A day in the life of a publishing lead: Steve Donlon
Hello, I’m Steve Donlon! I’m a senior publishing lead at Acclaro, where I’ve worked for the past 15 years. I oversee production management for documentation and user assistance in every language we work in (125 and counting), as well as solutions development and implementation. Come spend some time with me as I go through a typical day in my life.
Waking the demon
The morning buzzer rings, and I wake to the dark gloom of fall. My wife tells me that it is my turn to wake the demon from her slumber, so I wearily go into my daughter’s room. I let her know that it is time to get up and open her shades so the first semblance of light can cast its gray shadow. She grumbles. I make sure she opens her eyes, and then I slink downstairs to start breakfast.
Soon, after some more cajoling, my daughter runs through our morning ritual with me reminding her to finish her banana and make sure her Chromebook and mask are packed for school. And with that, we are out the door and on our way. By this point, she is fully awake and in a better mood. We play some music and sing along to Ray Charles or They Might Be Giants. This is my favorite part of the morning. After dropping my daughter at school, I zip over to Dunkin Donuts to get my wife a coffee and return home to eat my breakfast. I’m hopeful I’ll have time to squeeze in some exercise.
The first order of the work day
Then, it’s time for me to check into my dashboard to see the list of daily assignments. Once I have the day mapped out, I connect with our Bangkok office on existing or upcoming publishing tasks.
Next up, I work on quoting and analysis for a new client. Then, I get an email from presales to look at some files they are analyzing and answer a few questions for them. I also have a couple of QAs that I complete and send back to our production team.
A shared lunch break (sometimes)
It’s lunch time, and I typically eat at my desk. But every once in a while, my schedule eases and syncs up with my wife’s. On those days we eat together and catch up on the last 20 minutes of that TV show we were watching last night when we both fell asleep.
After lunch, I notice a new ticket has been logged, and I have a Zoom meeting with a translator. Then, it’s off to another Zoom meeting. This one is a weekly check-in for a client. It’s late in the afternoon now and California is up and running. The West Coast team hands off a testing QA which I finish up.
My wife picks up my daughter, and they arrive home around 2:30 p.m. I take a little break to say hello to my daughter and see how her day went. Then, she’s off to complete homework followed by drawing in her sketchpad and maybe a little Xbox. I run downstairs and do 10 minutes on the elliptical to get the blood pumping again and then head back up for the last part of my day.
Winding down the work day
The work day is waning, and I need to get some important information off to the Bangkok office and answer a few more queries from the project management team before signing off.
Dinner is ready, but there is not much time to eat as we have to get my daughter off to swim practice (or is it the TikTok dance class?). After scarfing down our dinner and sharing the details of our days, we rush out. I stay to watch swim practice and kibitz with the other parents about upcoming meets, as well as school and town happenings.
