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JayPortnoy

Having concluded the AYE conference, I'd like to offer to all the folks I met and with whom I shared this experience the following rather random thoughts:

I want to express to you how much I learned and acquired at AYE, both from instructors and other participants. I met and came to recognize how much I share with so many other hard-working people in the software engineering and related industries. Most of all, I really enjoyed every moment I spent at AYE.

I think that we are part of something that is more than just an annual event. Some of us have built bonds filled with extraordinary insights, strong trust, special moments and memories, and terrific humor. I discovered people from all over the world whom I now consider my friends, advocates, advisors, and supporters. I have never come away from any conference, or other event for that matter, with such a strong feeling of accomplishment and joy. I hope that there will be a way we will all be able to stay in touch until the next conference.

AYE ended on an incredible high note with Naomi Karten's wonderful closing session. All of the teams had a different take on the same Powerpoint topic, yet delivered unexpectedly hilarious and original presentations. We were spontaneous and "living in the moment." As one good friend of mine said, "That is when the most authentic part of you comes out." I discovered that my genuine moments are good and even appreciated, and I do not have to apologize for them. On the other hand, Naomi, please excuse me, but I HAD FUN!

I must admit I was quite exuberant and exhausted upon my arrival home and convinced that I was on the verge of great and exciting personal change! Moreover, I felt prepared to pass my knowledge and influence on to others who could benefit from what I discovered.

Now, a few days later, the warmth and glow (sorry to be so trite) of AYE are starting to wear off. I am coming back to my "surreal reality," attempting to adjust back to many of the issues and stresses, which confront me. This certainly contrasts with what seemed like a wonderful "alternate reality" in Phoenix. I do not mean to be too philosophical, but the meaningful things that transpired at AYE seem so much more important than the trivial day-to-day challenges in front of me now.

The questions before me now are:

• What have I really learned?
• How do I synthesize that into a meaningful way of conducting my life?

Well, I can only partially answer these questions now. Firstly, I realize that others are burdened by their own histories. Their perspectives are equally colored and strained by their experiences. Yet, we all share common elements in those experiences. Somehow, through greater recognition of the struggles of people to perceive and understand one another, perhaps I can tap into a more open, giving, and genuine component of myself. By being more in touch with the interpretive possibilities that exist in each transmission and reception and by layering that on the established context, I hope to bring about improved communications and ultimately achieve congruence more efficiently in all kinds of situations. The workplace is filled with many adversarial persons who often elect to focus on the tiny missing piece or flaw in what is said. Maybe that's okay and can be incorporated into the overall group discussion.

I can use the Interactive Model to exercise self-awareness when confronted with puzzling responses, rather than escalating into oblivion. I can give up defensiveness, possessiveness, and most of all the need to obtain credit for my individual contributions, for the sake of overall team success.

But, will that serve me well in the environment I'm in? Will I just be a catalyst who is ignored or thought of as an eccentric? I'm not sure and in fact I really doubt it. So, I will try to act on the Change Model to face each foreign element, traverse the chaos, arrive at a transforming idea (I've got to get out of here!) and move on to a new level of work life.

Moreover, I can rely on the strength of others, so many of whom share issues similar to or related to those I investigated in the Satir session. We are all products of our collective experiences from childhood to adulthood. We can accept and incorporate our inner child, while congratulating and encourging the accomplished adult in each of us.

I want to thank JohannaRothman, EstherDerby, DonGray, JeanMcLendon, JerryWeinberg, BeckyWinant, SteveSmith, Jim Highsmith, NaomiKarten, and BobKing for inviting me, challenging me, enlightening me, and bringing me avenues to change and improve my life!

I also want to thank AndrewBove, Maria Mendoza, PhilStubbington, PeterMorales, PhilippeBenitez, WillemVanDenEnde, LaurentBossavit, IraWeinstein, DaveRabinek, Sandy Loeffler, Gifford Louie, MalcolmCurrie, KenEstes, BobKing, SuePetersen, Joyce Bowman, and many others whose names escape me, for sharing a part of your lives with me and contributing your friendship, support, and extraordinarily humorous anecdotes.

I hope some of you will respond to this message so that we might keep the conversations going and stay in touch with one another.

Regards. JayPortnoy 2003.11.10

Jay,

I really enjoyed meeting you and spending time with you. One of my nicest memories of the conference is of sitting in the hotel lobby one evening, listening to you play the piano. :-)

After 9+ years, I'm still learning how to integrate each conference/workshop into my everyday life. For myself at least, I've learned how to cushion the disappointment of the ending with the understanding that I can always make the time for another one later on... I've also learned that my moods will be a bit up&down for a few weeks as I go thru the chaos of learning & understanding something new. And that I'll win some and lose some, but in the long run I'll probably be better off.

I try to keep an eye on the wiki, but in any case, I'm always available via email to my AYE friends. :-)

-Sue Petersen 2003.11.11

Sue,

Thanks for your kind response. Right now, I think I'm trying to cushion my slightly manic, declining mood by staying on the wiki and hoping to maintain contact with so many of the people I met, at least for little while. Your response is so important.

It's really interesting that you applied the change model to the AYE experience and return. I think it really makes sense that there's chaos (up and down) after the introduction of all the new ideas presented at AYE. I guess I'll have to arrive at my own transforming idea so that I can integrate and practice what I've learned. I must tell you that, in a meeting that just took place, I was able to communicate an adjusted version of the change model for a particularly challenging project and sensitive customer! So, I'm already experiencing little windows of success. My manager even complemented me on how well I communicated the needed information.

Finally, thank you very much for the kind complement about my playing the piano. I looked at that beautiful piano and wanted to place my hands on the keys so badly. I play by ear and just juggle various melodies as I go, so I took an unusual risk and proceeded for myself, with flaws and all. I'm really glad that no one objected and people even enjoyed the background music.

JayPortnoy 2003.11.12

Jay, I also enjoyed your piano playing, it encouraged me to continue my attempts at re-learning to play the piano. I would have liked your company when I was at Taliesin West on Sunday - they had Frank Loyd Wright's piano in one of the theaters and the guide asked if anyone wanted to play it, to show the acoustics... Silence followed...

I enjoyed your company, if I ever need someone to impersonate a New Yorker, I know who to call ;-)

WillemVanDenEnde 2003.11.12

Jay,

Thanks for remembering. I find that I need time to let what happened in Phoenix percolate and settle before I write any sort of coherent statement about it. Until then, let me just say that I value the connection we made there, and appreciated the authenticity in which it was forged.

LaurentBossavit 2003.11.13

Hey Jay, I had a great time with you and everyone else (I won't mention the 'ducks' - much). Keep in touch. -Andrew

Hello,

I'm sure that you've already guessed my name.  I'm a lifetime resident of Boston, MA, but am proud that my presentation style (speech) is somewhat less impacted by the traditional "Bahstin ackxent" than most natives.

I just passed my fifth anniversary in the internal IT department, entitled Information Systems, Infrastructure and Services (ISIS), at The MITRE Corporation in Bedford, MA.  Previously, I spent 17 years at The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, where I performed development engineering, quality assurance, and process improvement in a DoD environment, working mostly on Air Force and Undersea programs.  At MITRE, I entered as a Process Improvement Engineer, however the Process Improvement Group has since been disbanded and absorbed by the Systems Engineering Department.  As a result, I've transitioned to a role as Software Systems Engineer, where the essence of my new job is to:

• Identify, analyze, organize, prioritize, and resolve complex project, cross-project, cross-functional, and organizational issues.
• Formulate a ?Big Picture? view of project problems and system interfaces.
• Support project planning and execution.
• Define business and technical requirements.
• Provide solutions consistent with our architecture, processes, and culture.

In this capacity, most recently I've worked on the following projects:

1. CM Integration Assessment
   Analyzed existing CM process flow and prepared plan for improving CM baselining, migration, gatekeeping, and rollout activities.
2. Mapping of Operational Data Store (ODS) to Active Directory (AD)
   In anticipation of our Integrated Messaging and Calendaring project, I prepared an investigation and mapping from our central data store (ODS) to Microsoft AD (via LDAP).
3. Integrated Libary System
   Developed requirements, questionnaire, RFP, and tool for assessing vendors.
4. CM Automation
   Facilitating requirements sessions across nine departments for re-engineering our CM practices and migration process to improve the quality and integrity of our product rollouts.  Will proceed with support on tools assessment and acquisition, design, and development.  This is an outgrowth of the assessment identified in #1 above as well as an external consultant's assessment applied to our organization.

During my career at Draper, I was responsible to external customers and was able to successfully maintain solid relationships resulting in a rather stable reputation as a valuable contributor.  Earlier at MITRE, in my process role, I served as a facilitator for selected departments and tried to build consensus and buy-in for proposed practices and methods.  Most of our efforts were met with various levels of resistance and foot-dragging, but our domain was rather local and culture-driven.  I was perceived as hard-working, a knowledgeable resource, and a "go-to" person.  Now, I am intensely involved with internal customers throughout the company, each of whom have different sets of demands and concentrations of corporate influence.  This introduces a new degree of intensity, which requires that I adjust and tune my delivery to stakeholders with varying levels of influence.

Accordingly, I'm interested in amplifying my strengths in the following critical areas:

• Teaming effectively.
• Leading, generally without ownership.
• Communicating both in an appropriately focused and constructive fashion.
• Maintaining smooth customer relationships (even when faced with conflicting or stressful situations).
• Meeting customer expectations.

I am attending the AYE Conference for the first time in order to work on further improving the above described skills.  My goals are:  (1) to enhance my image/perception within my organization (ISIS), (2) to increase the demand for my services, and (3) to ultimately build a platform for career advancement.

I expect the AYE event will offer an exciting week of interactive events, which I'm sure will facilitate improvement in my professional persona.  In addition, I look forward to meeting lots of new folks and exchanging beneficial ideas based on our experiences and successes.

Sincerely, Jay S. Portnoy

JayPortnoy 2003.10.22

Jay,

Wow look like we have lots to talk about. You have done some really interesting things and I look forward to meeting you. Hope you don't mind. I moved your picture onto this page

KenEstes 2003.10.22

Ken,

Saw your bio; very interesting. I'm working on CM Automation task (requirements acquisition right now) that will address need for simplified, automated, and central tracking of development through migrations and rollout.

Unfortunately, picture isn't getting picked up. Am inquiring with Jerry about this.

JayPortnoy 2003.10.22

I do not understand, whos picture is not getting picked up? What do you mean by picked up? I put your picture on the page the same way I put my picture on the page, by putting a link to it in the wiki as a text. I see your picture (and mine) fine when I load the page.

KenEstes 2003.10.22

I see it fine in Netscape 7.02 on Linux and opera 7.11. Does the image load by its self? Oh wait, Someone moved the image to a local server so there has been a change wich may fix things.

KenEstes 2003.10.22

Welcome! JohannaRothman 2003.10.23

Since I started this whole mess by volenteering to edit this page I feel an obligation to document what has happened so far.

Jay originally had the a link to his home page on Geocities. The only information on that page was an image. I removed the link from this page and imbedded the image by finding the full path name to the image (on the geocities server) and putting it at the top of this page. Last night the image path was shortened to be a local link, so I believe that one of the administrators of this sytem copied the image locally and changed the link to a relative link pointing locally. There were complaints about this image both before and after the link was changed. I know that this wiki has version control back ups for all pages so I think an administrator who can verify the problem should look at previous copies of this page and see if they can verify the problem with both the local relative path name and with the original absolute path name to geocities.

To make debugging easier just I put two links to the photo on the top of the page. One with a relative path name (to the local copy) and one with an absolute path name (to the local copy) of the image. I do not remember where the geocities link was so I can not include that link as well. I do not know how to retrive older versions of this page to get that information back. I do not think that this would be the problem though, the page I made for my father DickEstes also has an image embedded in it which is retrived off a different server. Does everyone see two copies of the image? I see two copies.

I am wondering if there is a problem with the image itself. Is it possible that this image is not quite a legal jpg and some browsers can render it and others are unable to.

KenEstes 2003.10.23

I am sure that you are not seeing the relative adressed picture. I would like to suggest that Jay delete that address and remove this thread.

Ken Estes 2003.10.24

Done. Thanks all.
JayPortnoy 2003.11.10

PhilStubbington 2004.03.31