Articles by Jessica Chan
Live Blogging: Designing for Mobile Workshop Event at Adobe
9:10am
I’m writing this on an iPad from the offices of Adobe in downtown San Francisco, trying my hand at this live-blogging thing. This event is called Designing for Mobile, and its an educational day focused on HTML5, UI/UX, Creative Suite integrations, and Lean Design.
I learned about this event from joining a Meetup.com group called Creative Suite Lovers. When I signed up for this event, the price was $10 and I didnt think the event would be a huge deal– something fun and cheap to check out.
Build Discipline: How to Get Back On the Horse Once You’ve Fallen Off
I have to go to spin tomorrow morning, which begins at 6:15am. I have to be there by 5:50am, or else the class fills up. I know it’s good for me, and in the past, I’ve always felt great after I’ve done it. But right now, I really do not want to go.
Discipline is a difficult thing to truly master. Some people are naturally disciplined, which to me means that they can more easily make themselves do things they don’t want to do. I think I’m pretty good at being disciplined, but then I face tasks like spin class tomorrow morning, or my resolve to write regularly. It’s easy to be disciplined for a while, it’s hard to be disciplined all the time.
I’m Teaching Myself Drupal (Screenshots)
I know, it’s been awhile since I’ve written. I’m due to re-read my earlier post, 6 Tips on How to Start Writing, Write Better, and Write More Often, and get re-motivated to write more often! So tonight, before I go to bed, I decided to geek out and talk about the last 5 hours straight that I’ve spent sitting here in front of my computer teaching myself Drupal, a popular open-source content management system (CMS).
Slow Down and Make Good Decisions, Not Fast Ones
I like fast. I like to think fast, do fast, decide fast, accomplish fast. When I’m not going a mile a minute from one place to another, my mind is. And sometimes, that’s not a great thing.
I noticed this a couple years ago, and really started to notice after working with a certain individual– let’s call him Bruno. Compared with the way I usually did things, Bruno does things slowly. At first, this irritated me because it left me often wondering: “where’s the follow-up,” “I thought we agreed on this,” and “why aren’t we moving on this? I’m ready to go!” I felt like a speedy little motorcycle, revving my engine and waiting for that stoplight to turn green.
What Happens When You Start To Get Too Much Freelance Work: Learn to Scale
Too much freelance work? More than you can handle? What a great problem, especially in this economy.
I just came back from Startup Weekend EDU and it was an incredible experience, one that I’ll be writing on later. It was a great way to actually show what I could do as a freelance designer/front-end coder during the 54 hour “hackathon,” — more valuable I think than even a portfolio and definitely more “show don’t tell” than the sometimes-stuffy networking events. As a result, I made quite a few contacts that may turn into potential clients.
Bragging Is an Art: No One Knows How Great You Are Until You Tell Them
Question: why don’t women brag more? I’m not saying women don’t brag, or that men do brag, but I am asking why women don’t brag more.
I talked to three different women today who weren’t sure what to write about for this publication. (Yes, I realize I talk about enableher. a lot, but what can I say– it’s given me a lot to write about.) And all three of them had trouble because they were trying to start at the beginning. They wondered how to write on how they began their career, or how they remember their first classes, or they were at a loss as to what point they should even begin.
6 Tips on How to Start Writing, Write Better, and Write More Often
Writing is not easy. In fact, I would argue that it’s sometimes the hardest thing in the world to do, and this is exactly which is why it’s my personal belief that everyone needs to do it. A lot.
Writing is difficult because it can be intimidating. The term “good writer” is elusive even to those who have been writing all their lives because writing is not an accomplishment or a pretty snapshot– it’s a constant flow of words that begins when you first learn to spell and ends when you die.
Thank You For Your Inspiration, Steve Jobs (1955-2011)
I only heard of the death of Steve Jobs an hour ago, and amidst the Facebook feeds flooding, Twitter failing, and my local public radio station KQED reprising the announcement, I realized: this was a great, great man.
Great people die. That’s just a fact of life. And we hear about it, much in the same way I am hearing about Steve Jobs’ death right now, and it’s saddening because it’s tough to see great people leave the world. It’s also chilling to me because it reminds me that death does take us all in the end. He was only 56.
The State of the Woman in the Workplace in 2011: It Could Be Better
Last night, I attended a talk in San Francisco’s pariSoma building in SOMA given by Nita Singh Kaushal, Founder of Miss CEO. My intentions were to pick up some tips, likely ones that I’d heard before, meet other women, and see if there were any interested writers for enableher.
As we sat through introductions and Nita began with statistics on the state of women in the workplace from this year, 2011, I began to feel I was going to get more out of this than I originally thought. The numbers flashed on screen: “women are making an average of 77.5 cents for every dollar a man makes,” “female CEOs are receiving compensation packages that were 85% the size of male CEOs, controlling for company size and other variables,” “40% of women are primary household breadwinners.”