Aries Systems Corporation

Tell us a little about yourself – how long have you been working for Aries? What did you do before joining Aries?

I started at Aries in February of 2020 and feel fortunate to have met most of my colleagues in person before the company transitioned to temporary remote operations a few weeks later due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to joining Aries, I worked as a technical specialist at MIT Press. In that role, I wrote user documentation about the press’s editorial content management system, and trained and supported all of the departments in its use. I also managed their Confluence site and was in charge of maintaining their neuroscience website, CogNet, which involved researching and testing new features for it.

How have your previous roles helped you in your current position?

Having started my career as a newspaper reporter, I am accustomed to breaking down complex topics and presenting them to an audience in a clear, concise manner. Working for a university press helped me understand the intricate editorial workflows of both book and journal publishers. I am also fortunate to have been a production editor at O’Reilly Media where I had firsthand experience shepherding books through their entire lifecycle.

How do you collaborate with other departments within Aries?

I have had the opportunity to work with many departments at Aries. In the past I helped manage the rollout of beta release sites for customers and worked with Client Services to ensure that we met all of our deadlines. I also work with Marketing to provide them with the latest customer documentation and release notes, and am excited to collaborate with them on the Aries internal Confluence site!

Tell me about your department and the people you work most closely with.

Working as a member of the Aries Product Management team has been great! The team has an incredibly deep understanding of the complex inner workings of Editorial Manager and ProduXion Manager, and are more than willing to share that knowledge. Everyone on the team has such diverse backgrounds, and it shows in their innovative approaches to solving problems and developing features – it is very inspiring!

Describe your typical workday.

Because the documentation team supports multiple squads that are working on different deadlines, it really depends on the development schedule and when features are getting released. Sometimes I am researching and testing new features so I can write release notes for our customers. Other times, I could be writing articles for EM Help and working in Adobe RoboHelp, or I might be in Confluence creating and updating instructional or feature specification pages for the Product Management knowledge base. I have also helped edit DB content, assist with NetSuite cases, and manage customer and vendor documentation on the wiki, so the variety of responsibilities keeps things interesting!

What do you most enjoy about your job? What do you enjoy most about working for Aries?

I have to say that the people at Aries make all the difference. Trying to learn EM and PM while training in a new job over Zoom during a pandemic has been challenging, but everyone here has gone above and beyond to make this a great experience!

What are you currently reading, listening to, or watching?

I am a big fan of sci-fi and fantasy television shows and recently finished watching the series Locke & Key on Netflix. I’m looking forward to its second season which starts in October, and with Stranger Things 4 wrapping up filming this August, have yet another series to binge watch next year!

Tell me about some of your hobbies/interests outside of work.

I recently started playing tennis again after taking a few years off, and am enjoying being back on the court! I am also an avid cards and board game player. I belong to a game Meetup group and regularly play Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Codenames, Mille Bornes, and Spades. Thankfully there are web-based counterparts to most of these games, so I was able to continue playing them with family and friends during the pandemic.

I am also an amateur landscape photographer and have combined that hobby with my love of road trips. In the past few years I have driven to the west coast and back numerous times and took photos of natural wonders such as Niagara Falls, Arches National Park, the Valley of Fire State Park, and Grand Canyon. I am hoping to make my first visit to Acadia National Park this year and to take some great photos of the Maine coast while there!