Matthew Milan, Boy Genius

So, instead of being down about my lack of work right now, I thought I would blog about something more positive and upbeat: my experience working with one of the design world's most genius innovators: Matthew Milan. I don't want to be a sycophant, but I thought that maybe some postive posting might go a long way for my positivity.

Matthew and I go way back: all the way back to elementary school. We were in the same Advanced Learners class, even though we were in separate schools. (The class was held every week at St. John Bosco in Barry's Bay, Ontario, which I attended so I didn't have to go anywhere ... unlike poor Matthew who would have to hop a bus each week just so he could take part). I don't remember an awful lot about those classes, except for the occasional talk about Edward de Bono, which Matthew would bring up in conversation when I went to work for him at Critical Mass in Toronto.

We then played together, in high school, on the same Reach For The Top trivia team. Matthew was a monster at the game, frequently scoring more than 200 points in televised matches, which were taped in Pembroke, Ontario. I even saw him answer a 40-point question with maybe just five words of the question given. I remember the answer to this day: Cassius Clay. Seems that Matt had practically memorized all of the old trivia questions in former games -- which I guess the powers-that-be sometimes recycled -- and was able to answer the question based on memory. It was crazy. The guy just completely dominated trivia.

We lost contact after awhile when we moved onto university. But, when I posted to a Toronto newsgroup a few years ago that I was looking to move out of Ottawa and try life in a different city, Matt answered the call. He basically asked me for my résumé and walked it over to the HR department at Critical Mass when I e-mailed it to him. Two job interviews later, and I got the job as an Information Architect (IA), which was a completely new field to me.

Life in Toronto was very difficult for me to adjust to in the beginning. But Matt was patient -- the whole organization was very patient with me, in fact. When I started contributing a bit more, Matt became something of a mentor, showing me how to use Visio to make wireframe mockups -- one-on-one. I was completely amazed at his skill using the program, and just his general thinking altogether. He was, again, a monster in the role. He claims that when he first started out as an IA, that he had to sometimes phone other people to help him solve the occasional design problem. I don't believe it. Nothing fazed the guy, at least in my working experience with him. I never once saw him crushingly fail at whatever he put his mind to. The guy, in short, was a genius. No problem, big or small, fazed him. He might have (minorly) kvetched the odd time about something he had to solve, but when it came right down to it, with time, he always found a solution. And that solution was usually the right one.

Matt even tried throwing me extra responsibility in my role by having me develop a series of training courses for other staff in the office. Unfortunately, while I did all of my research and put together a number of PowerPoint decks to this task, these courses never came to pass -- for whatever reason. (I think it was because we just got generally busy with our major client, and these courses sort of just slipped to the back burner, alas, as "billable work" was more important to the company.) I look back on that and wish that I was able to complete that work, but I appreciated the opportunity to be able to do it in the first place. I think Matt was right in putting me on that task: he knew that I was a skilled researcher and could complete it without much in the way of supervision.

The thing that I appreciate now, looking in the rear view mirror, was that Matt was always pushing me to be better. And the thing that I particularly appreciate was Matt usually had the time for me to answer my questions, no matter how insignificant they might have seemed. (Well, per se, I suppose.)

Not everything was rosy, and I include this section just to make it look like I'm not unnecessarily kissing up to the guy. (Also, it's probably the journalist in me.) I recall that on one of the Spyglass research projects -- basically, a forward-thinking exercise about pitching certain ideas and products to our clients -- we had to come up with something about geo-tracking technology. (Or along those lines ... .) This was a field that Matt had an education in, but much of the information was so bleeding edge that there wasn't a lot of stuff to find online. That make the project incredibly challenging and frustrating, and Matt was there pushing us to keep looking ... and maybe make a few inferences between the lines. I like hard-cold facts, not coming up with something out of nothing. (Again, it's the journalist in me.) So I found that aspect a little difficult to deal with. How do you impress someone who might know all of the answers but doesn't want to give them up? But I guess that was part of the deal; Matt kept on pushing, and encouraged people to come up with their own ideas, rather than ape his own.

Still, I generally enjoyed working with Matt. And the day that he announced that he was leaving Critical Mass, I sort of knew that it was the beginning of the end for me in the organization. (He was my champion there, and was always vouching for the work that I did. With him gone, I no longer had that.) I could turn to him for anything, even the most personal of things that I might of had a crisis with.

Matt has gone onto bigger and better things. He owns his own design studio in Toronto these days -- Normative Design -- and things, by all accounts, seem to be mostly positive there. Even though I have doubts about my skills as an IA, when he Twitters about all of the good things going on for him, I can't help but wish that I was working there as an IA, too. I don't know how he juggles life at work with an active life at home. (He has a kid, now.) But he does it.

Matt has still been there for me. He was the first person I called after getting laid off from Critical Mass. Whenever I need some job advice, he's been there -- even going so far to talk to me on speakerphone making the long drive from Toronto to the Combermere, Ontario, area where he grew up and has parents. (That was a bit weird, as I could hear my own voice echoing through the car as I was talking.) There's even talk of doing a special project with him -- non-work related, and I probably shouldn't mention it yet as A) it might not even come to pass and B) I don't know if he wants to make it public just yet.

All in all, though, working with Matt was a big pleasure. I can only hope that I get lucky enough to work with someone like him again.