Mini Kahlon, LPFI, Director, Innovation

Target user type: Hub with tinges of Busy Body

Point of reference: A combination of Katie, Sheila with a little bit of Ted

High-level takeaways

Does Mini have the problem we're trying to solve with the Chandler Ecosystem?

• Lots of things going on at once. Projects of all different sizes.
• Most of things she's doing, she hasn't done before and are of indeterminate size and scope.
• Has 3 main project areas that are long-term and then an assortment of minor projects

• Doesn't have a strict system, sort of a motley assortment of tools, mostly tied together by her memory
• Works very closely with around 5 people: Collaborates with them on the substance/output of what they do, not just coordinating logistics
• Works frequently with 10-15 people
• Drives projects to keep them moving
• Facilitates interactions between disparate groups that need to work together: extract requirements, understand limitations, possible solutions, etc.
• Facilitates meetings, interactions and communications to make sure disparate parts of the organization are communicating and understand each other's requirements and needs
  • Pulls together agendas with input from others
  • Facilitates meetings to make sure they get through their agenda, answer questions and end up with concrete next actions
• Manages shares task lists with people she's working with
• Produces tangible deliverables as well: Write-ups, proposals, project definitions. With a few exceptions, most of Mini's deliverables help other people execute on the projects she's driving.

• Needs a way to roll-up summaries of projects for Caroline and Freada

Likelihood of Mini adopting new technology

• Curious about technology, comfortable with it
• But not a gadget-freak
• Not a productivity freak, just wants something simple that works

Interview Questions about Job Responsibilities and Workflows

• What projects are you working on right now?
• What meetings have you had in the last week?
• Who have you talked to?
• What were the meetings about?

• Do you have a safety on the Send button?
• How many drafts do you go through before sending out email?
• How regularly do you purge your Drafts folder?
• What feature do you use the most in your email client?

• What mailing lists do you subscribe to? RSS feeds? Blogs?
• What software have you downloaded and played around with?
• What other software do you use?
• What gadgets do you have?
• What are your favorite possessions?
• What books have you read in the past year? Movies? Television shows?
• What magazines do you subscribe to?

• Do you consider writing to be a major part of what you do?
• What other skills are important for you to be effective at your job?
• What aspects of your job, do you love the most?
• If you were talking to a 17-year old about careers, how would you get them excited about what you do?

• What degrees do you hold?
• What did you think you would be when you grew up

• Is your desk messy or clean?
• Is your house messy or clean?
• What are you anal retentive about?

Interview notes

This week in Mini's life:

• 3 main solo projects that I'm responsible for driving and project managing
• PLUS lots of other things that are less urgent, where I serve more in the capacity of a Content/Advisor, rather than a Lead or Project manager
  • But these side projects still take up a lot of time

3 main projects - in order of priority

1. Education project: Production podcasting channels with SMASH students

• People I work with:
• Irene - Program director of SMASH
• Eric - Marketing and Outreach program
• Trevor and Simon - Teaching a tech and multimedia class, they will include podcasting in their class (TAs for the summer)
• IT - Dave, Chris and Jared. SMASH-casting with Dave

2. CorporateLeavers.org

• I manage the project (making the website happen)
• I drive the user scenarios

• 2 sets of people
• Implementors: Sean (visual designer), Brad (newly hired contract Drupal/tech expert)
• People I interact with less frequently:
  • Mary-Kate who is actually conductin the interview, collecting the content
  • Caroline: Program Director of CorporateLeavers.org

3. Strategic business project

• Partnering with scientists from Project XXXX
• Evaluating a new business, joint-venture between LPFI and Project XXXX
• Trial partnership
• Clients: Diversity and HR reps from YYYY/Kaiser
• Engaging : Brian, Magda, Tony (3 scientists - founders)
• Mitch is an advisor
• Freada: Project lead (strategy)
• Implementation is Mini
• Doris project manages from the XXXX side - she's on her To: line in emails right now, but she is going on maternity leave

Things I needed to do this week for Project XXXX:

• Need consultant to do business due diligence for the partnership
• Need more resources from within LPFI
• Large meeting with LPFI, presented status: Mary-Kate, Caroline, Lakiba, Greg, Rhonda (part-time)
  • Defined near-term needs and Vision
  • Who in LPFI is interested in working on this?
  • Map out how internal resources might play out

More on each Project

1. Education project: Production podcasting channels with SMASH students (SMASH-cast)

• Ran a session on Saturday
• We meet every 2 weeks, and I spent a couple of hours on preparing for each meeting
• I drive the session

• Sent a reminder email to the students beforehand
  • Outlining: here's what we're going to do
  • Didn't require too much preparation
  • Spent an hour composing the email, preparing the text
• However, communication needs are heavy
• Students are kind of random

• I do all the final editing on the stuff they produce

Collaborating with Marketing and Tech

• We trying to reach out to programs like SMASH around the country
• Show them the possibilities that Podcasting allows
• We are willing to help them get up and running
• I work with Eric, he's the marketing and outreach person
  • We define: What's the process, what are the materials we're going to need
  • Contact programs by email, phone call, and follow-up with materials in a package
  • Work with Eric to define what the package should be
  • I gives him suggestions, Eric creates drafts, I provide feedback or or will change stuff directly (via Email)

Trevor and Simon (T/S)

• Working on creating a radio diary
• Coordinating with them to create multimedia pieces for a tech class they teach
• Review progress, T/S evaluate meets their needs
• Mini's role in that process: facilitate between T/S and others in LPFI to make T/S get what they need to teach their class
  • T/S say they need software
  • Irene takes on the task with Chris from IT
  • They got stuck, couldn't find cheap versions of the software they needed
  • So then Mini came back in to help resolve the problem by:
    • Re-clarify what their needs were, via email
    • Simon had suggested something a long time ago, Mini remembered this and that turned out to be the solution

ADVISORY Project: SMASH Tech needs for the summer

• Kick-off project with IT
• Facilitated the kick-off meeting
• Bring Irene, IT, T/S together
• Bring the right people together

Once there have been sufficient number of kick-off meetings

• Clarify requirements for IT, talk to IT
• IT and Mini realize this is a project in it's own right, not just a handful of concrete tasks
• Provides informal facilitation before handing it over to Irene to turn it into a real project
• Figure out: What do you need, requirements, stakeholders
• Get some preliminary ideas from IT
• Set agenda: collaborate with Irene and IT to make sure you have the right Agenda
• Hand-off the whole thing to Irene and Chris
• Communicate with Irene + Chris via email and f2f (face-to-face)

2. CorporateLeavers.org

• This project is either really time intensive OR goes into Stasis for a while
• Driven by the interviews Mary-Kate is able to set-up, so the schedule is unpredictable
• Why are the interviews not predictable? People take a long time to get back to us.
• 100 interviews didn't sound like enough so we upped it to 1000 interviews

Responsibilities

• Thinking about parameters of the project, what's the scope?
• Test out interviews
• Interviewing process started in August of last year
• Project developed on its own with Caroline leading

Lately, the project has started up again...

• Once the interviews have been done, I need to figure out how it all fits together in the website
• Need to be 'codified' for the database

• Need to make sure the language we're using is going to work
• Content is from focus group or 1-on-1 interviews
• Interview content is turned into a series of snippets which describe 1 scenario (a barrier, tip, funny point)
• The scenario snippets are the content unit that people engage with on the site
• Snippets are strung together - similar to a blog UI
• SUM of the snippets = Story
• Need to figure out, define: What's a good snippet?
• Do the snippets together convey a story?
• Each story page has a background header + context for the person's story

• We're using tagging to start creating points of access for our Target Users
• The CorporateLeavers team (lead by Caroline) uses interviews as a way to collect qualitative data for quantitative study. But the website has different goals, so the tagging/taxonomy we develop needs to meet different goals

Target User/User Experience project

• I have several meetings a week for this
• I have 1-on-1 interviews with key people on this project
• We kept coming up with too many target users, 3 target users
• I draft up a Target user proposal, take it to the experts: What's missing? What are better questions to ask?
• I can only finish that process up to a point
• For 1 of the target users, we just weren't moving, couldn't get beyond high-level description
• We'd get trapped in uber-questions, couldn't make progress on that user
• Stalled, stasis...so we would do background projects instead
• Sean wants to be focused on the visual design, so we work on that for a while

Mini facilitated meetings about target users

• Pull together agenda, provide team with a draft for feedback beforehand
• Defined user types, user scenarios
• Wrote up a draft, passed it around
• Asked a set of questions to guide feedback
• Maintains task list for the group: for Mary-Kate, Sean, Brad on technical development

Task tracking and updates differs person to person:

• Mary-Kate is more f2f, Mini asks for stuff over email, drafts, etc
• Sean: f2f
• Brad, email

• Sean and Mini use the wiki
• Eric and Mini use the wiki

• Mini maintains wiki lists of task, they edit it collaboratively
• Just rough list of todos, not prioritized

• Keeps track of tasks in your head
• High-level tasks are tracked on a word doc Mini creates for each Project

• When things are fuzzy, Mini doesn't create project schedules
• Now when things are clearer, then you create a schedule
• Mini creates the schedule on the wiki (draft schedule with Sean)
• Meet with Brad in person
• Also uses excel spreadsheets

• Doesn't really have the right tool
• Would like to have a template

• Key stakeholders are Freada and Caroline
• Problem Mini faces today: How do I roll up high-level milestones for them?
• Right now, I have high level summaries in my head and write it all down in a work doc.

3. Project XXXX

Communication

• Most of the conversation are online: Freada, Mini, Doris (XXXX project manager), Brian (XXXX scientist)
• Now, the group is: Tony, Magda, Brian, Mini, Freada who manages the project
• General conversations on email, e.g.
  • Did someone do this? Follow-up on that?
  • Gather input and feedback.
  • I had a friend of mine, who might be interesting for the project down the road. I sent that to the group via email.
  • Updates on project status: This one has gone well, this one is stalling.
• Use a wiki, U of Virginia, wiki. It's totally different from LPFI wiki. Doesn't like that.
• Mini is responsible for making sure the conversations keep going.
• Interacts with Freada via Email and in person
• Interacts externally with XXXX via email
• Interacts with clients over email and then phone

Activity level

• Every day there's stuff going on
• At the very least, there's communication on this project, 1x a week

Client interaction

• Mini manages client contacts for XXXX
• e.g. Several independent diversity consultants
• Freada is supposed to contact them, client intake interview, make sure she has the right information

• There's a Promising conversation with potential client: YYYY
• Mini sets up a phone call
• Potential for something HUGE, but maybe not
• Send a summary of situation with YYYY to everybody for feedback
• Consolidated input, reworked What do we want to tell YYYY?

Project management thread because Doris is gone

• Define next checkpoint
• Worked on it with Freada
• Summarize for everybody what the point of the next check-in is, pull together agenda

Resource mgmt at LPFI

• Pull together chart of what people are doing on the project
  • Still has 1 additional person to catch up with
• Define next steps and next batch of meetings

• With Freada, start to define products and services
• Focused on this with just Freada at first
• Also spoke with Lakiba
• Between Freada and Mini - pass back forth many drafts and edits

• Made some cack of the envelope calculations
• Need to start a competitive landscape project
• Need to hire senior from the venture world, more sophisticated business modeling

4. Background Projects

Management team responsibilities

• Mini feels like it requires a lot of extra meeting time
• 1.5 hour meeting a week
• Organizational roadmap process: contribute to it
• Just a matter of putting down my thoughts
• Facilitated a section of it at all-hands
• Participated in an off-floor retreat
• Discussed staffing issues, staffing needs
• Discussed CorporateLeavers.org marketing help

Communications within the Organization

• Mini co-drives many discussions about intra-team communications
• She initiates contacts with outside people sort of things
• Providing projects with technology help
• Introduces tech person she meets to OSAF
• Meets people at conferences
• Meets journalist, bring them in to LPFI
• Facilitates discussions with with IT - SMASH is the biggest

Manages Sean directly and contractors like Brad

Do you go to a lot of Conferences?

• Last year not at all. This year, not more than 2.
• Some of the tech stuff is just to try-out.
• 2nd Life: Serious games conference.
• To learn about the Virtual Worlds space. What does this space look like?
• More for market research.
• Gaming conference more useful than N-10 conference

How many meetings do you have on average: Too many

• Pretty good meeting week: 8 meetings
• Bad meeting week: 12-15

Management and Weekly Check-in meetings are very useful, but there are a bunch of those:

• 1 standing mgmt meeting/week
• Check-in with Sean
• Check-in with Freada
• Check-in with Eric
• Wikipedia

"Additional uber-organizational meetings sometimes feel heavy, a lot of time talking and not doing, etc."

Working meetings with Eric (5 minutes): Not enough working meetings

Potential partners and Clients: 1-2 a week on the phone or in person

• Will increase as project ramps up

Interview questions about Mini and her software tools

• Mini doesn't have a safety on the Send button in Outlook
• Emails typically require 1-2 drafts
• Doesn't use drafts folder for todo lists anymore - shifted to Word document
  • Because she didn't clean out the Drafts folder often enough
• Has an annotation system for Todo docs, using on the Filename: Todos + Today's date. Not systematic about it though.
• Review the list 1 or 2 days after she makes the list
• I write it down in the doc when there are just too many things and
  • my head doesn't sufficel and
  • the Inbox doesn't suffice
• I flag things much more
• I delete things more regularly
• I separate Done stuff out of my Inbox now. If it's Done, I delete it or File it.
• So my Inbox is more a Todo list
• Every 3 days: I deal with most of my email
• I also use white board in my cube

Mailing lists? 2

• Internal mailing list
• KKIE spending committee,
• These are directly filed, so I have to keep looking and searching for it. Then I forget to. K is too far down on my list in the sidebar, so I don't remember to go check KKIE enough.

RSS feeds? Blog feeds, Bloglines

• 2-3 Blogs:
• 1 work (to keep in touch with Virtual Worlds stuff)
• 1 is my husband's
• 1 is Mike Linkslaver's blog (Creative Commons, CTO)

• Photoshop
• Audacity: Open source audio editing software, MP3 encoder
• Second Life
• Blurb (DIY books) books and writing, for myself and for LPFI
• Cygwin
• Little telnet
• PUTTY
• SSH clients
• Turbotax
• Bit Torrent: But I don't really use that. My husband put that there.

Gadgets

• Treo
• Voice recorder, Olympus
• I sync my Treo with Outlook, or at least that's why I got it. But then I switched computers and never got around to getting it working again. Sync it to see my calendar.
• Digital camera

Interview questions: Personal

I have lots of Books

• Fiction
• The Year of Living Dangerously (Indonesian history, ex-pat journalists, Sukarno)
• A Fine Balance
• Science fiction, airport reading

• Non-fiction
• Virtual Worlds: new world of multi-player worlds
• Some stuff around technology
• A lot of history
• Hate popular science: Science of Immortality, Aging and Immortality: How to make a business out of advances in anti-aging genetics

Movies

• Love movies, haven't seen many recently though
• Excited to see X-men 3, love science fiction
• I watch TV shows on DVD: Sopranos
• I download stuff from iTunes: Prison Break, Commander-in-Chief
• I watch stuff online - Jon Stewart, Colbert Report
• I don't get cable at home
• I don't have Netflix because I like my local store, get out of the house

What physical possessions are dear to me?

• Not many things
• Sugar container, something I've had since college, from India
• I like pottery
• Few little nice things from India

• Car - useful to me. I'd never had one before. It affords me a level freedom I didn't use to have.

• I travel internationally a lot

Degrees:

• BA in Biology
• PhD in Neuro-science

What do I want to be when I grow up: Astrophysicist

Not sports-oriented. Doesn't play sports recreationally.

• Desk is modal: It's either really messy or completely clean
• House is the same

I'm anal retentive about:

• Design, all or nothing. Functional design. Rational. Why is stuff there to begin with. Minimalism.
• Honesty, precision. Not right. The right word. Touches on a core issue. Sometimes you can be vague. If the vagueness is allowed to perpetuate, really aware of it. Too much.
• Food. Modal. Crap or you care. If you do it, you do it right. A lot of effort into it.

-- MimiYin - 05 Jun 2006