Jewel Mlnarik

Divination Foundation: education, content and technologies

Jewel Mari — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 09:10:27 +0000

Advice Column
Podcasts
Videos
Blog
Educational Content, Essays and Articles
Books

Sony Pictures Television Worldwide

Jewel Mari — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 08:29:57 +0000

Primary Objective: Manage the support of 70+ international sites and lead transition to new a new support team.

In 3 short months, we documented key components and setup needed processes and systems to streamline support requests, custom development requests, global teams management and coordination and training– all the while still providing primary support. (Majority of the sites sit on a customized core of Drupal.)

Sample actions and deliverables:

Customize and expand support ticket system to meet unique needs of various business units and contributing vendors.
Created key documentation as living documents now in use by global business owners and contributing vendors. (Cut down on emails and questions like “who has the latest and greatest???)
Centralized documentation using Google Docs and their project management software.
Product Management: Centralized information and documentation on the core platform, including branched development, staging environments, production environments, databases and URLs.
Team Building and Communication: Engaged with contributing vendors (designers and developers working with global departments) to streamline common activities such as checking in and out branches, creating and submitting Drupal modules, QA expectations and timelines and system FAQs.
Project Portfolio Management: Created visibility into global projects priorities and resources, so we could reach out to vendors ahead of time and get projects on track.
Transition plan, time line and management.

GeoMeridian: a new knowledge network

Jewel Mari — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 08:16:41 +0000

Symantec: Project Planning & Strategy Workshop

Jewel Mari — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 08:10:59 +0000

A two-day workshop to bring key business owners and technology leaders within the company together to collect vital information needed to kick-off a new initiative to revise their partner management systems and websites.

Partner management systems engage folks in regional and international sales, marketing and finance- and have to talk to and interact with the variety of systems used by these independent business units. As such, we interviewed and analyzed the needs and processes of the various departments, reviewed current technical components and presented recommendations for moving forward.

The primary objective was to give Symantec a starting point and action plan for how they could approach making necessary updates to their core systems to enable supporting their global partner marketing and sales force.

Key deliverables included:

Map and Gap Analysis – overview of current systems, where they currently talk to each other and gaps needing to be filled to support required functionality and workflows
Database ERD – database architecture, to support desired new interoperability
High Level Projects Time line and Priorities – recommended phases and action items to kick-off implementation and individual systems design

Switchyard Artist Studios

Jewel Mari — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 17:31:53 +0000

In 2009 I joined a collective of artists to share warehouse and soon-to-be-built gallery space that we named “Switchyard Studios”. To help coordinate between the various (and ever-changing) artists and promote our space, I worked with a few other tech-savvy (or at least unafraid) artists to launch a website, Facebook page and internal communications groups and tools.

As of 2010 I’ve left the collective, though am working on a way in which I can still contribute w/out having a physical space at the studios, to help the amazing group of artists promoted and giving them more time to do their art.

Artomatic

Jewel Mari — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 17:10:15 +0000

In 2009 I supported ThinkShout as a client project manager, information architect and design and content manager for their engagement with Artomatic, a stellar volunteer-run arts organization located in Washington DC. ThinkShout launched a project to rebuild the Artomatic website to better help save volunteer time by including new tools and workflows to facilitate and automate event registrations, artist catalog listings, volunteer signups and shift management.

I learned a great deal about working with a volunteer-run organization and admire the folks who were able to dedicate their time to making both their organization and annual event run smoother.

How Facebook is Breeding a Country of Intolerance and Extremism – NOT Bringing Us Together

Jewel Mari — Fri, 07 May 2010 16:21:09 +0000

Can you figure out the next word in this series?

Good. Bad. Right. Wrong. Left. Right. Like. _____

Excellent! Now, let’s look at some numbers. (Quick caveat: this is quick math.)

The USA has an estimated population of 308 Million.
- Of these, roughly 250 Million are 14-95.
Facebook has 400 Million users world-wide.
- 70% are outside of the US, leaving us with 120 Million Americans.
- That’s darn near 40% of our population – or 2 out of every 5 Americans for those of you preferential to chewing gum commercials.
If we look at these by age ranges, I have a hunch that this ratio will creep closer to 50% - or 1 out of every 2 for those of us between the ages of 15 and 40.
- If anyone can find Facebook data on US members by the same age groups, I’ll do the math.

Now let me go back to that word series. On one hand, I want to fill in “Dislike” and start on a rant of how Facebook is perpetuating the teenage fallacy that the world, choices and judgments are black and white. And that our opinions are facts. And there is no room for savoring chocolate or appreciating nuance. That there is only Like and Dislike.

On the other, Facebook has no Dislike button. So I can’t completely back that up, though living in America’s #2 hipster capital, Portland OR, I can begin to argue that the lack of an opinionated “Dislike” is encouraging apathy. Don’t agree with something? Eh, let it slide. No use in caring enough to disagree or debate.

In both hands is a rather scary phenomenon: nearly half of us Americans are being faced with a seemingly trivial choice more and more frequently every day: do we like something? There is no “kinda-like”, “kinda-think-is-funny”, “don’t like it, but curious where this is going”, “my condolences, i’d like to stay in the loop so i know you’re ok”, etc. (The folks over at buzzfeed have quite the range-ometer.)

After seeing more and more disturbing tea party videos where angry constituents blather on about the only 2 options we as Americans have, to LOVE our country and to HATE our country, I grow concerned that we’re teaching our youths and even ourselves to be intolerable. That there is no in between.

I’m not saying that I want to see 5 stars everywhere, but the simple task of rating engages our brain in a much different way than the simple yes or nothing. What would happen to our collective groupthink when we began practicing critical thinking and rational assessments on a daily basis rather than emotional extremism?

Possibly Related Reading: Culture of Intolerance: Chauvinism, Class, and Racism in the United States, by Mark Nathan Cohen.

Specialty Food Wholesaler eStore

Jewel Mari — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 09:58:13 +0000

At the beginning of the 2000’s, we didn’t have many “out-of-the-box” solutions for e-commerce so many projects were custom developed. The original developer built the site using Cold Fusion and so I learned yet another programming language.

Made Site “dynamic” and secure
- Order Form
- Recipe Submission
Architected Database (Excel) for products and recipes
Created Secure Administration area where Barhyte can view and manage orders

Game Company eStore

Jewel Mari — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 09:50:14 +0000

US Games Systems, Inc. publishes more than 400 card and board games. They needed a web site that could showcase their product lines, attract new customers and help them better manage orders from time placed by the customer to follow-up after shipping.

Setup an eCommerce store using xCart
- required custom PHP and MySQL development
Custom xCart theming
- graphic designer provided comps
Architected custom extensions to enhance functionality that wasn’t available “out of the box”
- wholesale partner lookup (by zip)
- affiliate tracking and administration
Project Planning, Strategy & Management

Email Newsletters

Jewel Mari — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 08:54:23 +0000

Email Campaigns
Newsletter Design
Stats and Segmentation

Various Email and Stats Systems Used

Jango Mail
MailChimp
Custom In-House Solutions

Facebook Friendly

Jewel Mari — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:00:38 +0000

Aside from my opinion that Facebook is on the verge of being (or already is) too crowded with junk that it’ll soon be unlikely that anything one “shares” will even be seen, I’m diving into the wonderful world of making web sites Facebook Friendly.

Automatically populate the page preview that shows on Facebook when you “share” a URL – overview of how Facebook uses meta tags
- Now that I got this working over on my personal site, I’m going to do some research to see whether there’s a Wordpress plugin for this yet. If not, one will be coming!
Pull Facebook comments on notes BACK into my blog. Over at the Divination Foundation, we have a blog that’s published on Divination.com, Tarot.com and then to the DF’s Facebook page. Right now, if you’re on Tarot.com you only see the comments left by other tarot.com members. If you’re in Facebook, you only see the Facebook comments. And if you’re on Divination.com, you’ll soon see all of them together: tarot.com, Facebook and divination.com
- Looking for folks who’ve done something similar and how they’ve tackled publishing a blog w/in Facebook
Other Facebook Friendly ideas over at mashable.com

Restaurant Marketing

Jewel Mari — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 07:56:06 +0000

Echo, a restaurant in North Portland, wanted to promote their upcoming summer event. So we created postcard announcements they could use to pass out to customers and post around the neighborhood with a web site counterpart. The postcards doubled as a raffle entry, giving folks an easy way to join Echo’s contact list.

Web Site Design and Setup
- Custom Wordpress Theme
Press Release after new ownership
Door Knockers – production
Postcards – design and production
Ads for the weekly and local newspaper – production

Best of all? I LOVE their food, hands down. Spent New Year’s eve here and never had better duck nor cocktails.

Palm

Jewel Mari — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 10:10:07 +0000

Developer Application Management System

Architected, designed and led development project for a custom web app for Palm developers, allowing Palm to effectively and efficiently manage 150+ developer partners focused on producing and distributing new apps for Palm smart phones.

Storyboard for 3rd party developers to manage their corporate and application profiles with Palm
Storyboard for Palm developer managers (both those assigned directly to a developer and those responsible for a region) to review, approve and manage submissions by developers
Systems Integration (LDAP), Single Sign-On
Collaboration with internal IT team (hosting behind their firewalls)
Interaction and Interface Design

Sales Leads

Jewel Mari — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:51:36 +0000

Automate Sales Lead Registration and Management

In 2003, I worked with Beemix and Amazon Consulting to design and implement a cutting-edge, web-based partner portal and lead registration system. I had built some smaller scale portals in the past, though this was the largest scale project I had yet to lead.

We were able to design, build and launch over the short course of a summer. (I distinctively remember many long days in my backyard “office.”) After we launched Mercury Confidential for what was then Mercury Interactive, we paired up again a couple years later to develop PartnerPath. After that, I continued to work on implementing and enhancing the Sales Lead Registration system for our clients, some of which included integrations with Siebel and SalesForce. If you’re a high-tech company that needs a better partner engagement solution and visibility into your entire sales pipeline, I highly recommend taking a look at PartnerPath.

My Involvement and Roles:

Interface, System and Workflow Design for all people interacting with the system:
- sales person who has to let not only their own sales team and manager know about a lead, but the vendor (who we built the system for)
- local, regional and global sales managers, responsible for a specific subset of business- needing quick access to data and some
- those account and/or regional managers responsible for reviewing and approving a registered deal through the claim phase
Discovery, Requirements Elicitation and Technical Specification
- client meetings, internal consultations with specialists
Database Architecture and Model Design
- flexible work-flow engine to accommodate unique sales cycles (terminology, statuses, percentage of close, etc.)
Graphic Design and Form Design
PHP/MySQL development
Custom Integration with Siebel
- Data Mapping
- Technical Requirements and Scoping
Account Management, Project Management, Implementation Management

Requests, Claims & Approvals

Jewel Mari — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:35:15 +0000

Automate Marketing Development Funds Programs

Worked with Amazon Consulting, their consultants, development team and clients to add a new module to their PartnerPath platform. The web based application allows technology vendors to efficiently manage marketing fund campaigns and accounts, partner requests for funds, claims and proof of activity attachments.

Interface, System and Workflow Design for all people interacting with the system:
- partner marketing specialists requesting funds and executing campaigns
- content managers supplying co-branded and custom collateral
- internal local and regional marketing fund managers
- directors responsible for budgets
Discovery, Requirements Elicitation and Technical Specification
Database Architecture and Model Design
- double entry accounting
PHP/MySQL development