AIAIO: Our Blog

We love the holiday season at Ai. Every December our office is filled with Christmas lights, menorahs, gifts and delectable holiday treats. This year we even turned one of our conference rooms into a Maccabee cave.

Another year-end tradition we have is our annual holiday site. The theme this year was finding joy everywhere. You can check out the site here:

Members of the team went around the city, and everywhere they went they found “joy” in one form or another. Whether it was in a gift from a friend or written on the outside of a grande soy triple pump peppermint iced macchiato (no whip)(extra sprinkles), we found joy everywhere. And boy did it make us want to dance (or do something approximating dancing).

Last week David Ow, Director of Project Management, took the PM team out to our annual holiday dinner, a time to get out of the office and change the scenery for a few hours while reminiscing on the past year.  And while we definitely spoke about things other than project plans, budget updates and weekly status reports, it was hard not to reflect on what we’ve learned since the same time last year.

Although the PM team at Ai is comprised of people with diverse backgrounds and experience, as a team, we can all say we’ve learned to keep the following top of mind –

• Be fact-based.
• Espouse numbers as a means of supporting your position but remember that the numbers aren’t your position (in and of themselves). That is, critical analysis of what numbers, metrics, etc. are telling you is equally if not more important than the numbers themselves.
• Provide options and implications to those options in order to (a.) make a decision and/or (b.) help facilitate the making of a decision.
• Planning has to be realistic.  You can’t succeed if it can’t be accomplished.
• Champion “reasonable” and “realistic”, but remember it’s your job to figure out creative approaches to getting to the finish line.
• Think like it’s all on your shoulders, but remember that it’s not.
• You are a facilitator; a guide; a remover of obstacles; a creative problem solver; a generalist who people will come to for all of the answers – even if you’re not the right person… but you are not The Boss.
• You’re responsible for bringing the right people in at the right time and setting them up to do what they do best.
• Be flexible / nimble.  Even the best-laid plans go awry.  Even the most proven processes will go off-the-rails for a variety of reasons.  The true test of your mettle as a PM will be how you respond, react, and adjust in a timely manner.
• Celebrate success. Since projects are finite, they will have an end…no matter how far off that might seem at present.

Cheers to my fellow PM team members, and to our fearless team captain, David, who continues to guide us to the finish line time and time again.

Happy Holidays!

During the month of November everyone awaits their Thanksgiving tradition. Whether it’s Turkey mid-day or takeout at dinner time, it is a time to be with loved ones, reflect and give thanks. This month we also decided to give back.  And Ai showed up. BIG.

Although usually camera shy, I gladly posed in front of what seems like a delivery for a mid-sized NYC bodega. However it is 564 food items donated by Ai-ers during our Thanksgiving food drive benefitting Urban Pathways (UP). With me are Jennifer Leao, committed staff member of UP, and Ora Timbers, a formerly homeless New Yorker who lived at Ivan Shapiro House – one of the residences Urban Pathways supports. Ora is now in her own apartment in the UP scatter site program with a permanent part time job in UP’s development department. Food drives free up budget dollars, allow for increased critical services and help Urban Pathways have more success stories like Ora’s.

The Ai food drive was scheduled to run from November 8^th to 28^th.  As our 1^st food drive, I was prepared to accept 150 cans as a success. It was a satisfying surprise that we more than tripled our goal.

We got off to a very slow start with no can contributions the first days. Once the race got going, the Front-End Engineers took an early lead.

The last week the competition got tough.

On November 22^nd, the Management Team + IT pulled ahead. They continued with a solid pace, courtesy of a genius strategy (i.e. boxes of food delivered from Amazon). At the last moment, the Front-End engineers won back their victory as half of the team trekked to a nearby grocery store returning with over a 100 cans in one trip.

The winning Front-End Engineers are below in all of their glory. Congratulations to them on a big win and to everyone who participated for having a positive impact on the lives of homeless this winter. We tip our proverbial hat to you!

Cyber Monday 2011 was the single biggest day of online shopping.  Ever.  And, some of our earlier predictions of sales continuing to hold strong beyond Monday have held true: the newly dubbed “Cyber Week” saw online retailers rake in $6 billion, according to comScore.  This is up 15% from the same period in 2010.

Consumers expect deals, sales, and discounts all week long.  In fact, they will expect them up until the very last day that they can get free shipping and guaranteed delivery before December 24th.  The implication for the savvy marketer is that one must no longer just focus on readying promotions for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but instead on a strategy that continues to keep a site top of mind throughout the entire holiday shopping season.

Will 2012 bring Cyber Month?