When did you start at TEN7, and what were you doing prior to joining us?
Why did you accept the offer?
What does your daily routine look like now?
What's your favorite part of the day?
IVAN STEGIC: Hello, you're listening to a TEN7 Audiocast. We're here today for a team member interview with Madeleine Lowry, our Technical Project Manager. I'm Ivan Stegic, founder and president of TEN7. Hello, Madeleine!
MADELEINE LOWRY: Hello!
IVAN: How are you today?
MADELEINE: I'm good. How are you?
IVAN: Fine, thank you! Let's jump right into it. When did you start at TEN7 and what were you doing prior to joining us?
MADELEINE: I started at TEN7 in July last year. I had been working for another Drupal web services firm in the twin cities. I was looking for a new challenge.
IVAN: Challenge. Have you found your challenge?
MADELEINE: I did! It's a bigger space to occupy. I think that where I was before was a little bit slow, and I was looking for bigger projects and certainly found them here.
IVAN: We're glad to have you. Thinking back to when you decided to join us, ‘cause we weren't the only shop in town trying to get you, why did you join us?
MADELEINE: I really enjoyed the vibe at TEN7. I mean just coming in the offices, back then we had offices, and just seeing the layout and appreciating the fact that the CEO, that's you, had set up the office so that everyone had the same amount of space, bright and open. And it was easy to see what was going on across the space that we didn't have a CEO that had the corner office, and you know, big conference room dedicated for himself. It just seems like a really egalitarian place to work and I like that. I also like the kind of clients that you have - non-profits, educational companies. I thought that was a nice mix of client base. And also the projects, they're very varied, and go from sort of medium to larger size projects. Whereas I've been working on mostly smaller projects before.
IVAN: You mentioned our space. Hopefully, that's not a detractor now that we're nearly distributed. What do you think has replaced that space for you being distributed?
MADELEINE: So we went from, as I described as open space concept offices to now all working distributed, which means that we work from home or wherever we choose to. We could work from a coffee shop. We can work from a library.
IVAN: Or Hawaii...
MADELEINE: That's I guess what has replaced it for all of us.
IVAN: How does your daily routine differ from when you're in the office?
MADELEINE: My daily routine is much the same. I try to get it in before most of the team to kind of review what's happened in the last day and gather my thoughts for the priorities for the coming days. And then I get the team started in the morning. We have a daily meeting called a stand-up. At that meeting we set priorities for the day for each developer. So I feel like my charge is to make sure work on the right stuff, the right time, and that everyone is happily busy - not overwhelmed, not underwhelmed but has a good size piece of work on their plate so to speak.
IVAN: And then do you kind of do the same thing later in the day or are there any other routines that you find yourself executing on?
MADELEINE: After that, the day can really go in all kinds of directions, right? That’s the standard opening to the day, after that I could be in client meetings, I could be working on marketing stuff, I could be writing a blog post, I might be working on a sitemap for a client, or creating tickets or updating tickets, reviewing work that's been put on the release site. You know, before the client gets to review it, I might look at that first. So it's really all kinds of things. Might be re-jiggering priorities for the team or coming up with an estimate for a new project that we've heard about.
IVAN: You certainly are involved in many aspects of TEN7, not just in project management. It's very much appreciated. What is your favorite part of the day?
MADELEINE: I think my favorite part of the day is working with clients and helping them plan new sites. I really enjoy that, being a recovering marketer myself. The challenge of helping companies prioritize. You know what is most important to have on the homepage, for example, what pieces they want to feature and how sites should be organized, their business needs as well as their content needs. So I really enjoy all the the voice of the customer stuff that we do and also user experience work that we do.
IVAN: Thank you! Last question- what are you looking forward to over the next month?
MADELEINE: Now that's a timely question because we're about to take a trip to Japan. I can say that it's my vacation that I'm looking forward to.
IVAN: We're going to miss you. Well, thank you very much for your time. That brings us to the end of this audio cast. I'd like to thank Madeleine for sharing today. Please visit us at TEN7.com and keep an eye on the TEN7 blog for future audio casts. This is Ivan Stegic, and thank you for listening!