July 25, 2014
Dear Everyone:
Things don’t always work out the way you think they will.
Case in point: The annual
ARMA Pacific Region Leadership Conference.
They wanted to have people from different chapters collect at
each table during the “breakout sessions” to “compare notes” on “what
worked and what didn’t.”
Usually these groups form around the general areas of the Board:
Presidents and vice presidents, secretaries, treasurers, program
directors and membership directors, nominations committees and all those
other directorships and committees that my particular chapter can never
seem to fill. With less than
three dozen members overall, we count ourselves lucky that we have a
complete Board (four members.)
On the other hand, the Golden Gate (San Francisco) chapter not
only has enough to fill their Board, they brought a total of 13 members
to the Leadership Conference.
But this time the Powers That Be decided to divide the chapters up in
another way. They chose
color-coding. Each table, of
around a dozen, was assigned a color.
Each attendee was assigned four colors, one for each “breakout”
session.
Apparently, this was a last-minute decision as the organizers were still
working on it when I arrived a little after 5:00 PM the night of the
Reception (and
Ice Breaker.)
The organizers had a lot of colored pens and were busily drawing little
round “dots” of colors on each name badge.
This is one reason why there were no name badges for the
Reception. They were “still
under construction”.
On the first full day of the Conference, when it came time for the first
scheduled “breakout session”, they announced that we should consult the
“first dot” on our name badges, then find the table with the
corresponding color.
Whereupon one person immediately pointed out that they were color-blind.
Oops. (Have someone
else tell you what color your “first dot” is.)
Twelve tables. Quick!
Name a dozen colors.
Of course, there are the primary colors:
Red, Blue and Yellow.
All others are combinations of these three.
Nine more colors to go.
There’s the rainbow: “Roy G.
Biv”. Translation:
“Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet.”
(Anybody got an Indigo pen?)
Even with that, seven down, five to go.
Then there are the various shades of each color.
“Is this dot Pink or Red?”
So someone wrote a “P” above the Pink dot.
And someone else wrote a “P” above the Purple dot.
Never mind the guy who can’t tell the difference between “green” and
“aqua”. Brick Red or
Vermillion? I asked several
people if one of my dots looked “blue” or “green” to them.
Turns out it was “gray”.
And there was one table that didn’t appear to have a color (drawn
in large letters on a piece of white paper) until I realized it was the
“yellow” table.
Oh, well. It was a good try.
Maybe if they had thought it out ahead of time they could have
gone to one of the office supply warehouse stores and got colored
stickers from the teachers supply aisle.
(All giraffes come to this table!
Peacocks and lions over there!)
As for “next time”, one big announcement was that there isn’t going to
be a next time. Not exactly,
anyway. Instead of eight
“Regional” meetings next year, there will be three “super-regions”
designated “Western”, “Central” and “Eastern”.
And, oh by the way, “International” which mostly means
Canada.
And Australia. Never
disregard the Canadians and the Aussies.
They take their
Records Management very seriously.
In fact, they tend to be the leaders, as in “we’re following the
Canadian model on that”. Or
the Australian model.
As for next year’s “super-region” conference, there were hints that the
Pacific Region (including California) would be combined with the Great
Northwest Region (including Oregon) and maybe the Southwest Region
(Arizona, Texas, et. al.) and might have their first “really big”
conference in the
Portland area.
That would work splendidly for me.
I have both friends and relatives there.
Not that
Anchorage,
Oahu or
Houston wouldn’t do either.
I just wouldn’t plan on driving to it.
Love, as always,
Pete
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