Leave it alone for 1 hour then bring it down to 350F - 175C for another 2 hours.
Go do something while it cooks otherwise you will be tempted to open to see how it’s going. Resist the temptation. While you wait I recommend making plain white rice to have with the brisket or a simple couscous with parmesan cheese and/or pine nuts.
After all the cooking is done, remove the aluminum foil and coat the brisket to make sure it’s moist. Bring the oven up to 500F - 260C and let it bake uncovered for 15 minutes - this allows the sauce to thicken. You might want to slice it to serve - if you’re cooking for the week (as I am) I prefer not to so it doesn’t dry up) - otherwise, it’s ready to serve.
The meat should be so soft you won’t need a knife. It literally melts in your mouth. If you try this, please leave a comment and let me know how it turned out.
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