Coordinator/Busy Body

Image of Ivan the Individual Contributor

Ivan the Individual Contributor is a web designer/front-end developer. He is an independent contractor and works regularly for Adelante on seasonal projects, building their website and custom tools for Adelante's clients. He received a MFA in Media Design from CalArts in 2001. He has 5 years of work experience. Right out of college, Ivan went to work for a dotcom right before it bombed. Since then, he's been working freelance. Ivan works for Adelante remotely from Santa Barbara, where he lives with his parents. (He actually bought the house from his parents to help them in their retirement and lets them live in it for free, while taking care of them as well.)

Ivan works from home, but owns a 2004 Mini Cooper with racing stripes and likes to go on weekend roadtrips with friends and/or a lady friend when he has one. He goes out a few nights a week to bars and parties, but he's not a total party animal.

Ivan is a Mac junkie. He has a 23" flat screen at home and at work. He has a powerful Mac tower at work and one at home as well. He has also acquired a new Intel MacBook Pro and is now bummed because a new one is coming out that leaves his new one in the dust.

He also has a Windows set up which he uses primarily to test designs he creates on his Mac. As a result, he does a lot of moving files back and forth using either email or OS file sharing. Once in a while, at the beginning of a big project, Ivan will drive down to L.A. and stay for a few days for face-to-face meetings, brainstorm sessions, etc.

He's web-hip. He uses skype to make all his calls from home, delicious to share bookmarks with co-workers and flickr to share pictures with family and friends. He reads other people's blogs with News Reader, but doesn't write one himself. He subscribes to the West End Film Festival and London Jazz Festival calendars as feeds. He doesn't maintain a personal calendar. He keeps track of his appointments in his email client. He's a little too old-school to have a myspace profile. He tried orkut when it came out but didn't stick with it. He uses linkedin to stay in touch with old co-workers and friends from college he doesn't see anymore.

At work, Ivan doesn't get a lot of email (relative to the project and account managers at his company). But he does communicate with the lead designer regularly to update her on his status; to send over comps for review; and to clarify assignments.

Once a week, Ivan has a one-on-one meeting with his manager where they go over his task list together. They rarely go over the specifics of projects and designs. Such issues are reserved for once or twice a week project meetings that involve project and account managers and sometimes even clients. Ivan has no more than 3-5 meetings a week. He never runs these meetings or sets the agenda. However, he is often consulted by the project manager running the meeting on the agenda.

His involvement at these project meetings is usually limited to presenting designs, listen to client requirements and ask questions.

Ivan's manager keeps track of Ivan's task list closer than Ivan does. However, Ivan is pretty good about updating status when he completes tasks. He's less good about adding new ones that come up or breaking big complex tasks into their constituent parts. He would prefer to to keep track of his task list as a few big tasks, rather than have dozens of smaller tasks. His manager and the project manager however have figured out that it's easier to keep Ivan on schedule if they can break tasks down into smaller pieces. It gives the managers a way to uncover dependencies beforehand, make strategic triage decisions and generally keep things moving along. Oftentimes, Ivan gets pestered by his manager to break-down his tasks. You could say that the managers make more use of his task list than he does.

Ivan's Mini

Taken from here

Ivan's MacBook Pro

Taken from here

Ivan's 30" Apple Cinema Display

Taken from here