Webcrumbs | The Life and Times of Andy Affleck (already in progress)

January 27, 2012
by Andy Affleck
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Interview in Social Media Week

I was interviewed for Social Media Week on the topic of Children and Social Media. While I do think about this topic a great deal (as is evidenced by how much I’ve written and spoken on the subject), I am turning my attention to how I, as an adult, communicate with my Facebook friends who are under 18 year of age (yes, an article is being written). It’s an interesting topic mainly because I am still figuring it all out for myself. If anyone has any insights from their own experiences, I’d love to hear them.

November 30, 2011
by Andy Affleck
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NaNoWriMo 2011

Five years. Wow. Five years in a row, two as a Municipal Liaison (though I was so busy this November I hardly did anything) and five completed novels. People keep asking me if I will post them. The answer is an unqualified no. What I write is not even first draft. It’s rough sketch at best. As such, it’s also highly embarrassing. I don’t want to share that stuff with people. This year, I plan on focusing my efforts and either pulling one of the five into better shape or doing something new but not in sketch mode but actual author mode. I promise select friends will be asked to proof that and give me constructive feedback and, later, everyone else will get a shot at reading it. Whatever it ends up being.

I spent this year doing a lot of self-analysis and figuring out where I was weak as a writer and what I needed to work on. I now have a list of areas I want to target and am going to be looking at resources to help me (classes, books, whatever). I want to make 2012 the year I get my act together, hone my ability as a writer, and go from playing around with words to working with them instead. In short, me want write good.

But for the moment, I’ll just bask in the glow of five straight years as a NaNo winner. I’ll get to work tomorrow.

October 21, 2011
by Andy Affleck
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Chained

I haven’t gotten a chain letter in quite some time. I think I have managed to train most people around me that they are usually flat out wrong (or at very best, wildly outdated) and, if nothing else, sending them to me means that I will take the time to debunk them and will reply telling the sender that and a small diatribe on the evils of chain letters. I figure most people have either learned not to forward them at all or, more likely, to avoid sending them to me.

So, imagine my surprise when I received one late last night about how illegal immigrants are costing this country more than the Iraq war has and blames our economic woes on them. That was too good to pass up. It only took me about 3 minutes of searching while sitting in Panera this morning to find a good debuking of the entire email and send it along.

I hope I was nice about it. I’ve long known that being a jerk to people about chain letters makes them ignore the fact that you just debunked their screed and just get mad at me for being a jerk. So I am very nice about it, usually ending with a statement about being cranky when I get chain mail or some such.

But to me, the biggest revelation of this little event is how infrequently I get chain letters. It took receiving one to realize how long it’s been since I last got one. So, that’s an improvement!

Now, I have to go forward this email to ten friends so I can win a million dollars next week. Drinks are on me!

June 7, 2011
by Andy Affleck
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In Seattle

I am currently in Seattle on business. I haven’t been here in 21 years. It is still a wonderful, beautiful city. I need to get back here more often. I’m spending my days watching testers work with a prototype of our application and listening to their comments and seeing what works and what doesn’t work for them. In the early mornings and evenings I am seeing friends, eating amazing food, and taking lots of pictures with my new iPhone 4 camera (much improved over my iPhone 3GS). I am collecting the pictures online in my Flickr account.

May 17, 2011
by Andy Affleck
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Why Panera Doesn’t Get It

Now that I am co-starting a company with a college friend, I have no office to drive to every day. So, to mix it up and keep myself fresh and focused, I am rotating through working at home and working at Starbucks, Panera, Borders, and anywhere else I can find with WiFi and good coffee.

Today, I am at Panera. A few moments ago, at 11:30AM, I was dropped off the network (it took me a moment to figure out what happened) and had to do their silly little reconnect thing to get back on. The screen informed me that I only have 30 minutes left. That during the lunch hours they only allow 30 minutes online.

This is, put simply, very short-sighted on their part. I would have sat here until early afternoon when I have commitments elsewhere and continued working. And I would have bought lunch and likely a snack as well as the day wore on. But by kicking me off WiFi at noon, I am forced to leave. They lose a lunch customer and they lose me wanting to use their place as my office away from office and thus they lose my business.

I can think of a few reasons why this policy makes sense to them. Perhaps they want to make sure that there are enough open seats for the lunch rush by ensuring turnover. But if that’s the case, the argument holds little water. They certainly aren’t hurting for people coming in at lunch and if they lack tables for all of them, then those people will get take out. How often do you see people look in, not see tables free, and then leave? Maybe at a restaurant but at a Panera? I doubt it.

And I think they lose more business by being hostile to workers like me who likely to spend more money over the course of a day than someone who just comes in for lunch.

Oh well. I have food at home anyway that needs eating. And tomorrow when I go out to find a place to work, you can bet it won’t be Panera.

Technorati Tags: panera, wifi, business, companies, lunch, fail

May 3, 2011
by Andy Affleck
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JWU Presentation

Last week, I gave a one hour (or so) presentation on Project Management at Johnson and Wales University. I was invited to speak by Bridge Technical Solutions. I spoke about my own career trajectory and how I ended up in Project Management and what being a PM is like out in the real world. I called the talk “Stories from the Trenches” and focused on three large projects I had worked on among the many in my career and what lessons can be learned from them. I also spoke about my strong belief that it is the responsibility of a PM to always be honest with their clients and to have a strong core of integrity in everything he or she does. I was very pleased when one of the students attending thanked me specifically for that sentiment.

Bridge’s blog about my talk can be found here: BRIDGE Coordinates Speaker at Local University to Give Students a Taste of Real World Experience « Bridge Technical Solutions’ Blog

I am debating putting the deck online. I am just not sure that the bullets are as useful or as compelling as the actual talking itself.

March 24, 2011
by Andy Affleck
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A Leap

Since we returned to New England in late 2005 I’ve been working as an IT Project Manager in Big Pharma. Three years at Pfizer, one at Merck, and then one more back at Pfizer again. I’ve learned a great deal and made many great connections and more than a few good friends in the process and I could happily continue on this path were it not for an old friend from college.

My current contract at Pfizer is a quick three month stint up in Cambridge, MA, my old stomping grounds from grad school. I don’t actually mind the commute, I’d recently become an Audible.com addict and I’ve “read” a great many books thanks to the drive. And I also got to see many old friends (and hopefully will see a few more before my last day next Friday). But because the contract is only 3 months, I started looking for my next contract almost immediately. I’ve learned in this line of work that you always keep looking for new work and that you make every effort to have the next gig lined up when the current one ends so you have no unpaid downtime. Last year it didn’t work out that well and I ended up having to leave Merck sooner than I’d wanted to start a high profile project at Pfizer.

Early into this process my cell phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and was floored. It was Joe, a buddy of mine from college I hadn’t spoken to in something like 17 years (no, I am not counting that initial, “Dood! How you been?!” message that is mandatory for all Facebook reconnects). I answered and everything changed.

Long story short, I am joining Joe on a four month sprint to get a new service to market that is web-based as well as iPhone- and Android-based. I jokingly tell friends, “I’m going to write an app with a friend from college and get rich!” But the truth of the matter is that Joe has a killer idea and the months to follow are going to be intense and exciting.

So I am sad to be leaving Pfizer (again) and if this venture fails I may yet return a third time. But, I’m filled with optimism and I feel more alive now than I have in some time: I’m taking a risk with a large potential payoff and even though it is scary, it is also exhilarating and something I have desperately needed for some time now.

I never do New Year’s resolutions but I was inspired to do so this year. Ann and I have been pushing hard the last year or so to improve our lives. She’s started taking classes at RISD, I’ve returned to the theater, our son has crossed over from Cub Scouts to a Boy Scout troop, we’re renovating the house Ann grew up in, and other smaller projects as well. The one major area we had not touched was my career. I felt that I needed to push myself so I resolved to change things up, take some risks, and finally move forward instead of playing it safe as I had been. It only took a few weeks into the new year before the opportunity presented itself!

I don’t know what the future holds but I am excited to be taking an active part in it again for myself and for my family.

What’s really fun is figuring out what tools I need to manage a project working entirely on a Mac. At Pfizer and Merck everything was Windows and Sharepoint and Microsoft Project and Outlook. Those tools are all fine but now it’s MacOS X and Dropbox and OmniPlan and Mail.app and BusyCal. I’m playing with Basecamp, Campfire, and Backpack, I’m investigating Flow, and considering a number of other tools (especially ones that interop well with an iPad and iPhone). We’re experimenting with FaceTime, iChat video chat, Skype video chat, and even Xbox Kinect video chat (though that one is a non-starter for many reasons).

And, of course, my days are spent wrapping up my work at Pfizer and preparing the transition plans because, of course, once we were well down the road to making this a reality, they extended my contract. Between days working for Pfizer and nights planning the new venture and taking my son to Karate classes, Troop meetings and campouts, working crew for the latest Swamp Meadow Community Theatre show (Footloose), and helping back at the Pack as an Assistant Den Leader for the Bears I am pretty busy. But it’s a good busy and am having a great time.

So, that should explain why I’ve been so quiet on this site for a bit. And why I almost certainly will continue being quiet for the next while.

December 8, 2010
by Andy Affleck
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Imagine

John Lennon

Imagine was the first song I ever played for Jack. I have a video of it around here somewhere. I just plopped him on the rug on his back (he still couldn’t roll over yet) and put the song on and then just filmed him listening to the entire thing. I wish I could say he showed interest. But at 2 months or so, he did what he always did: look around, move his arms and legs, and, well, just sit there. But it was a moment I still cherish because it was the first song I played for him in full. We always had music on but it was background to what was happening. This was the first time I’d just turned on the stereo and had him listen to something with no other distractions.

I was at a rehearsal for A Christmas Carol (I was Bob Cratchitt) at The Loft in Bronxville and everyone was depressed and upset. I found out that someone named John Lennon had been killed but I was 12 and didn’t know who he was until someone told me he was that guy from the Beatles. Over the next few days I read every article I could find in the newspaper and Time and Newsweek magazines and grew incredibly sad. Sad for his death and sad that I wasn’t aware of him independent of the Beatles until it was too late. Not long after, I had to make a diorama for a school art project and I made a montage of mourners in Central Park clipped from those magazines.

I went on a John Lennon and Beatles binge and listened to everything and learned what I could about the man. The song Imagine became something personal for me. Not a theme song per se, but just something that was, at its simplest, an expression of my feelings towards the world.

It’s 30 years later and his death still stings when I think about it. I have always been sad on this date and probably always will be. John would have been 70 today. I can only imagine the music he would have made in the last three decades.

December 2, 2010
by Andy Affleck
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NaNoWriMo 2010 Complete!

NaNoWriMo 2010 Winner!

I completely forgot to post about this the other day (that’s how busy I’ve been) — I won NaNoWriMo for the fourth straight year. 50,000 words in 30 days (28 in my case) is insane! Doing it four times is doubly insane! The fact that I was also a Municipal Liaison (that is, a volunteer helping to coordinate a geographc area, in this case, I was the Co-ML for Rhode Island along my friend Rob who did most of the heavy lifting anyway) made it even more insane than the level of insanity we reached in the previous sentence, which, it must be pointed out, was a far better constructed sentence than this one.