November 8, 1990
Dear Everyone:
The much anticipated (and, in some cases, dreaded)
35th Annual ARMA International
Convention is officially over.
“Jeannie” was right:
There is life after ARMA.
Although, for a while there, I had my doubts.
We (meaning the “volunteers”) showed up at Moscone
Center bright and early at 8:00 last Saturday for the traditional “last
minute stuffing party”, so-called because there’s always something to be
done at the last minute and it’s usually stuffing the “goodie bag” that
one always receives when one checks in at Registration at the beginning
of the Convention. Needless
to say, the bags have to have all the “goodies” in them
before they’re handed out to
people.
Well, we were told, the bags had already been
stuffed. Mission completed
ahead of schedule.
Apparently, this was an ARMA first.
Kudos to “Renee Greene”, Chairperson in charge of Registration.
She was so concerned about something going wrong that she
overcompensated and everything went right.
But don’t go
away, we were told.
They had a special job for us.
They wanted us to
un-stuff 77 bags.
That’s right, take everything out.
These bags were going to be presented to the International Board
of Directors and to the Speakers and we had to be sure that each bag had
all of its “goodies” intact.
(Incidentally, the “International” Board of Directors have their
seat in Kansas, which is about as international as you can get, right?)
One by one, we emptied each bag and made sure that
it contained the following:
DataSafe Notepad and Pencil (unsharpened)
ARMA Pen
Roster of Attendees
ARMA Annual Repot
Each of 12 separate printed fliers
Macy’s coupon for a free tote bag
**
Apple computer luggage tag
“Files Are My Life” pin, courtesy of WrightLine
(who makes – guess what? – filing equipment)
A book entitled
Filing Dynamics, developments in
color coding for filing systems which boasts “59 pictures, including
40 in full color”, which
makes sense – why have black & white pictures to illustrate color
coding? This book, all 96
pages of it, retails for about $25, which is a total rip-off.A 3M item,
usually Post-It Flags
Event Locator, which tells you where the various
sessions and meetings are being held.
Heaven forfend that any member of the Board should
miss out on their free package of Post-It Flags.
** (It seems
that Macy’s volunteered to give the actual bags to go into the “goodie”
bag. However, Olsten, which
provides the bag that the “goodies” go into, raised a ruckus last year
about the possibility of placing a very nice canvas bag into their much
inferior nylon bag, so Macy’s settled for the coupons instead.
Can’t imagine why Olsten is so touchy.)
During Registration, each person received The Bag,
their session tickets, badge and “credit card” (vendors use this just
like a credit card to record your name, company and address for future
reference), the Official Guide to Exhibits (don’t be fooled by
imitations), last minute changes for sessions
and the Copy of the
Proceedings. This last is a
3” binder containing 908 pages of a not-more-than-20-pages-long synopsis
of each of the 74 sessions.
You could tell by the look on their faces how
thrilled people were to get that book.
Alone, it weighed 4.5 pounds.
With the bag: just
over 7 pounds. I took mine
home Saturday night and weighed them.
Another thing “Renee Greene” did right was to have
“early registration” Saturday and Sunday (for those who came to San
Francisco to play first) before the convention officially opened on
Monday. As a consequence,
over 700 people didn’t need
to register Monday morning and, except for a brief rush between 8:00 and
8:30, nobody had to wait more than a few minutes to get their package
and be on their way. I
understand that this was another ARMA first.
Reasons to attend the 35th Annual ARMA
International Convention:
1. See
San Francisco, California, United States
(Lots of people from Canada, Japan, Australia and Europe)
2.
Hospitality Suites. This is
called “Networking”.
3. Pins
and Stickers. The idea is to
get as many small, medium and large pins on your person and/or badge as
possible. Generally, people
put stickers on the badge (the goal is to completely cover the badge
with stickers so that no one can read your name) and pins (small tie
clasp sort of pins, mostly) on ribbons attached to the badge.
The pins usually identify the city that you’re from.
Cable Cars for San Francisco, oil derricks for Houston, volcanoes
for Tokyo, pineapples for Hawaii, you get the picture.
By using the ribbon approach, you can manage to have a good 12”
of solid metal dangling from your shirt pocket, or from an elastic
“string” around your neck.
This affords an infinite variety of opportunities
to let your pins fall into your food at meals.
This applies especially for women as men are more accustomed to
having a silly thing hanging around their neck and have acquired the
habit of holding onto the thing as they sit down to eat.
One man even fastened all of his pins onto his tie, thus killing
two birds with one stone (as well as killing the tie).
Those of us from the “host” chapter were also given
a special pin which read:
“Put Your ARMA Round Me”
The idea was that, as locals, we could be useful to
out-of-towners and this would help to identify us to them.
There were two problems with this:
1) I would not advise
walking around South of Market, especially in the dark, wearing a badge
that says “Put your arm around me”.
2) Veteran pin
collectors immediately started trading for the ARMA round me pins and
they became a very “hot” item.
One guy by the name of Mike, from New Jersey, who appears to be
on his way to getting into the Guinness World Book of Records for pins
(he has a vest covered in them and even attempts to arrange them by
“themes”), had a “local” pin before lunch time Saturday, two days before
the Convention started. He
also seems to be a professional ARMA Convention goer, as near as I can
tell.
All of this pin and sticker trading also falls into
the category of “Networking”.
4.
Parties. And more parties.
And more parties.
One afternoon/evening boasted a reception followed by a reception
followed by a party followed by the “real” party.
There was the Awards Banquet, the Canadian Party, the Region VI
party, the “Jail House Rock” party (inspired by Alcatras) and, on the
one evening that there was no official party, there was the “Non-Party
Party”. This is also
“Networking”.
5.
Vendors exhibits. This is an
opportunity to see examples of the very latest in records keeping
technology and, incidentally, to pick up as many free samples and
promotional gimmicks as possible.
Also falls into the category of “Networking”.
I got lots of rulers-with-logos and my very own miniature
Steelcase Truck.
6.
Educational Sessions (if there is any time left over).
This, of course, is the “real” reason your company paid $500 plus
travel and lodging for you to come.
74 sessions to choose from and some of them were actually full.
At the beginning of each session, the session monitor checked
your ticket and gave you a pink evaluation form.
These forms were very important and people accepted them eagerly.
As soon as they were seated, they would turn the sheet over and
use it to take notes. So
much for evaluation feedback from the audience.
During the session (which lasted and hour and 45
minutes – short session – or 3 hours with a break in the middle – long
session – the object was to stay awake (remember, these people went to a
lot of parties at night), try to look interested and applaud
vigorously at the end. This
was to assure the speaker that he/she was brilliant and to let the
people in the next meeting room know that you had already been cut loose
while they were still stuck in their seats.
During the last 3 sessions, the monitors also
passed out blue evaluation
sheets. Rather than for the
single session, these were intended to evaluate the entire convention.
Those who didn’t use them for note-taking usually turned in just
one. Not me.
I filled out and turned in 4.
This is called “stuffing the ballot box”.
(Speaking of ballots, thank
God the election is over.
35 initiatives are about 34 too many.)
As for the sessions that I actually attended.
Never mind. The best
was “The Significance of Cultural Analysis in Records Management”.
It wins for most ridiculous title.
Love, as always,
Pete
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