Name: Melissa St. John
Title: Senior Developer
Company: AOL Digital City New York
How I arrived at my present job (academic and other influences): I began my career as a policy analyst in Washington, DC. The road to my present job was a long and winding one. Academic influences were studies in Communication rather than Computer Science. After all, the Web did not exist when I was in college. A love of computers grew into a BBS system and an interest in online and internet communication pre-Web. I became a member of America Online in 1991, and gradually developed tech skills on PCs and mainframes until I could apply for my first position with AOL in 1995.
How I organize my day: I get the 6:30 train into NYC from the 100-acre farm where I live. I get to work around 8:30 and read email until about 10am. Then I begin calling partners and advertisers to make sure that all of our advertising production is running smoothly, and that everyone is happy. I run reports to see how our traffic is looking (what did well the night before, what did poorly). I may need to build a couple of new pages to flesh out our Health Section, or create an application that will automate a news feed... Every day is different, and requires a different set of skills, I just kind of roll with it.
Amount of time spent working daily (at home and office): Including home and office, I work about 70 hours a week. More or less, depending on schedules and deadlines.
What I do to get myself thinking creatively: I cruise the Web to see what other people are doing, to get a fresh perspective.
My problem-solving strategy: I chunk everything down. Regardless of the nature of the problem, I will break it into pieces and then tackle each piece at a time. That way I never feel overwhelmed by a problem, it just becomes its component parts in my mind, and each one is manageable.
What I do to relieve stress: I vent to my patient and understanding husband, I read mysteries and cyberpunk novels, I cook and clean.
My hero, mentor, or person I most admire and why: Pattie Maes, because she is so brilliant and beautiful, and has pioneered a field that is very close to my heart: Artificial Intelligence. Personal agents are the future not only of the internet, but of technology. Personal, consumer technology. The work that she is doing will affect every aspect of our lives in the new millennium. She is truly a revolutionary, as much as I hate to use such a hackneyed word to describe her. http://lcs.www.media.mit.edu/people/pattie/
What I do to mentor those who work for me: I always encourage people to focus on the application of what they're doing. Cool code is great, but only if will make someone's life easier when it's done. Sometimes the very best and most important applications are the simplest---the ones that everyone misses because their heads are in the sky. Keep grounded, and learn, learn, learn.
How a negative event changed my life in a positive way: There hasn't been any single negative event that's memorable to me at this stage of my career. But as a rule, when small negative things happen, which they always do, I remind myself that it's not personal; that things happen for a reason and that they usually turn out for the best. It's a sappy aphorism which my mother always threw at me, but it's true.
One event or decision in my life I wish I could go back and change: I wish that I had been a more serious student.
What values are the most important to me and what I value in others: I value people who speak their minds, consequences be damned. Assuming, of course, that these people are not hostile or perverse. ;) Loyalty is another quality that's important to me. I'm a very loyal employee, wife, and friend, and I value that trait in others.
What inspires, motivates, or gets me excited about my job on a daily basis: Just working for this company, the greatest company in the world, America Online. What could be more motivating or exciting than that? I'm very proud to be a part of such a progressive, dynamic organization.
Biography: That's such a broad question... My technology/research interests revolve around artificial intelligence and biotechnology. I only dabble in articles and follow a few researchers, but I really find these fields fascinating. I'm an avid reader and read on many different topics, all of which relate in some way to the future of technology. To me, nothing is more interesting than speculating on how all of this will evolve, how it will change our lives. I have my theories, but they change almost daily!
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Location: www.acm.org/crossroads/dayinlife/bios/melissa_stjohn.html