May 8, 1997
Dear Everyone:
Yes, there is life after
Records Management.
I’m living proof. I
have survived the 1997 Records Management Conference.
But not without making some sacrifices, of course.
The First Sacrifice was getting up an hour earlier
than usual on Monday. This
is very difficult for someone who firmly believes that the greatest
technological advance of the Twentieth Century is...the Snooze Button.
Nevertheless, I set my alarm clock for some ungodly hour in order
to be at the “Pleasant Hill” facility, suitcase in hand, in time to
catch the 6:00 am Passenger Van to
San Francisco.
Why the suitcase?
Sacrifice Number Two was being forced to check into
a four star hotel, to wit, the St. Francis on Union Square, so I could
spend the night in the City rather than going all the way home Monday
night. There was a cocktail
party scheduled for the first official evening of the Conference,
followed by dinner at one great restaurant or another.
This brings us to the Third Sacrifice:
Taking out-of-towners to dinner.
Last Thursday, “Murray” mentioned to “Wilbur” and me that we
should probably plan on taking some of our customers to dinner Monday
night. It would be a good
way to network with them. So
on Friday, I called several people that I knew would be coming to invite
them to be my guests on Monday, with the intention of picking some more
up during the day on Monday.
What I didn’t know was that “Sally” had said the
same thing to her people.
Since we have many of the same customers, “Carla” and “Mahitabel” were
going around asking the same people as I was to go out to dinner.
The hapless customers were being showered on all sides with
invitations. (“Carla”
actually referred to it as “poaching” from each other, which was
certainly not our intention.)
I ended up with a party of five, including
“Wilbur”, whom I introduced as the “Versatile
Database Administrator-in-Training”.
Apparently, I had neglected to mention this fact to “Wilbur” up
until that point in time. By
the way, we ate at “John’s Grill” on Ellis, only two blocks from the St.
Francis and the place where Sam Spade was always eating in
The Maltese Falcon.
Excellent.
So much for sacrifices.
As for the Conference itself, it went very well indeed.
As did my Expo. This
took place, at lunch time during the first two days, in a conference
room with a single large table in it.
We used all laptop computers, which don’t take up much room, and
rented monitors for the various demonstrations.
I arranged these around the conference table and there was a
counter nearby where we could stack handouts.
We had to wait until Monday morning to do the
actual setup. So while the
Keynote Speaker was enthralling his audience with the joys of
“Litigation Discovery”, I was engaged in such highly technical
operations as re-configuring laptops and crawling under the conference
table, plugging computers and monitors into power strips.
I also set up a bowl of candy, including three bags
of Tootsie Pops, on the counter.
This was an inspiration in itself.
There is no discreet way to eat a Tootsie Pop.
Sooner of later, someone notices that there is a lollipop in your
mouth and wants to know where you got it.
The standard procedure is to take the lollipop out and use it to
point to the conference room where the Expo is taking place.
Worked like a charm.
The Expo was very well attended.
Of course, it could have been because people were
actually interested in Electronic Document Management systems and
Versatile for Windows.
But I noticed that there were very few Tootsie Pops left by the end of
the second day.
Movies...
Took time on Sunday to see
Murder at 1600.
Wesley
Snipes, who keeps trying to be a serious actor, plays a
Washington, DC
homicide cop who gets called in when a woman’s body is discovered at
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, i.e., the
White House.
Ronny Cox plays
a popular President who may have been having an
affair with the victim (obviously a Democrat).
Red herrings all over the place.
“Jeannie” kept leaning over and whispering, “He did it!” every
five minutes. By the end of
the film, she was ready to indict the kid making popcorn out in the
lobby.
The plot has holes in it big enough to drive a
truck through. The cop is a
Civil War buff, so he has a model of Washington in his living room and
knows all about the tunnels under the White House.
There’s no real need to use the tunnels, but since they’re there,
they use them. Many scenes of Washington as portrayed by the city of
Toronto. Cover ups trip over
other cover ups. Don’t trust
any well-known actor who shows up at the beginning then disappears until
nearly the end. And there
are several.
Bottom line:
There’s only so much credulity that you can leave in the car.
Or, as “Jeannie” put it:
“I’m so glad you paid for this one.”
Love, as always,
Pete
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