This week I’m working with teams to define and align 2021 priorities and estimate development efforts. For some, they are cautious about the expectation (how to estimate TBD?); for others, they’re eager (& perhaps inpatient) to see the projection. It’s also time to request and determine next year’s budget and resource allocation. It’s no surprise …
Author Archives: admin
Give a Gift that Lasts a Life Time
I met Heather Beem, founder of Practical Education Network (PEN) at an MIT social innovation event several years ago. I like her/ PEN’s mission to improve learning outcomes by building teacher capacity with locally available materials. We became friends. I reached out to her recently asking if anything I can assist with my voluncation (volunteer …
Buy-in => Believe-in
Change is never easy. I’ve learned that to be effective and lasting, we need “Believe-in” beyond “Buy-in”: people not only agree but also understand why and take ownership to drive it. When things go well, people feel proud to be part. When things get hard, people would persist, collaborate, and come up creative solutions to …
Creative Volunteerism
After a heated election, Feel inspired, America brought me a big smile. One example… In 2016 Scott Duncombe, a software developer in Portland, Ore., saw on the news that Cleveland residents had to wait hours in long lines to vote. His heart went out to them. In Oregon, there are never any lines because everybody …
Sal Mubarak
My roommate usually goes to visit his girlfriend during the weekend. The past weekend is Diwali (11/14), one of the biggest Indian holiday to celebrate light over evil. I was eager to hear how it went. When I got up on Monday and came to the living room, I saw a card with my name …
冬令進補,三喜臨門 Winter’s Coming, Triple Happiness
Winter is coming. According to Chinese tradition, people celebrate with tonic (warm, nutritious food). I celebrated with three good news this week: Biden/ Harris won the US presidential election. I hope that means integrity, justice, and opportunities for all. We completed the customer portal interviews: we built everything (process, material, relationship) from scratch and successfully …
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Patience
I posted the job of book cover design on Upwork and 9+ people responded. One designer offered to do it for $5 in exchange to write him a recommendation afterwards. He calmed he has done many book covers yet new to Upwork so he wants to “fast-track” establishing himself. The cost is tempting and I’m …
Enchanted Halloween
A special Halloween 2020: I achieved the goal to complete “UncoverSpecial” book editing by the end of October – getting ready to publish in November and I enjoyed two first experiences… First Trick ‘o Treat: I came to US as an adult so I never had a candy basket experience. I did my usual after-dinner …
Snow
First snow this winter…Thanks to working from home, I enjoyed watching the beautiful “little white cloud” falling outside the window without having to “dig” my car out to go to work. I remember 2018, a historical freezing winter, my fingers were “hurt” inside 2 gloves and though the heat was on in my car, I …
Worth it?
We, product and UX team have spent the past few months designing the customer research and interviewing users to gather feedback of the current customer portal and the new design. It took a lot longer than expected to set up the calls though most of sales/ Ops teams welcomed the idea to engage customers. Looking …