October 16, 2015
Dear Everyone:
So now I have yet another
email account to keep track of and how did
that happen? Follow…
At this year’s ARMA International Conference, in
Washington, D.C., I
checked in at Registration some time on Sunday.
This was “early registration” and I heartily recommend it.
When I registered, they gave me a page of printed materials,
including my official name tag, complete with
barcode for scanning me
into various events. They
also gave me “The Bag”.
The Bag was an integral part of the Conference Experience.
It was always provided by one of the sponsoring vendors, and
typically contained materials relating to various parts of the
Conference. It gave us a
place to hold all those freebies that we picked up at the vendors’
booths. And, originally, it
gave us a way to lug around The Binder.
The Binder, also sponsored by one of the vendors, contained all the
information about the Conference in general, schedules and so forth; and
it provided printed copies of all the handouts from all of the
Educational Sessions. It was
always very big and very heavy.
In time, it was replaced by a
CD that contained all the
information, but weighed considerably less than The Binder.
But we couldn’t exactly check the CD to find what sessions we wanted to
attend, so a smaller version of The Binder, now called The Guide, was
also provided by one of the sponsoring vendors.
The Guide was spiral-bound, about yay by yay, a little bit larger
than a half-sheet of standard paper, and about a half-inch thick.
And it contained a brief description of each session along with
the time and location. Very
helpful.
This year, the people running the Conference decided to take it a step
further. They provided an
App (short for Application, i.e., a computer program) that you could
download to your smartphone.
Now you could hold the entire Conference in the palm of your hand.
Literally.
So, of course, I clicked the link to download the App.
There were two ways to get it:
Go to iTunes, for an
iPhone; or go to
Google for anything else.
Since I have a
Windows phone, I clicked the link to Google.
And discovered that I couldn’t “buy” an App, or anything else, even if
it’s free, until I signed my soul over to Google.
“One Account, All of Google” crowed the sign-in page.
No, I COULDN’T go any further until I create a
Gmail account.
Whether I need, much less want, one or not.
So I set up a
********@gmail.com
account, complete with a password that required at least one Capital
Letter, at least one Numeric and at least one Special Character.
Which I plinked out on my tiny phone screen.
Once that was done, Google allowed me into the store, where I was
informed that the App only works on
Android devices, not on Windows
devices. Curses!
Luckily, when I was registering, there was a large display case with
plenty of those Guides. In
fact, I took two: One to
scribble all over, slop food on and generally trash, and one to keep
just in case. Evidently the
people running the Conference thought just EVERYONE would use the App,
so the Guides ran out pretty quickly.
As for who paid for the Guides?
Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E).
In fact, PG&E was all over the place.
They sponsored the Guide, they gave a presentation at one of the
Educational Sessions. They
even had a booth at the Expo, where they gave away freebies and offered
jobs to anyone who wanted to sign up.
That’s right, they were recruiting.
Why is PG&E suddenly so interested in
Records Management?
Because they
blew up a part of San Bruno, California, a few years
ago and are busily blaming the whole thing on “poor records management”.
Now they are just as busily trying to make it look like they have
embraced Records Management in all its glory.
They would probably offer me a job if I walked in the front door, with
that “CRM” (Certified Records Manager) after my name.
In fact, another vendor asked me point blank if I wanted a job
right on the Expo floor. I
smiled and declined, politely.
Lord, I love being retired!
In the meantime, I still have that
%&$*#@gmail.com
account to try and shut down.
Assuming I can remember what I called myself and what I used for
a password.
Love, as always,
Pete
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