Michaelbox

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If you are read­ing this post, then chances are high that you are well aware of my ongo­ing inter­view series “Do You Think You Know…”. If you have man­aged to beat the odds and do not know what I’m talk­ing about, just read some pre­vi­ous posts, the series will stand out and you can get caught up easily.

At this point in time, I have con­ducted six inter­views, and they all have had vary­ing lev­els of pop­u­lar­ity and high lev­els of enjoy­ment for both myself and the per­son we’re get­ting to know. Within this post, I hope to explain and describe the gen­eral process used going into each inter­view, even as it is bound to change and evolve with time and expe­ri­ence. I also hope to clar­ify motives for why I choose to make the effort.

Sadly, I am do not hold an employ­ment posi­tion that uses any of my design and devel­op­ment knowl­edge. Any design or devel­op­ment work has been done dur­ing my free time away from a 40hr/week day job. While I won’t com­ment fur­ther on my day job, I will admit that I do still appre­ci­ate the amount of time avail­able to think and brain­storm, even if it does suf­fer dis­trac­tions. It was dur­ing that free time that the first draft of this post was writ­ten then on yel­low legal paper. This is also when all ques­tions, for the per­son in the hot­seat, are con­ceived. I am able to sit, fig­ure out what I am going to ask, and how I’m going to word them.

I have done what I can to keep the ques­tions pretty open ended but also keep some top­ics reg­u­lar with each inter­view. Ques­tions involv­ing favorite col­ors and fonts, pref­er­ence between pirates and nin­jas and the occa­sional zom­bie or pirate, and a non­sen­si­cal ques­tion involv­ing birds on pow­er­lines, have all been used reg­u­larly. One that I take a lot of pride in and put a lot of focus on is about twit­ter users that the inter­vie­wee rec­om­mends. This focus is because almost all of the peo­ple that we’ve got­ten to know together, I first met on Twit­ter. One of the best parts about this ques­tion is the allowance granted to the inter­vie­wee to high­light some peo­ple impor­tant to them. Lit­tle bits of pro­mo­tion and rec­om­men­da­tion facil­i­tates every­one win­ning and meet­ing new people.

At the end of the brain­storm­ing stage, I have fif­teen ques­tions that I’ve done my best to tai­lor fit the per­son, their per­son­al­ity, and their areas of spe­cialty. The ques­tions are a mix of seri­ous and (hopefully)humorous ques­tions. Before send­ing the ques­tions, I orga­nize them in a man­ner that goes back and forth between seri­ous and humor­ous. I do what I can to acco­mo­date for busy sched­ules by send­ing the ques­tions about two weeks before the day I plan to pub­lish the post. I also send friendly reminders, if nec­es­sary, a cou­ple times dur­ing the two weeks.

Once I receive the answered ques­tions back, I put every­thing into a new word­press post, apply the nec­es­sary styling, add the asso­ci­ated set­tings and meta­data, and sched­ule it for the right date and time. The post going live is what I look for­ward to the most, as it is when myself and the inter­viewed get to have fun pro­mot­ing the inter­view and spread­ing the love. Read­ing the twit­ter replies, retweets, post com­ments, and any­thing else make all the time and effort worth it.

At the end of the day, I get to take pride in that I got to pro­mote some­one I care about, sup­port, and believe in. Mean­while, that per­son gets to be in the spot­light for a day and be the focus of peo­ples’ atten­tion. I hope that it is con­sid­ered a huge honor, with them being in a field where so fre­quently they do the high­light­ing, pri­mar­ily for clients. That is why I put forth the effort.

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