May 23, 2014
Dear Everyone:
Last night was ARMA night, usually the fourth Thursday of each month.
Earlier in the week, our Chapter Secretary suddenly discovered a
conflict and wouldn’t be able to make it.
Could someone else take the minutes for her?
If you look at the “job description” for Chapter Vice President (that
would be me this time around), it finishes with something like “…and
fill in as a substitute for anything any other Board member is unable to
do…” or words to that effect.
Typically that means, if the President can’t make a meeting, the
Vice President fills in.
Ditto the Secretary.
The Treasurer is a little bit trickier, since it usually involves
writing a check to the restaurant and producing receipts for those
members who need them. This
is one reason to have a signature card on file with the bank with
additional Board members authorized to sign for the Chapter.
As for the absent Secretary, I assured her that I would handle taking
the minutes, no problem. But
I had forgotten something:
The other thing the Secretary does is produce a Certificate of
Appreciation to present to the Speaker at the end of his/her program.
Originally, the Certificate was hand-lettered on official ARMA
cardstock. I should know; I
used to be the one who did it each month with my handy
calligraphy set.
With the proliferation of computers, all that hand-lettering went
the way of the Woolly Mammoth.
Now it’s just a
Word document, and you can even choose from a
number of templates.
The issue was what kind of paper to print it on.
Once upon a time our Chapter Secretary bought some lovely paper
pre-printed with a kind of “parchment” background on it.
They made very impressive Certificates.
And we’ve had that paper, still in its protective plastic
wrapping, for a number of years.
At the end of each term, the “former” Secretary bequeathed it to
the “new” Secretary.
When I was the Secretary (I’ve held every Board position except
President, which I’ve managed to resist so far), I would send the
Certificate to one of the network printers at work.
The only problem was making sure the pre-printed “parchment” was
in place and that someone else’s email didn’t print out on the wrong
paper.
The way you did that, with a network printer, was to include a command
to the printer to only print on paper that was hand-fed into the
printer. On big printers,
this was usually a special “drawer” that typically didn’t have paper in
it. The printer would “hold”
the job until you fed the special paper in.
The only problem was when other people also sent jobs to the printer and
their job would get “stuck” behind yours.
I once had to print the Certificate about six times to get it on
the correct paper because people waiting for their jobs would “help” by
feeding blank paper into the special “drawer”.
Now it’s much easier with my home printer.
Just put the paper in and print the job.
Only, in this case, the Secretary had the paper and I didn’t.
I thought, that paper is getting to be almost as old as
“parchment” anyway. Maybe
it’s time to drop by the Big Office Warehouse Store and pick up
something new. But then the
Chapter President sent an email informing me that she had taken care of
it and not to bother. So I
didn’t.
The Speaker, by the way, gave a very informative, and entertaining,
presentation on how his company can preserve documents (usually held by
cities, states and/or counties) that have an indefinite, or “permanent”,
retention. Remember when you
bought your house and the title deed was “recorded” by the county?
That record is paper and has to be held “forever”.
Just wait a hundred years and go take a look at it.
What kind of shape do you think it will be in?
And, at the end of the presentation, the Chapter President gave him a
lovely Certificate of Appreciation printed on sparkling new card stock,
which he can keep for a hundred years, if he wants to.
Or not.
Love, as always,
Pete
| Previous | Next |