August 14, 2002
Dear Everyone:
Well, it looks like I’m off to “Hobby” next week. (I knew there was a reason I didn’t put the luggage away after the First Annual Wood Family Reunion.) Originally, I was going to be there Monday and Tuesday for an electronic records conference being held by the “Hobby” chapter of ARMA (Association of Records Managers and Administrators), returning home on Wednesday. But then my boss, who has discovered Instant Messaging at work, sent me an IM (Instant Message), asking if my schedule would allow me to stay in “Hobby” until Friday, to help a co-worker who is a bit overwhelmed by some projects.
Sometimes a project starts out fairly small and manageable. Someone just wants some help with their active files. But then that turns out to be just part of a larger picture. Which in turn becomes part of an even larger picture. And, before you know it, the small project has mushroomed into a Major Project.
This has happened with a couple of the co-worker’s projects, so I’m going to help her with some customer interviews, as well as taking over one (so far) small project with the “Overseas Supplies” folks who have recently been transplanted to “Hobby”. Fingers crossed that this doesn’t balloon into one of those Major Projects.
So, a year and two weeks after I started going to
“Hobby” for the Move/Add/Change project, I’m going to “Hobby” again.
On the plus side, there appear to be no plans to tack an
additional trip to
And there are a few interesting-looking possible projects beginning to poke their noses over the horizon. So it’s a good thing that two of my (former) projects have pretty much come to an end. The inactive records management project is completely finished. (It’s so refreshing to have a project come to a complete end, instead of just running quietly out of steam and getting relegated to a back burner, before being completely forgotten about.)
And we held a requiem (of sorts) for
Move/Add/Change. Actually,
the official title is “Phase V – Lessons Learned”.
We brainstormed some positive things and negative things that
contributed to the decision to abandon the application.
Once that has been documented, the only thing really left to do
is box up all the documentation and (guess what?) send it to the
So I’ve been spending some time going through the 1632 Emails I have on file for this particular project, winnowing out the non-records, such as the message announcing that we will “meet” in a teleconference at such-and-such a time and phone bridge to discuss this, that, or the other. A lot of Email messages are not truly records, but a lot of them are just that: Company records, and frequently the only record of a decision or discussion that could be important.
To keep all those Emails straight, I tend to create folders. For instance, all the messages pertaining to the Move/Add/Change Project are in a folder called “MAC Project”. That’s how I know there are 1632 of them. Or, rather, were. I’ve narrowed it down to 1560, so far. Once we’ve identified all the actual records, we’ll export them from the Email system and burn them onto a CD and put them with the rest of the documentation.
And that’s just my copies of the messages. Other team members also have copies. Now you know why lawyers are so interested in Email these days.
In other news…
A couple of weeks ago, our supervisor pointed out
that the name of our group is
Global Records Consulting, at that it would be embarrassing if
someone requested our services and we had to make them wait while we got
passports.
So I’ve been working on getting a new passport.
I got one 31 years ago, when I went to
Would you believe I found the old passport? (Of course you would! That’s the kind of person I am.) Needless to say, the certificates of vaccination are long expired as well, but they were folded inside the passport, just as they were when I put it in the drawer 13 years ago.
And I must say, applying for a new passport is so much easier now with the Internet than it was 31 years ago, when you had to stand in line at the Post Office to get the form, then stand in line again once you had the form filled out. Now, the government Passport Services Web Page lets you download the form and shows you all the offices that process applications within a 50-mile radius of your ZIP Code.
The young woman at the San Ramon City Clerks Office told me that my new passport might even come back earlier because the expired one shows that I’m already in the system. So, while I’m not planning on going anywhere overseas any time soon, I’ll soon be ready for it, legally at least.
Love, as always,
Pete
PS. No
Letter next week. I’ll be in
“Hobby”.
P.
| Previous | Next |