Taming Email Streams

This post is inspired by a session at Science Online 2012 that I attended in January 2012. The session was on the information overload that many of us endure in our personal and professional lives. There is a constant stream of tweets, email messages, IMs, Google+ posts, FaceBook, etc. Some people become engrossed by all the information and it destroys productivity. I have dealt with email for a long time and have looked into ways to get a handle on it.

I compare the problem to that of a sick and bleeding patient. You deal with the critical thing first. The first thing to consider is to stop the bleeding rather than try to cure the illness. Minimizing the incoming stream can be accomplished in most cases. First, analyze who is sending you messages so you have some idea how you can manage the flood. Most email is from people on your workgroup, friends & family, email distribution lists, and miscellaneous senders.

For project teams or workgroups, there are effective techniques for managing email. Frankly, good management will have developed a communications plan even if it is loosely defined. It is important for a manager to set up rules of engagement for communications. Put together a communications plan where team members understand when to email and when to use other communications.

For example, a manager may want to limit email to weekly updates (daily in some cases.) Individuals may be assigned to deliver their input to one person and that person might send one message a week to the team. I see a lot of people in a constant email stream defining work assignments. These can be multiple messages where one answer ends up causing additional questions. Suddenly, you have 10-20 messages to define simple tasks. Email probably isn’t the best way to handle these types of problems, but I see this happening all the time. Use the telephone or walk down to the person rather than have a long email stream back and forth.

Carbon copy is one of the most abused parts of email systems. Each person should think about who really needs to be copied on messages. There are very few times when everyone on a distribution list needs to have a copy of a message between two other people. This means that all those people need to manage the message with no gain in productivity. Don’t do it.

The email system should not be a file storage where people attach documents and send them back and forth. That is what file systems do. Also, FTP, wikis, and all sorts of collaboration tools are better ways of handling the file distribution problem. The versioning issue with files are also a big problem when people email copies of files around for review or editing. It can be very hard to determine the latest version and the correct version of a document.

A manager should also consider other forms of communication. A wiki or blog system may be a better mechanism for a team. Those will allow other team members to see Q&A and not have to repeat the same discussion on another email thread. Collaboration tools should be used for collaboration rather than having that stuffed into a messaging system.

Getting all the communication plan at the start of a project is a good way to limit the number of messages you have to manage. After a few projects, you will notice a reduction in the number of messages due to frequency and the number of CCs that you get. The idea is to reduce the number of message in total and only message when information is useful rather than CYA which happens a lot in business.

Business people should also consider the sources of their messages and ways to compartmentalize groups of messages into separate folders. Most email systems allow you to filter messages by a number of criteria. You can send email lists to specific folders. You can send messages from the boss or special accounts into the “important” folder. Family and personal messages can be sorted to a “Personal” folder automatically by the sender’s address. Email distribution list messages can be sorted to different folders. Alerts from machines and systems that many of us receive can be moved to a “Alerts” folder. Getting things out of the Inbox and into specific folders allows you to deal with the messages appropriately (or not at all.)

If you find that you don’t read all those messages from professional email lists, you should consider unsubscribing from them and using the web based system to peruse messages. That gets the messages out of your system, but they are still available on-line at your leisure. Some of the geek lists I received would have hundreds of messages a day. No one can deal with a job and deal with lists like that.

Unless you are told by your management that you must be available in real time, consider turning off your email client for most of the day. Check email two to four times a day at specific times. Some people do it twice at 11am and 4pm. Obviously, this doesn’t work for everyone and it should be cleared by your management. This goes to another issue of time management, but it is very much related. That’s another blog post though.

The conclusion is that the best way to deal with email is to not get it in the first place. Determine a communications plan for any teams that you manage. Figure out ways to reduce message count. Delete messages viciously. Sort and file any incoming messages and plan time to deal with them. If you see that you don’t deal with them over time, maybe you should look at why you are getting the messages in the first place. Life is too short to worry about missing something!

Don’t Ditch the Weird Conference Session

I have learned from attending a lot of conferences and workshops that you go to all the sessions. Some sessions that I thought I might ditch were some of the best of the conference. An example was the Science Online 2012 Short Film Festival. What a delight! Very entertaining and some very talented videographers.

Science On-Line 2012

I got word on Wednesday, January 18th, that I was off the waiting list and off to the science bloggers / writers conference Science Online 2012 at the McKimmon Center at North Carolina State University. After signing up, I started perusing the sessions at the unconference and was happy to see a number of interesting topics.

Day 1 was very interesting. After the initial welcome by @MisterSugar, Dr. Randy Woodson, chancellor of NC State gave an official welcome to the university. He obviously “got it” and was happy to be the host to this event. The keynote was next with @mireyamayor of National Geographic video fame. Her keynote was one of the most interesting keynotes I have seen at a conference (though I mostly go to geek conferences where speaking is not a main skill.)  She gave a hour long talk on how she started and how she segued from a graduate student studying monkeys in the jungle to TV host. It resonated with most in the audience who most likely had a similar history. She is an adventurer at heart and it showed in her talk.

The sessions started after that. I have to say that I had not studied the program given the late addition to my schedule so I figured I would “wing it”. During the rest of the day, I hit some winners and some that I wish now I had skipped. I’ll add those to the blog after I think about them. I should have looked into the rooms to see where the more famous people were attending since I didn’t have a lot of experience with the topics. I may try that technique in Day 2.

 

Professional Community and the Toxic Workplace

I hear all the time about how professionals should take care of what they post to social media. Business HR departments and hiring managers are going through search engines to determine if someone could be a problem employee. This may be true, though I doubt it is often the deciding factor in hiring most professionals. Even at that, it is probably prudent to avoid posting how wasted you got last weekend and the photos of wild drunken orgies if at all possible.

In most cases, those looking for work at businesses are also searching and gathering information on prospective businesses. This can be tough since there is not a lot out there for most businesses except marketing materials. Even if you find something, you can’t really use the information since many toxic environments are hidden behind layers of management. Two departments in the same business can have startling differences of climate.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that it is impossible to find out what it is like to work at a company. What isn’t discussed often is the grapevine that is part of many fields. These fields are most often highly specialized and technical, but don’t have to be. People in the field develop an underground communication network which allows them to find out details that businesses have been able to hide in the past. The new social media and networking systems have allowed people from vast distances to almost instantaneously find out when a business unit has a poor employee climate. What was once a void for information is now very widely known.

For example, a business wants to hire a software developer in a very specialized language and platform. This field most likely has mailing lists, blogs, events, user groups, and conferences devoted to this technology. Many people involved in the field get to know each other personally and virtually. This happens to the point where a community develops and trust within the community becomes high. This means that those in the community have resources that have only been available within academia and a few other professions up to that last decade.

A business that has treated employees in that field poorly in the past may find that they may have difficulty in attracting the caliber of applicant that they want. The hiring manager may be surprised to find out that people who would have applied for positions are seeking work elsewhere. They also may find applicants who know a great deal about the climate within the business and ask uncomfortable questions.

So businesses who allow toxic environments to fester will find that they have more difficulty hiring and keeping the top applicants if they are in a very specialized field. It behooves businesses and managers to be very aware of the climate in their organization and fix the climate when they detect a problem. Unfortunately, perceptions can take a long time to fix long after the toxic environment has been fixed.

The Creative Process and Software Development

Creative Processes Make a Difference

I am a scientist/developer supporting a biomedical group at a major research institute. I make web pages, client server systems, database back-end systems, and generally do a number of geeky things. I also enjoy many creative activities such as woodworking, drawing, and other arty or crafty things. I love music and dance as an admirer more than a doer. This usually surprises people who only see the geek side. Surprising even more is the idea that the creative activities greatly enhance the geekly pursuits.

When I was a single man, many moons ago, I would attend week long classes at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee for my main vacations. I really didn’t enjoy going to the beach or mountains alone so those classes were my down time from my job. Those that have experienced Arrowmont in those years will understand the intense creativity that seemed to flow throughout all the classes. (I haven’t been for years after they reorganized, but I understand it remains a good experience.) I took a number of woodturning classes from some of the most fabulous craftsmen from around the world.

A Workshop in Creativity Exercises

After a number of woodturning classes, I was getting to a time in my development that I needed creativity more than I needed another woodworking workshop. I could make pretty much anything I wanted on the lathe. I was a leader in the local woodturning group and eventually a board member and officer of the national American Association of Woodturners. I wrote articles for the local newsletter and was published in a number of national journals. With all that, I felt that something was missing. I need more creative activities.

I talked with a number of people I respected in the arts and crafts field about this feeling. Rodger Jacobs of Newland, NC described an upcoming two week class in creativity with Steve Loar. It sounded like a great idea to me and I was willing to give it a try. Acceptance into the class was by invitation and Rodger was gracious in giving me a chance by recommending me. I was happy to get a chance since I felt I was getting stagnant in my development. Thankfully, I was able to attend.

The main reason for having it be by invitation was that it required an open mind; a very open mind. You couldn’t go into the class with preconceived ideas about art, craft, or creativity. You had to be able to accept that whatever got thrown out as exercises would be worth it in the end. There were a lot of exercises. Many didn’t make a lot of sense at first. There were exercises in abstraction from song lyrics, photographs of scenery, instrumental music, and a number of others that I forget after all the years. It was laborious at times without the feeling of progress.

The Abstraction Process

Many of the exercises were in abstraction. Abstraction is a process of taking a complex image or object and removing all non essential items until you get to the essence. For example, a song lyric can be dissected into phrases and words until you get to the fundamental meaning with only a word or two. An instrumental can be abstracted by covering the walls with a large roll of paper and drawing the wave forms manically while the song plays at high volume. (The quilting class across the hall was about to rebel during this exercise.) There were other exercises that would be difficult to describe even if I remembered them all.

The abstraction can then be reformed or rebuilt into something that contains a narrative to represent the essence of the original instance. We took our final abstraction and drew plans for a 3-D sculpture and finally building a maquette in foam insulation board material and found objects. It boils down to a method for priming the creative juice in your mind. It can be used to develop ideas for representing in a creative piece.

As you might imagine, these two weeks were not a relaxing time in the mountains. It was a very intense experience and frankly a bit much for this geek to chew on. I have to admit to some cynicism at times during the time, but I have a high threshold for creative pursuits so I wanted for it to work. The time was exhausting, but I look back on it very fondly.

Relating Creativity Exercises to Software Development

The curious thing about the experience of this workshop is how it made me a much better software developer. It may be hard for many non-geeks to believe, but software development is a highly creative experience. Yes, it involves machines and very strict code and tedious protocols, but overall, you create something from almost nothing if you are lucky enough to go through the entire development process. I do the entire process since I work by myself without a lot of other developers or designers involved in my projects.

When you look at the software development process, it follows a lot of the same abstraction to final product themes as I described in the exercises above. We collect requirements from end users and managers (if you are lucky) and develop something from them. In many cases, there is a lot of mind reading going on and people don’t really know what they want until you describe it in detail or show them a mock up (similar to a maquette.)

My software systems must work technically, but more importantly, they need to be a positive enhancement to the end users work life. The processes I go through to develop the systems is very similar to the abstraction model used in reducing a creative thought to an abstraction and then reassembling it into a narrative piece. I think of this often when looking at some of the more complex systems I have built over the years. I also look back with fondness to what I learned from Steve Loar and the rest of the very talented attendees during those intense two weeks. In addition to Steve, there was another woodworking class going on at the same time with Michael Hosaluk and Mark Sffiri who are internationally known for their work.

Lasting Impressions

Lastly, I gave Steve a hard time about how he puts hair on many of his pieces. Ever since that class, I think of his work every time I see sculpture with any hint of hair or feathers. It is a fond memory. Steve Loar is now the director of The Center for Turning and Furniture Design at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania in Indiana, Pennsylvania. I don’t know if this workshop was ever repeated, but I am sure he uses the experiment at Arrowmont in creating other curricula.

Software developers are usually not one dimensional. They tend to be curious about many things and the best have many talents. We do have a tendency to get overwhelmed with code and zone out for periods of time. I hope that any young developer will pause and look at the whole of their life. Take time out to enjoy beauty and creativity. It actually will make you a better developer.

Driving Technical Change by Terrence Ryan

I have over three decades in the scientific and software development world so I was curious when I noticed Terrence Ryan’s new Pragmatic Bookshelf book “Driving Technical Change”. The subtitle is “Why People on Your Team Don’t Act on Good Ideas, and How to Convince Them They Should”. This subtitle tells you a lot about what Terry was writing about. He is mid career in the software development field and has worked in a number of companies. He has had a lot of enthusiasm about bring new ideas and tools into his teams. This enthusiasm comes out as a bit of frustration as he describes the battles with colleagues to embrace new technology and techniques. He turned that frustration into a search for ways to convince the skeptics that the changes were worth the effort.

He approaches the reader by offering a list of stereotypes for the skeptics in an organization in part two of the book. In part three, he offers techniques for mitigating the push-back you get from each type of skeptic. Part four offers strategies for the reader that could be useful in pushing for change. As I read the book, I was often nodding my head agreeing with many of his thoughts. The skeptics do come out and many are the stereotypes that he describes. Sometimes the same people take on several of the behaviors and sometimes the people change behavior depending on the topic. Some people are your allies on an issue and then become your enemy on others.

I think the book is best read by someone with a few years of experience in a technical field, but not so many that they already understand office politics. After a decade or two in a technical field, you know the landscape. The interaction of people on a team comes down to culture and politics of your organization. If you understand people and politics, you will go a long way in making your work life easier. You will also know when to fight the battles and when to retreat. Knowing when to retreat is the most important since most people are competitive and want to fight. That is where the maturity makes a big difference in your career. This is similar to the stock market decisions. It is easier to know when to buy a stock than when to sell.

Another important issue is to decide who you are and what you want in your career. Do you want to fight for technical change on your team or do you move from team to team or company to company looking for that great fit? Which is more comfortable for you? This book could help someone on that quest, but should be partnered with other resources on career development and change management.

Conferences On-Line Science On-line 2011

In the past year, I have “attended” a number of on-line meetups such as the on-line ColdFusion meetup that is held weekly and hosted by Charlie Arehart. He gets a number of really good speakers to talk about topics that ColdFusion developers are interested in so it is easy to take part through Adobe Connect sessions. If you aren’t familiar with Adobe Connect, it allows a speaker to share out their desktop and speak while showing an on-line audience their presentation.

I had wondered if this could be a good way to put together a conference. Traveling to a conference is becoming more difficult and annoying. Travel in general (especially by air) has gone beyond annoying to down right awful. It is expensive and extremely tiring (at my age.) Hotel rooms, rental cars, and all the other expenses make attending an out of town conference difficult if not impossible for many people. So what if we could have an on-line conference? Would it work? Would you learn anything? Would you miss the personal contacts and late night bar discussions?

I thought of all this as I watched the SciO11 conference sessions on-line last weekend. Science Online 2011 is a science bloggers conference that has been held for the last few years. It attracts many highly regarded people from all over the US and other countries. I didn’t get into the 2010 conference and I looked forward to this one, but ended up on the waiting list after getting delayed at lunch when the registration opened. It was full in less than 15 minutes of so and I came in about 5 minutes later. So I waited on the list and eventually could have registered, but it seemed like I had too much going on to attend. I had not prepared myself for it and was pretty tired after a stressful week.

All this leads up to the on-line conference experience. I watched four or five sessions of SciO11 in whole or in part. Two of the five rooms were live streamed. I got a lot out of the session video and the chat helped as you could ask questions and give comments. I did not feel I got much of the experience of the conference though. Twitter helped as I followed the stream, but there were many interruptions as I tried to follow the discussion. Sometimes the audio would fade out as people didn’t use the microphones. I also didn’t get to meet people which is a big part of a conference. Networking is a big part of the conference experience.

In all, I don’t think watching on-line is much of a substitute for being at the conference. It is better than nothing, but I think the technology would need to advance tremendously for me to get a quality conference experience on-line. I know that a number of people have discussed the idea in the past, but I just don’t think it would be much value. The difficulty with an on-line SciO11 may be in part due to the unconference format. A conference that was mostly presentations that were structured with less audience participation might be more effective.

Technology and travel cost will probably make the on-line conference idea come to life, but I don’t think it will appear anytime soon. There will be more on-line experiences such as watching session video, podcasts, and videocasts. However, the live experience is definitely the best way.

Rockwell Exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art 2011

Miss Hunt and I visited the NC Museum of Art yesterday to view the current Norman Rockwell exhibit. We are members so we get the first visit tickets for no cost. This turned out to be a good thing as far as I was concerned.

This exhibit follows a number of exhibitions at NCMA such as the Monet exhibit several years ago. They usually have a big exhibit about once a year. This is the first year where members don’t get unlimited access to the special event exhibits. That policy was changed and I can see that it would be a hit to the funding. The memberships are very reasonable and one free visit is most I would do for most of the exhibits.

The Rockwell exhibit is a large one. It starts with a number of paintings in several rooms that were excellent. The crowd was something of a problem in those rooms though so I tend to go where the crowd isn’t to view the paintings. The folks with headphones are annoying and in their own worlds so they can get in the way. Some were a little rude in just jumping in front of you. Most of these were the older folks surprisingly. We figured that 3pm on Friday afternoon would be less crowded so my annoyance probably had a lot to do with calculating incorrectly when to attend.

After the front rooms of paintings, there was a constriction in the walkways were they were looping a large video describing his life and work. This was an unfortunate placement since many people got in the way and you had to scoot around the outside trying not to get in the way of people standing and viewing the video. Basically, they placed the video viewing area in the hallway which did not work.

Behind the video area, there was a large room with all the covers Rockwell did for the Saturday Evening Post. This was mobbed which was okay since I didn’t have a lot of interest in these illustrations. There were several larger paintings of the cover art which were the best things in the room. Not surprisingly, this room seemed to be the most interesting to those in attendance. The older people who would have remembered the covers from their childhood seemed to be riveted. This was great as it must have brought back many pleasant memories for them.

After fighting my way through the video crowd again, I got to the other back room where there were a number of other illustrations. The most memorable were those of JFK and Ike and some of the works he did for the original Peace Corp. After that was a room showing the methods he used in doing an illustration he did of the civil rights movement. It is weird today to realize that black people could not be shown on a cover except as servants back then.

The working drawings and photos in the last room were interesting to show method and procedure, but I thought it was a poor choice for a high end exhibition. There is a question on whether an exhibit such as this should have concentrated on illustrations rather than artwork. I would have expected that at the NC Museum of History, but it took me by surprise at the NCMA.

The North Carolina Museum of Art is definitely worth going to for the amazing content of the galleries which are all free to view. It is an amazing value to people who are interested in art in general. The Rodin gardens are great. The outdoors park is great. I love the place and appreciate all that people do to make it available. I just didn’t much care for the Rockwell exhibit. I am glad I didn’t have to pay the $15 ticket price. I would have been very annoyed on leaving it. YMMV

IndieConf November 13th, 2010 Raleigh, NC

I have attended a number of conferences and events over the years. Some were forgettable, some interesting, and some charged me up. The IndieConf on November 13th, 2010 was one of the latter. Michael Kimsal put it together over the past months after seeing a need for a conference on the the business aspects of being an independent developer or designer.

I heard of the conference from Michael over LinkedIn, Twitter, or some other way early on. I signed up at the early bird rate so it was very reasonable. As the sessions were planned and announced, I got more interested as it sounded like Michael had lined up some outstanding presenters. I really didn’t have much to lose since it was on a Saturday and about 3 miles from my house.

I have plans to end my career at my current job so a conference on being an independent developer may seem odd. Since getting a full time gig as a geezer geek is like winning the lottery, I look at this as my plan B in case the company doesn’t feel the same way I do. No matter, the IndieConf was full of great content I can use even as I work for the man.

There were many cross-over topics from indie to employee. A lot of it was in time management and client management. Career development also crosses over between the two. There were plenty of topics that ended up as germane to my work in the corporate world.

After the event, I realized that I had taken six pages of notes, plus I have a CD of slide decks to look through as I debrief myself. It was a day of intensity and one that I will do again if Michael plans another one for 2011.

Jalapeno and Mushroom Poppers Recipe

Preface

I normally will search for recipes on-line when I am looking for something new to make in the kitchen. The recipes are normally very complex and somewhat difficult to put together due to unusual ingredients, specialized equipment, long preparation times, and/or confusing preparation methods.
My goal is to approximate the recipes and get a good result, but minimize the odd stuff. The stuffed peppers and mushroom recipes are variants on recipes I found on-line by Emeril and someone who now has been forgotten. The original goal was to replicate the Jalapeño popper recipe I learned years ago in Mexican cooking class, but have misplaced. I wanted a recipe that baked the poppers rather than fried them and I wanted to be able to make them fast as we eat them fast. [Making slow and eating fast is problematic for geeks.]
It took significant effort on my part and MissHunt.com’s eating part to get the popper recipe worked out. She has a low threshold for hot (spicy) food so a low intensity pepper like Jalapeño’s worked out. After making the poppers for a few months, I wanted to modify it to use mushrooms [too an enthusiastic MissHunt]. I found that the cheese filling was perfect to cap the bottom of the mushrooms and I added curry powder to the stuffing part to give it a flavor that is one of her favorites.
The cheese mixture turned out to be very flexible as it could be made ahead of time and stored for long periods. It is just a mixture of cream cheese and shredded pepper jack at about equal ratio. The beauty of this is that if you have some cheese mixture in the refrigerator, you have cut prep time considerably.

Market List

10->12 oz pepper jack cheese
10->12 oz cream cheese
12 Jalapeño peppers or 12 button mushrooms (5-6cm / 2-2.5in length or diameter respectively)
Box of panko (Japanese bread crumbs, regular bread crumbs aren’t as effective)
Small onion (mushrooms)
Curry powder (for mushrooms) [If you are a cook, I am assuming you will have miscellaneous spices to use.]
Butter
Cooking spray
Aluminum foil

Cheese Mixture

Shred 10 or 12 oz of pepper jack cheese. Mix with an equal size chunk of cream cheese. [Hint: shred the pepper jack while the cheese is cold and then warm to ambient before attempting to mix it with the cream cheese.]

Pepper Jack and Cream Cheese Mixtue

I would double or triple this mixture preparation since you can store the remainder in the refrigerator for a while.
The mixture is the consistency of play dough and is just as much fun.

Jalapeño Poppers

At the market, purchase the largish peppers (i.e., 5-6 cm/2-2.5in) rather than the little ones. Little peppers work fine, but you will have additional preparation time and they don’t hold as much pepper goodness.
Pre-heat your oven to 350F. Line a baking pan with foil and oil/spray it. (Cheese is sticky)
Heat a cup of panko crumbs in the microwave with 1 or 2 tablespoons of butter. (the real kind) You will use this as a coating on the poppers. Put this is a small bowl or dish with low sides.
Wash the peppers and nip off the stem at the stem/pepper interface.
Cut the peppers along the length into two mirror image sections. [Hint: see how the peppers sit on the cutting board balanced on the heaviest side? Turn them 90 degrees when cutting so that they will sit properly in the pan due to weight distribution.]

Jalapeno Peppers split and halved

Cut out the seeds and the white membranes and discard. This material usually has the highest concentration of Capsaicin (the hot stuff.) Leave the membranes in if you like it hot. The seeds are just a PITA and will be tough so get rid of those.
001 Mold some of the cheese mixture into the peppers.

Fully Cheesed Peppers

002 Holding the sides of the pepper, mash it down into the buttered panko so the panko sticks to the cheese mixture.
003 Place on the baking dish.

Panned Pepper Poppers

004 Go to 001 until all the peppers are prepared.
[The above is a geek joke: I started with Fortran 66 on an 8080 processor.]
Bake for about 30 minutes.
Note that these are highly volatile and last about 15 minutes if you have more than one person. Make a whole half sheet pan if you have a party.

Jalapeno Poppers Baked

Mushroom Poppers

The mushroom poppers were a nod to MissHunt who isn’t as fond of spicy food. This recipe was just made up one day, but I am sure there were influences from a variety of sources.
Clean the mushrooms and cut off the ugly bit at the stem bottom.
Carefully cut out the stem from the mushrooms leaving a depression in the inside.

Cored Mushrooms

Finely dice up the stem material <1mm dice.
Dice up a small amount of onion the same size. (A couple of tablespoons is enough) [Hint: You could use other alliums if you want to like shallots, but I wouldn’t use garlic in that amount. Experiment, but don’t be foolish.]
Saute the diced mixture for a few minutes until it is soft. Add salt and black pepper (~1/4 teaspoon.

Mushroom Filling

Add the same amount of curry powder, more if you like it a lot. Transfer the stuffing to a small glass bowl and allow to cool a bit. [Hint: curry will stain plastic depending on the polymers.]
So now you have the mushrooms, the stuffing, the cheese mixture, and the panko on the counter with the prepared baking sheet. If not, return to the proper step above.
Distribute the stuffing between the mushroom caps with a small spoon.

Stuffing the Mushrooms

This can be loosely packed.
Using your play dough skills, make a small cap of the cheese mixture to place over the mushroom cap. If you over cheese at this point, a lot of it will melt into the pan. [Thus, the reason for the aluminum foil]

Cheesing the Mushrooms

Mash the stuffed mushroom into the buttered panko so that it sticks to the cheese mixture. This does not have to be pretty or uniform, but geek out if you wish.

Mushroom Crumbing

Place each mushroom cap down on the baking sheet.

Mushroom Poppers Panned

Bake for 25-30 mi until the panko is toasted on the top. If you like mushrooms raw, you can bake it less.

Mushroom Poppers Baked

Conclusion

The cheese mixture melty mess in the pan is part of the process. It is also very tasty. The cook may want to save these bits for their own pleasure.
You could also add parmesan cheese to the panko if you wanted to add more flavor.
I have used different spices in the mushrooms incluing Thyme, Parsley, Basil, and a bit of Sage. A little garlic powder doesn’t hurt in the mushroom stuffing.