How To Document a Family Vacation

I love to write about my experiences, show how to do the things that I’ve learned. To give freely of my knowledge, even if only 1 person actually reads this blog.

I’ve been working on catching up on the summer of 2012, I did an internship that summer and although we had a lot of pictures, we didn’t post them anywhere. I started the family blog over a year ago, and I never intended to do retro posts, I felt that we should document that time.

I wanted to find ways to document our vacations on a blog post. There is a lot of thing on family vacations, but there were no tips how to write a post about your vaction, how to convert hundreds of images into a good post. So this is my atempt at that.

Begin with the End in Mind

Yes, cliché, but so very true. Gather all the images into one place: all your DSLR images, the ones you took with your phone, ask relatives if they have images, videos, etc. Put everything in one place and look at them once over. What is the feeling you want to transmit on that post. I write one word themes: excitement, fun, sun, bright, awe, etc. That is the feeling that will guide you throughout the post. Your goal will be to have your readers feel that.

I will use this post on our trip to Saint Louis as an example. I chose to have my readers feel small, because that is how we felt when were were at the monument.

Select the Images with Purpose

This is always the harderst thing for me, for this trip to the Saint Louis Arch I had over 200 images. How was I ever to going to reduce that number to a handful of images to use. I normally make a copy of my images and I start deleting, I do multiple passes, this is sort of the way I do it:

Any images that are just bad, blurry or empty
Remove some duplicates, there will be pictures of the same thing in different angles, I remove most of the duplicates leave a few for further consideration
Images that don’t convey your theme, I’m not saying to remove everything, just think about your theme and remove some more.

I’m able to remove around 50% of the images using the previous 3 steps. There will always be images that you fall in love with, so make sure you keep those. There will be a time when you will have to make a decision, but right now just reduce your images to a manageble set.

Design the Flow

By this point I get sick of just looking at pictures and videos. Most of the time I feel overwhelmed and think that I will never be able to write a post that is not 2000 words long that not even my family would want to read. So I leave that behind and start thinking of the flow.

I use blank paper and I start drawing headings and boxes. I first think about what I want to write about, which experiences make sense. What emotions did I feel during the trip and how will they all fit together. I think of my audience, mostly my family, if we were gathered together what do I want to tell them. One thing I always tell myself is: “You are not making a documentary on the place.” I don’t want to be just showing images of building and exhibits, I want to document my family, and the emotions we’ve felt in those places. Yes there will be images of buildings, but they should make us remember those feelings.

Depending on the length of the post I will write 3-4 headings. For the Arch post I settled on 4 headings: the museum, the math behind the arch, being at the top, and our return trip. On my piece of paper I put down the heading, and put some boxes with images that I thougth would be good. I wanted to put 2 images side by side, on for the east side of the monument and another for the west side. I wanted an image of the “elevators.” I also think of what I call, obligatory picture, you know the one that shows the name of the place with your whole family in from. Yes, the Disney Land Mickey Mouse garden in the entrance of the park. So in a few places I just write, oblig, to make me look for an image that would be that, THE images for that section.

I also represent with smaller squares images that I think will be good to give context or to tell part of the story, but if people skip them I’m fine. WordPress uses galleries, and I use galleries in different ways on my posts, but those smaller boxes are the galleries. I use 3 column galleries to most of the time I think of how many images I want to add to a certain sections in increments of 3 (3, 6,9, etc).

Back to the Images

Having a good grasp of what I need to do, I go back to the images and it becomes a lot easier to find the images I want to use. There are times when I know I need 5 images and I still have 30, I create a new folder, put the 30 images inside and start deleting more images. Sometimes I have to do the oposite, I have to look at all the images and think of 3 that I HAVE to keep, so I move those to the new folder, that eases the process.

Many, many times I know I will need 5 and I end up with 10 in the set, and I’m fine. I start editing process, I use GIMP for the post processing. I’ve found that at this point there are images that I thougth that were amazing, and then looking at them in a post production state, they aren’t really that good. Or I thougth I could straighten them, but then they don’t work out. So it is good to keep a few extras on hand. I reduce the resolution to about 2048px x 1536px; it is still HD, but not too big. WordPress creates lower resolution copies for various applications, so that makes it even easier.

Start Building Your Post

At this point is where I start putting my blog post together. Begin by getting some sample text to help me see what it’s going to look like. I use lipsum.com to get dummy text, it helps me picture inside the post what the final product will look.

I then start adding the images to the sample text, I use my paper flow to guide what I’m putting where. Not 100% strict, some images looke better in one way rather than another.

You are done with images.

Start Writing

Once I know how the post is going to look like, and I see the images and I start remembering the events, all the emotions come back. I then convey those emotions and memories in the text. Some explanations takes long paragraphs, some take a caption on an image.

I picture my family (my audience) waiting for me to tell them about our vacation. I think of my daughter going back in time and reading about the time she walked, or rode a bike. I want her to see those images, but also remember those stories. I write to her, I write to make those memories last longer.

This is not how I would write a post like this one, but this is how I write a post about our family.

This is the result, from a bird’s eye view:

May 13, 2014May 13, 2014

25 Years of the Ram – Cummins Co-Brand

Can you believe that it has been 25 years since Cummins joined forces with Chrysler on the Ram brand.

I recently attended MATS in Louiseville, KY and saw the history of the Cummins – Ram co-branding, but also many other co-branding partnerships.

This is a Western Star truck using the Transformers brand to drive traffic to their booth.

This is a Freightliner truck with a Cummins Natural Gas engine. This truck uses CNG, notice the big CNG tanks in the back. Each one of those cilinders cost about $40,000. Again an example of a co-branding, using the expertise of Cummins for the engine, and the Freightliner brand for the truck.

April 10, 2014

Translate a WordPress Blog

For my family blog, I decided to fully convert it to Spanish. We had been primarily posting in Spanish, but most of the descriptions were in English. The primary reason for doing the blog in Spanish was so that we could have a connection with our family in Guatemala, and although many do speak English, Spanish is still the best way to communicate with them. Although I did not do all these changes in the order that I present them here, now that I have given more thought to the process I think this is the best way to do it.

WordPress in Your Language

From the WordPress help:

Although WordPress displays in U.S. English (en_US) by default, the software has the built-in capability to be used in any language. The WordPress community has already translated WordPress into many languages, and there are themes, translation files and support available in many other languages. It is also possible to create a multilingual blog with the help of Plugins.

It is fairly simple to change the language for the installation of your WordPress instance. You can find a list of languages in the codex site, the list will live here soon. For now, go here. Since I wanted the Spanish translation, I started at es.wordpress.com, but the instructions are always the same:

Download the .mo language file for your language.
On your site server, create a new folder in your /wp-content directory called /languages
Upload the .mo file to the languages folder you just created.
Open your wp-config.php file in a text editor and search for:

define ('WPLANG', '');

Edit this line according to the .mo file you’ve just downloaded, e.g. I wanted the Spanish language so I added:

define ('WPLANG', 'es_ES');

Once you’ve added your language code, save the file.
Upload the modified wp-config.php file into the WordPress root directory.
Open your browser and go to your WordPress site. It should now display in the newly-installed language.

A Theme with Internationalization

Now that your installation is in the language that you desire, you can change the language on your theme, this is can be as easy as your main installation or downright impossible; this because you depend on the theme’s creator to allow internationalization. I believe that the all default themes come ready for multiple languages, for others it really is hit or miss. I had chosen Pinboard because it offered internationalization.

What does it mean to offer internationalization

You can find a lot of information in the wiki entry, but in short for a theme to offer internationalization, or as commonly written i18n (where 18 stands for the number of letters between the first i and last n in internationalization), they need to provide a template.

Pinboard provides a template file called pinboard.pot, which contains a list of all the translatable strings extracted from the sources. The .pot files looks something like this:

 #. TRANSLATORS: Please leave %s as it is
 #. Thank you for contributing to this project.
 #: src/name.c:36
 msgid "My name is %s.\n"
 msgstr ""

Translating the theme

Search for other people that have translated the theme, you should be looking for a file name like themename-locale.mo or themename-locale.po (ie pinboard-es_ES.mo). I couldn’t fin any translations on the support forums or on searches, I had to do it by myself.

In short you need to rename the .pot file into a .po file and add all the translations on the messages. You can find all about it here, but there are easier ways.

I used the web service Loco, which offers a very easy interface to load the .pot file, translate each message and then download the .mo file. From their about page: “Loco helps you manage and integrate translations into your software, whatever you’re building.”

I renamed the file as pinboard-es_ES.mo and then uploaded it to the correct folder. This is in a subfolder where you placed the wordpress language file.

By this point you should be able to see your site in the language of your choosing. I love looking now at my blog and just seeing that I made it happen.

Changing the Language in Your Posts

There are several ways to do this, you can learn about them here. I considered these 3:

Translate each post
Create separate posts for different audiences
Use a service to translate

Although I would have full control over the content on options 1 and 2; the burden was so big that I couldn’t do it. I tried a few services and settled on Google’s Translation services. Here are the steps I used to add this service to my blog.

Go to translate.google.com

Select Website Translator

Then click on “Add new website”

Add your site, the original language and the languages you want to have available

Pick the way that you want your dropdown bar to look and see if any of the Advance features apply. I use Google Analytics so I wanted to track this. If none of them make sense to you, leave them unchecked. Now click on “Get Code”

This code needs to be inserted in two places for it to work on your wordpress site. This is where it becomes less easy, if you see the instructions as being too complicated you can try this plugin “Google Language Translator” it looks simple to use and has very good ratings

First you will need to find your theme’s functions.php and edit it. You can find it in the Appearance editor. Then add the following code:


if ( ! function_exists('mijangos_google_translate')):
/***
Adds Meta tag to header
*/
function mijangos_google_translate() {
echo '<meta name="google-translate-customization" content="XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXX-g4a2bfd921f7edf6c-f"></meta>'."\n";
}

add_action('wp_head', 'mijangos_google_translate');

endif;

Notice that the part after echo ' is from the code being generated, and don’t forget to end it with ' ;. This functions puts this code in the header. Now click on “Save File.”

Edit the single.php page, this is the page that generates your posts. I wanted the language selector to be just above the post content. I located that part and put the following code in.


<!-- Google Translate -->
<script type="text/javascript">
function googleTranslateElementInit() {
new google.translate.TranslateElement({pageLanguage: 'es', includedLanguages: 'en,fr,pt,ru', gaTrack: true, gaId: 'UA-37421093-1'}, 'google_translate_element');
}
</script><script type="text/javascript" src="//translate.google.com/translate_a/element.js?cb=googleTranslateElementInit"></script>
<!-- Google Translate -->

<div style="margin: auto;">
<div id="google_translate_element"></div>

Save the file and go to a post. This was my result.

April 4, 2014April 4, 2014

What do you want to do next?

Recently I was in the midst of a redeployment effort as the project I was working on was put on hold. My manager and other leaders would ask me, “what do you want to do next?” I had some vague concepts of the things I wanted to do, but it was very difficult to articulate them. In the back of my mind I kept saying: “I just want to still be employed.” That was not an issue, thankfully, but it seemed everyone was allowing me to think of what I wanted to do, and I had no thoughts.

I met with my mentor and with other managers to learn how they though about transitions, and I was able to learn some very interesting bits. I don’t think that any of this is revolutionary, but it created an easy way for me to answer the question: “What do you want to do next?”

Big Dreams

The first thing that I learned was to set my mind free and say: What are my big dreams? This includes retirement and spending long days in the beach with my family. This is everything, all your dreams onto a piece of paper. Then do a second paper, more structure and this will be just your professional Big Dreams. (I’ve included a simplified version of mine)

As you see I’ve put age just to have some context and some titles, but mainly it will give you some context. It provides just jumping points, but if someone asked me what do you want to do next I would just be able to answer: “Eventually I want to be a Director, maybe internationally, in either Marketing or Strategy or some combination of all of that.” It does not answer what I want to do next, but it does give you a good next milestone.

What should I do next in 5 steps

Step 1 – What kind of work do you want to do?

There are infinite permutation of work that you could do and you would enjoy doing. Think broadly, things like “exciting work” or “working close to customers” or “working close to the product” or “thinking about long term strategy” or all of the above. This could change on your next leap, but shouldn’t vary too much.

I want my work to be exciting, important to the company, and strategic and forward looking.

Step 2 – What is your history?

Think about the past 3 or 4 roles you’ve done and list them out. For me they would be: I was a developer, then a general manager, then in market research, then a program manager. This gives you context; do I want to do more of software development with a twist or a project manager over something bigger? Or I want to use my MBA degree into something more like marketing. Start thinking about skills that you have acquired and what you want to develop

Step 3 – What skills do you want to develop in the next 5 years?

Remember my statement: “Eventually I want to be a Director, maybe internationally, in either Marketing or Strategy or some combination of all of that.” To get that I need to develop a few skills. I know that where I work to be promoted to director I have to be 6 Sigma Green belt certified; I need that skill. After talking to a few people that are in those roles, I saw that I need to learn more about the products and customers. Think about the skills that you will need for that next milestone

Step 4 – Convert that milestone into possibilities

Look for positions that would be possibilities for the milestone. I looked in my organization and there were a few positions that I would say, yes that is what I want to do. One of them was Director of Competitor Intelligence, another was Director of Market Strategy and Planning, and another Director of Market Segment in Mexico. These were places that would fit my milestone, I want to get there, so finally, which role/s would take me there.

Step 5 – List the roles that will take you to your next milestone

It has become evident that I might have to be in 2 more roles before I get to be a Director, but that is fine, as long as I can identify a few roles that:

Take advantage of my past skills
Give or strength my desired skills
Are congruent with my overall type of work I want to do

That is the last step, find 2 or 3 roles that would lead you to that milestone. I talked to the directors that hold the positions I want and learned about their path. Some took a longer path because they had to gain more experience or education. Others had similar roles than those I want to pursue, so I could relate easily. We discussed the skills and which roles provided particular skills that I have to master.

Putting it all together

A mentor shared a similar slide that puts all those steps into one visual image. As you see each part has a number, but you can fill it out in any way you want, as you are putting things together. You will probably have to do a few passes before you can say that you are satisfied. In the end I had 3 jobs I thought would be good next steps and looked for open positions. One spot I interviewed and discussed the skills I wanted to gain and those that I was bringing; the manager agreed that I would make a good fit.

I don’t think I will update my slide until next year, when I will start again thinking about next steps. In the meantime, I have a lot of material to read to catch up to the rest of the team.

Here is a template that you can use: Template

March 19, 2014

NTEA Truck Show

Hino truck with no cab over for the American market

March 13, 2014March 13, 2014

My path to giving feedback

Giving feedback has never been something that I can do easily. It is not that I don’t have an opinion on subjects, more than likely I feel that it is not important for the other person to receive it. When things get so big that I believe that there is benefit on expressing my opinions more than likely I will try to either schedule a meeting or write an email. By that point I have stung together so many things that the message probably feels like I go bonkers over petty things. It is hard to express that the accumulation of it all is the cause, and most meeting end with: “You should have told me sooner that those things were bothering you.”

Over the past 4 months I’ve been meeting with consultants that are helping my team develop stronger relationships as we deploy a new business process in our business unit. One of the traits I chose to improve was the way I give feedback. Although this journey was hard for me, I’m sure that it is incredibly easy for others; but if you are in my camp they you understand.

Thinking about feedback I started remembering a trip I took with my family to Sea World. Looking at the magnificence of the whales and their interaction with their trainers I started remembering the cues and feedback these animals receive as they do what they are told to do. I think I always thought that was the only feedback needed, encouragement on the things we do well, but we are no animals and as humans we want to improve on the things we are lacking.

I didn’t have a way to effectively give feedback, I thought that I should meet and have this laundry list of things and we could all just mark each of the items off. I’ve learned a few ways to give feedback that allow both parties to come out of it positively.

First is the XYZ Sandwich, which I learned is an easy way to express behaviors. Read the link, it explains what it is, for me what it meat was that I had now a structure, a script that I could use to express my ideas. For someone who didn’t even know which words to pick, this was a great help. I was still uncomfortable with just saying this phrase to a coworker as things happened, but I could connect with them after I had written down what I wanted to say and just express my ideas. What happened was that people would improve or I would find out more information about their motivations and perspective.

Another tool that I’ve learned comes from Ken Martlage from the group Phoenix Images. From this I was able to understand that before giving feedback I needed to separate reality (facts) from my perception. When my perception is incorrect I can attribute the wrong intentions for why people were doing things. Having understood this I now could talk to someone and discuss each angle separatly: (1) what are the facts? (2) how did these actions impact me? (3) what drove the facts? (4) what am I requesting? what am I offering?

The final piece in this journey is doing it. You have the tools, now pick something that you feel someone needs to improve and take a stab at their intentions. Words like: “you probably wanted X…” or “I guess your intention was Y…” and finally propose an alternative. Write these things down on a piece of paper, also do an assessment on yourself and offer possible alternatives on behaviors you should improve.

The first time I did this I was really scared, I couldn’t believe I was asking a colleague if they wanted my input on their performance. This colleague had been struggling in a few meetings and I felt that I needed to help them out, but we weren’t as close that I could just say: “hey, they really put you through the ringer; next time you should do this…” I was also being assigned tasks my boss thought I could tackle better than them. So I sent them a note that just said: “How are you feeling about all this pressure? I have a few suggestions that could help you improve. Do you have time on Friday to go over them?” My colleague agreed and we met. I had my notes in front of me and we just had a conversation. For some intentions I had them wrong, others were on point. At the end we ended the meeting on a high note, higher than what I would have anticipated. We had a higher level of trust and a deeper respect one for the other.

I had read an article in the HBR Blog about negative feedback. The authors show that employees want that negative feedback, even more than the positive praise. I guess in my n=1 this was also true, and it felt good.

March 5, 2014March 5, 2014

Cummins among the top companies in Intern to FT conversion

Top Industries and Companies to Score Full-Time Positions for Interns from LinkedIn

February 12, 2014February 12, 2014

Great Time to be Latino?

I read this article in the Harvard Business Review Blog (Hispanic Talent Is the Future for Big Companies) the other day and started pondering about the position that I am in right now as a Latino. One notion that struck really hard was this:

By 2050, Hispanics will represent over half of the nation’s workforce.

I look around at Cummins HQ and we have a much diverse group of people representing almost all nations from around the world. We want to harness as much diversity as possible, I have written about that some time ago.

Tapping into this rapidly-growing pool of workers will require a mix of traditional values and forward-thinking practices. The important role work plays in creating paths for upward mobility in many Hispanics’ lives suggest that companies should emphasize well-thought-out career development options – attractive promotion possibilities and access to resources required to attain them. To the extent possible, career advances should be accompanied by status-related recognition, including titles or other symbolic designations (such as badging) that can be easily shared with an extended community.

The article notes to companies that their future lays in taping into this segment of the population, to do this they will have to change their culture. I would agree that:

Latinos are a growing demographic in the United States, there is no denying this is true.
Companies don’t really have a strategy for this demographic, other than going to conferences like NSHMBA.

Having said this, I don’t think that they really need to cater to my demographic; they should be MORE demographic agnostic. Knowing that Latinos like to be recognized, does not mean that as a company we need to have new ways of recognizing. Even worst, targeting Latinos to these programs. I am sure that there are other cultures / demographics / backgrounds that DO NOT like these public demonstrations of recognition. I am not saying that companies would want to abolish the recognition either. Companies need to set guidelines, processes and procedures for the good of the company.

Just like I would not think it would be fair to cater to another demographic element of the population, I would not want the company to put special procedures for me.

Had this article been about how do we recruit Hispanic talent that is currently being lost because companies are not recognized in Hispanic groups. Or how can companies demonstrate they are truly committed to diversity. That would be something that would be compelling, but telling companies they need to change their culture to cater to one group is simply unacceptable.

February 11, 2014

Your Alumni Network

I still remember the talk during orientation where our group was told the importance of the school’s brand. How we were to go out and remember our school, the students, the professors, and the alumni. We were not just getting a degree, were were being meshed into a network.

I can’t deny that I was excited, I really was. I met second year MBA that were just great. They taught me how to improve my resume, how to go after interviews, they even connected me to other second year students that had worked at places where I wanted to work. I also met faculty and staff that lent a helping hand in finding a place for me. I can’t deny that I also met a few alumni, most older professionals that thought our program was great and wanted to contribute. The one group that I didn’t really see, were recent grads. The people that had graduate year before I started my MBA.

I didn’t give it much thought until I was a second year students, and there were first year students that I thought should meet recent grads that I knew, “my” second year students. I discovered that they were very willing to help, but few were being asked to contribute. They were recent hires, so there were in no position to extend offers. They had very little experience in the field they were working in, so I guess people didn’t think they were important.

I thought differently, I thought that they held key knowledge of how company’s recruited. They knew enough people to connect first year students. They were not influencers, but they were people of trust. They also had all the interview and resume knowledge and could critique the work of MBA Students. They are also the link to past generations of MBA Alumni, and that would grow the overall network.

It has almost been a year since I graduated, so I am a recent grad. I talked to the person responsible for Alumni Affairs and also to the head of MBA placement. I told them that I did not want to be the missing link. I wanted to continue being involved with new students and help in any way possible. I was particularly interested in international students, I being also an international student felt that I could bring some additional knowledge.

Over the past 10 months I’ve been trying to be involved with recruiting for Cummins. I have been able to meet wonderful students, and tried to make myself available to as many as I can. I don’t know all the incoming class, but I do know quite a few. I don’t believe in karma, but I do fell that we need to pay forward for all the help we get in order to get a job.

I would be more than happy to help our school. Regarding the interns, I would be more than happy to talk to them. Feel free to ask them to give me a call anytime and I can talk to them too. — Alumni

The other wonderful think I have discovered is tapping the shoulder of the Alumni Network. I have sent a not to all BYU MBAs at Cummins a personal note, just introducing myself. All have responded positevely. Next I have asked them if they would like to be involved in the recruiting efforts of the company; all have agreed. Right now I know of 15 BYU MBA Alumni that work for Cummins, imagine how the 6 interns this summer will feel when they will meet, face to face or virtually, all of these people. These are Alumni that want their peers to succeed, and before had not participated because they hadn’t been asked.

I now live the teachings from that day in orientation. I can see how I am part of a network bigger than my graduating class. Many times I struggle to expand my network at work, forgetting that there are alumni that are more than happy to connect with me and further my career. I also want to make it explicit that there is an onus on you to be available, to be open, to engender trust to your fellow alumni. It is my hope that we can all be more open and find that strength in OUR alumni network.

January 27, 2014May 18, 2016

JW Player WordPress Alignment

Update May 18, 2016 – I have stopped using jwplayer, I don’t want to be hosting the raw mp4 files on my site, I didn’t find that jwplayer adapted well when changing screen resolutions, and it was hard on mobile users. I’m back to YouTube, and I couldn’t be happier.

One of the coolest plugins I’ve found as I’ve tried to add video to the family blog is jwplayer (site, wordpress plugin). It allowed me to stop publishing family videos to youtube, but rather host them myself. I want to show you how to customize this plugin so that your blog looks great.

Continue reading “JW Player WordPress Alignment”