Sarah Borders

Many years ago, a former colleague of mine was up for a promotion in IT support. Part of the interview process included a timed practical assessment where candidates were asked to repair a computer with several functional issues not related to its hardware. After some basic troubleshooting, she decided the only way to complete the task in the allotted time was to re-image the machine. The test was meant to be impossible in the allotted time; it was supposed to show that the candidate could keep calm under pressure and knew how to assess the situation by running though all the possible fixes from the most common to the least common. The proctors had to suspend assessments while the fixed computer was broken again. My colleague got the promotion. She told me this story, and I said, "So you Kobayashi Maru'd the assessment." When she looked at me quizzically, I knew she wasn't a Trekkie, so I explained the story. If you're not a fan of Star Trek or unfamiliar with t

This is atypical of the writing I do here but, if I may be permitted a religious analogy, I feel compelled to be an evangelist and spread the "good news" that is Peacock 's original, eight-episode limited series from the minds of Tara Hernandez and David Lindelof, "Mrs. Davis", and I shall endeavor to make the case for watching it without spoilers. Here goes. The plot centers on Sister Simone (played by Betty Gilpin), a nun living in a convent outside Reno, Nevada, whose literal middle name is "Danger". Simone, for valid reasons, detests Mrs. Davis, the AI that seemingly everyone is obsessed with, and will do whatever it takes to bring It down. She is joined in this mission by her ex-boyfriend and "cowboy", Preston "Wiley" Wiley (played by Jake McDorman), who has a sense of urgency and his own reasons for wanting Mrs. Davis to shut down. Together, they travel the world in an effort to bring about Her destruction, supported by Wiley&

I continued to work in my role as a readers' advisory librarian until January 2012. Having started out managing the library's "For Adults" section of the website, I started taking on more and more responsibility, until I was granted super-admin access, and was managing almost all of the website and training other users on the content management system we were using at the time. Toward the end of 2011, there began some rumblings about making a more concerted effort to focus on the library's online presence and services by establishing a dedicated team. As the person who found herself managing much of the day-to-day work on the website, I was a natural candidate to be a part of this newly formed team. Rather than being a part of Public Services Division of the library, we were now a part of the IT Division, and that was an adjustment. For me, it was like a duck moving from land into water. IT people were my people. That's not to say I know everything there is to

I started library school at the University of North Texas in the fall 2006 semester, excited to go back to school to become a librarian. One of my colleagues at work suggested I take the Web Development courses, a set of two electives offered that would count toward my total credits needed for the General Program of Study I was pursuing, and they sounded interesting to me, so I did. That fall, while I learned all about how information is organized—a foundational concept of librarianship, I discovered I had a real affinity for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which were the focus for the first Web Development course. I enjoyed working with markup and styling my HTML, but I really enjoyed using JavaScript to manipulate the DOM. In the following spring, I learned about the different types of reference work (primarily handling reference, referral, and directional requests), and important best practices for providing assistance to patrons. I also learned PHP, SQL, MySQL, and how to interact with

When I was younger, there were these books and posters of "Magic Eye" images that, allegedly, if you stared at them long enough, you could see some hidden image. No matter how hard I tried, I could never see the image. Ever. All I saw were a bunch of abstract colors in a pattern, but no big picture. Can you see the hidden image above, or are you like William and me? The image allegedly shows a shark, in case you were wondering. This is not an exact science, but if you have trouble seeing the hidden picture, I'm willing to bet you're naturally more of a detail-oriented person than a big-picture thinker. These two approaches live at opposite ends of the spectrum, but there's a balance in between the two, and I like to think of it as being a helicopter. Unlike being a helicopter parent, being a helicopter in business is, in fact, a good thing. It means you can see and readily understand different perspectives in a situation and easily switch between deep dives an

Once upon a time, in what now feels like another (and in some ways, an alternate) life, I was a librarian. I'm not ashamed to admit that it's a career I chose by default, but not as alternate-universe Mary Hatch did when there was no George Bailey to marry. I had earned a BA in Classical Studies. The history, mythology, philosophy, literature, art, architecture, and language of the ancient Greek and Roman world all fascinated me greatly, but I had no idea what I was going to do with it. I'd worked my way through college as a bookseller at Barnes & Noble, and once my course load wound down, I began to work full-time and was promoted to lead bookseller. I was still living with my parents, and I had no plans of moving out until, at my father's insistence, I could afford to buy a house (renting was a waste of money). I had no immediate plans for my next move, and was content to continue working at the bookstore until I figured it out, until one day, my mother pointed m

I've worked with cross-functional teams throughout my experience as a PM, and I've learned a thing or two about leading cross-functional teams. And now, dear reader, you can benefit from my mistakes experience. Here are some best practices I've collected, in no particular order: 1. Cast a Wide Net Whether you're forming the team or inheriting it, it's important to make sure you have the right people on your team. Consider the work to be done. Do you have the right person to do that work (or oversee the work being done)? Regularly confirm with each of your team members that they're the right person to be included on the team--no one knows better than they do. Create an org chart of team members, and map it to your work breakdown structure to make sure you're not missing any matches. 2. Have a Clearly Defined Scope and Desired Outcomes OK, so this one is kind of obvious, but it's worth mentioning because when you get stuck in the weeds with your project o