Planet Edgar

What makes a viable professional association?

2011-04-15T22:33:00.003-04:00

For my IAAP friends, we'll discuss the specifics behind proposed amendment one in a minute. FOr those outside of IAAP, there is an amendment to the IAAP bylaws up for vote at this year's Annual Meeting to require IAAP local chapters to maintain a minimum of 15 members, the same number that is required to charter a new chapter. Any chapter that has less than 15 members faces being disbanded by IAAP HQ. It brings to mind a larger question: What constitutes a viable professional development organization? I am a member of just two - IAAP and Toastmasters. In both groups I have seen the mission of the organization get buried under politics. In both, I have seen individuals come to believe that they, as individuals, are bigger than the organization, that all actions at the local level must run through them, and that there are two ways to accomplish a task - "my way" and "the wrong way." I have been witness, again in both organizations, to groups at the local level become little more than poisonous units where nothing of value is accomplished. Today, IAAP is completely powerless to stop it, and Toastmasters is very limited in stopping it. So again, what makes a professional development association viable and valuable? IAAP and Toastmasters have excellent mission statements and expect local chapters/clubs to uphold them and live by them. That is part of what keeps me involved. I absolutely have no bloody idea why someone would join a professional association for no other reason than to have it appear on their resume. Yet we all know they are out there - they pay their dues, come to a meeting or two, if at all, assume no leadership roles, and won't even work on a leader's committee. When you press them to be more involved, the vast majority of the time they respond, "No, I don't have time." What is the point in this? If you apply for a job in a corporations communications department, and the hiring manager sees that you are a member of Toastmasters in addition to your communications or journalism degree, and that might be the thing to get you the job. But won't you, the hiring manager, and your colleagues get very frustrated very quickly when they find out there is nothig extraordinary about your communication skills vs anyone else's, because you haven't been to a Toastmasters meeting in 6 months and haven't given a speech in a year? Personally, if I had these associations on my resume and was using those memberships to advance my career, and yet was not participating in anything the associations were doing, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. To me, you are essentially lying on your resume, and the expected extra skills that turn out not to be there will find you out. And probably bite you hard on the backside. Apparently, as far as these "under 15" chapters is concerned, IAAP HQ has had enough. The International Board of Directors has proposed the amendment mentioned at the top of the post. For the first time in 5 years, I will not be attending the meeting, and this news adds to my sorrow for missing out. This promises to bring out a debate every bit as vigorous as the debate to increase international dues by $25 at the 2009 Minneapolis meeting. I have already seen opposition to the amendments in the social media universe. Some are worried that very viable chapters, with membership levels decimated by members losing their jobs, will be wiped out without just cause. There is angst about chapters that have been around for decades being unceremoniously disbanded. Those are definitely legitimate concerns. However, I am in favor of the amendment. I look at my own local chapter and there is plenty of evidence for it. As I've mentioned in my IAAP testimony before, I and one other IAAP member decided in spring 2005 to try to start a chapter in downtown Charlotte. The way new chapters must be chartered quickly puts you into a catch-22 - I lost track of how many times people told me, "As soon as you charter, I'll join," but of course I needed 15 people to join to charter the chapter. As I'm sure you can imagine, it got very frustrating. I would go home and literally bang my head against the wall on many a night. When I finally crossed paths with the crew at The Shaw Group who joined in, we got to 10 commitments and I thought we were home free. But then we hit another wall. I would privately share with my wife that I thought this setup was wrong - that there were a number of nearby chapters that had less than 15 members, and why do they get to continue to sail along and I have to out-do them in membership to get something started? Fortunately, I eventually got a meeting with some admins in the Bank of America legal department, where there were willing members and a willing executive sponsor, and the chapter was off and running. This coming Monday, April 18, it will have been exactly 2 years since our chartering. We chartered with 18 people. How many do we have today? 18. We have lost a few and gained a few, and the last 2 that joined have immediately plunged headlong into leadership roles and have quickly built some badly-needed momentum. After serving as President the first year, I rolled off this year and have assumed the Past President role, which in our chapter keeps you on the board of directors, but only as an advisor and carrying no vote in decision-making matters. Our Past President is also in charge of the next year's elections. At our meeting next Wednesday, I must present a slate of candidates for officers for the new year. Up to yesterday, I had none. For any office. A few key people are now engaging in coaxing, encouraging, and outright arm-twisting to ensure we will have a full 7-person board for the coming year. It is often said that in any volunteer organization, 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. I have always observed that to be true. So if you have 10-12 people in a chapter or club, you probably have 2 or 3 people doing all the work. It must be unbelievably frustrating and exhausting for them. Trying to believe the best in people, I would like to believe that passage of this amendment would motivate enough people in chapter on the borderline of disbandment to jump in and do the work needed to get the chapter not only to the required 15, but well beyond. There might be initial pain of some chapters that get the axe, but I think could inspire enough in others to get them growing again, and the association as a whole will be the better for it. What say you?

Throwing myself into social media

2011-04-09T12:51:00.002-04:00

Well, I finally did it. After years of making fun of its users, and for the technology for being nothing more than an annoying tool for narcicists to tell everyone what they are eating for breakfast, I signed up for a Twitter account. It wasn't entirely my idea. It came about from one of IAAP Charlotte Center City chapter's newest members, a lady I had been recruiting for a couple years while trying to line up the required 15 members to start the chapter. She never did join at that time, but our current president made contact with her and she joined us. Prez put her to work right away; she's in charge of our chapter newsletter. She saw our long-dormant Facebook page and it was suggested I give her admin rights, which I did. She also set up a Twitter feed for us. So I decided to be a team player and sign up. You can follow us @IAAP_C4. While we are on a roll, I set up a chapter group on LInkedIn for us as well. Social media marches on. I decided not to get left behind. I do promise not to bore the world with tweets about what I'm eating for breakfast though.

Hitting the re-set button again

2011-04-09T12:44:00.002-04:00

The home PC was out of commission for several months. Now that it's back up, I mean to get back to posting regularly again. I'm working Tue-Fri 10 hour days now. I think that's going to help. We have convinced all our doctors to see us on Mondays, so I have that day off and won't need to take PTO to see doctors any longer. YES!

IAAP and Toastmasters

2010-08-10T19:34:00.002-04:00

While I was still searching for the needed 15 people to charter the IAAP Charlotte Center City chapter, I had lunch with a lady named Marcia who I was attmpting to convince to join the effort. Turns out she had a recruiting mission as well. She couldn't finanically commit to IAAP, but she was involved with a fantastic professional development organization that she wanted me to check out. That organization was Toastmasters. I figured since she listened to my sales pitch, it was only right that I listen to hers. I went to the meeting that week. I was extremely impressed. Most people have heard of Toastmasters, since it's been around since 1924, there are thousands of clubs, and well over 200,000 members, and it has a well-established reputation for helping people polish their verbal communication skills. But it also has an excellent leadership development program. Upon my third visit, I concluded that both development tracks would give me skills that would be very useful in leading a new IAAP chapter. So I joined the High Energy Toastmasters Club on December 1, 2008.

I jumped headlong into the communication program, and completed the first manual of speech projects, the Competent Communication manual, 11 months later. The cool thing is that once you finish the CC manual, you get to go on to work on advanced speaking manuals. Each advanced manual has 5 speech projects, so each time you complete 2 manuals (and in some cases, other requirements), you can be an Advanced Communicator Bronze, Silver and Gold. I'll finish the bronze level in November of this year, Lord willing and I can stay on the schedule I have set for myself.

On the leadership track, there is an opening manual called Competent Leadership. There are 10 projects that help you develop key leadership skills, such as listening, facilitating and team building. These were particularly helpful skills once the Charlotte Center City chapter was chartered and I found myself facilitating board and chapter meetings. It was a bit rough at first, but by the time my term as chapter president ended in June of this year, things were running smoother.

Now I'm working on some official leadership positions in Toastmasters. I am the High Energy club's Sgt. At Arms this year, and I will likely run for a higher office next year, and eventually run for club president. I'm also serving as an Assistant Area Governor. (For the uninitiated, the Toastmasters organizational structure goes like this: 3-4 clubs make up an area, 3-4 areas make up a division, and the divisions roll up to districts, which is basically the state level. Districts roll in to regions, to the international leadership.) Our club's VP of Public Relations is Area Governor over 4 clubs that meet in uptown Charlotte. As his assistant, I'm accompanying him to visit each of his clubs over the next week - one today, one tomorrow, one Thursday and one on August 23.

As for Marcia, she never did join IAAP, but one other member of the High Energy club did.

I know there are a number of people who are in both IAAP and Toastmasters. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how one has helped the other.

2010 EFAM Review, Part VII – Post-EFAM thoughts

2010-08-04T19:48:00.000-04:00

For those that have attended EFAM, you know why it’s a can’t-miss event. If you haven’t attended or if you aren’t an admin, it’s hard to put into words what it does to you. I’ll give it a shot.

I don’t know about other professions, but when administrative professionals gather in one place, the camaraderie is instantaneous. Every profession has its rewarding part and the parts that dance all over your last nerve. With admins, we seem to have an innate ability to pass that “I feel your pain” vibe to one another. If you are even the slightest bit open to others, you can become fast friends with almost anyone you spend time with. So you bond with people very quickly. This is also what makes the end of EFAM so dadgum heartbreaking. You bond with folks and then you have to part ways, usually until next year at EFAM. Many people voice their dismay at how you wait and plan for EFAM all year, then when you get there, it seems like it’s over barely after it begins. And along with the bonding is the encouragement. As admins, it is easy for all our “behind the scenes” work to occasionally be taken for granted. In a convention center full of admins, encouraging words and pats on the back provide a much-needed emotional lift. After my very brief speech on Monday opposing proposed bylaw amendment 2, I received several compliments each day for the rest of the conference, many calling my remarks “spot-on” and thanks for speaking up for many non-delegates in the audience who also disapproved of the new requirements.

Another great aspect of EFAM is all the educational opportunities. It’s nice to get away from the daily grind and spend some time on your own professional development. In turning down my request for company funding this year, my boss cited “all the good development opportunities of in-house training classes.” Quite frankly, our in-house stuff isn’t really all that valuable. And after 2 years of not getting any more than 5-10 people to sign up for any classes, they dropped the admin-specific classes. (That especially sucked, because I was usually one of the 5-10 people that signed up.) Granted, EFAM has trotted out a few clunkers, but generally speaking, the workshops have been top-notch. Laura Stack (AKA The Productivity Pro) comes just about every other year and never does anything halfway. Most of the other instructors are experts who give valuable things for us to take home.

And no company in the world can replicate the Office Expo in-house. This enhances us as experts back home, because we see the new products first at the Expo and can train others on their use when we get back to the office. It’s so much more than a chance to get free stuff. It’s also a chance to meet with real people at the companies where we buy supplies, give them valuable feedback on their products, and to build relationships with them.

I made a decision before departing for Boston that I was going to make this my best EFAM yet by concentrating on making the most of the opportunity. Each day I strove to drink it all in, to really “be in the moment.” I think I managed to do that pretty well. I absorbed much in the networking, the education and the general atmosphere. I made sure to show appreciation for the friends I have made at these past 5 EFAMs. And, as icing on the cake, I brought home 12.5 recertification points.

I’m glad I put in that effort to appreciate EFAM, because it’s is going to take nothing short of a God-autographed miracle for me to go to Montreal next year. The costs of transportation and accommodations will be significantly higher than they were for me in Boston. The Band-Aid we put on our fickle, 25-year-old HVAC unit may not last to the end of summer, so it’s pretty certain that all tax refund and bonus money will be devoted to its replacement. About the only way I can see me making it is if the company agrees to pay all expenses. And unless the economy takes off in a way no one is predicting, the purse strings will probably remain very tight.

But there is plenty of time for a miracle to materialize. For now, I’ll just bask in the great memories of the 2010 EFAM in Boston.

2010 EFAM Review, Part VI – Thursday, July 22

2010-08-03T21:12:00.000-04:00

There was still an agenda item for Thursday, even though EFAM was officially concluded. Chapter and Division leaders could attend the Leadership Workshop (non-leaders have the option of signing up for a post-EFAM workshop as well). It started with a presentation by Bretthauer and Rannals on fiduciary responsibility as IAAP leaders. Then came the learning opportunity I never expected – a presentation by Stephanie D’Amour, “Embrace Your Lazy Leader.” The idea is instead of working at a 12 on a scale of 1-10 by yourself, you should work at a 5 on that scale, and get 3 others to join you doing the same, and for those 3 to each get 3 more to work at the same level. As a result, you have 10 people working at a 5 rate instead of 1 person working at a 12 rate.

But what about the 90% of your chapter members that say, “I don’t have time?” It’s all in how you interact with them. If you ask them to do something and they can sense dread in your voice, they’ll assume it’s a mountain of work and decline. Or, you may have asked them to do something and it’s not something they want to develop. Instead of approaching them with what you think you can offer them, find out what they want to do. Maybe they do boss calendaring all day and desperately want to do something creative. Well, that’s when you offer them to work on the chapter newsletter or publicity efforts. Maybe they spend all day in Microsoft Office and really want to do event planning. Then you can put them in touch with the Programs and/or Events committee. The key is to find out what they want to do, and offer them a chance to do it.

Oh, man, I can’t wait to get in front of our chapter’s new board and share all this! They’ll be thrilled they paid half my registration fee.

Now, after a few more final goodbyes, it was off to catch the shuttle to the airport and get back to Charlotte. I had to very quickly change hats from IAAP member to husband – July 22 was our 10th anniversary. I cashed in some Hilton Honors points for a free weekend at the hotel downtown. On Monday, I’ll go back to work where I can get some rest.

Next up, some final thoughts.

2010 EFAM Review, Part V – Wednesday, July 21

2010-08-02T19:37:00.001-04:00

While the official program at EFAM has undergone some changes each of the last 2 years, Wednesday has always remained the day of nothing but educational workshops. Totally by accident, I signed up for 4 Wednesday classes all in the same room. First up was “Administrative Professionals Today,” discussing workplace trends. The speaker brought no handouts, citing her love of recycling and saving trees. Of course, if I had known that up front, I’d probably have sat up front where I could see the presentation on the screen. So I got little out of that.

The rest of my classes were taught by Lisa Olsen, a former IAAP member in California. “The Power of Professional Integrity,” “Keep your eye on the target – remaining focused amid chaos and change,” and “Ethical Dilemmas in the Workplace” were all outstanding. She did bring handouts, and kept the classes interactive so nobody could doze off.

So, with only 1 real dud among my workshops this year, I can conclude that the workshops were better than last year. (I had 3 phenomenal Laura Stack workshops last year, but also had 3 that were complete wastes of time.)

After a full day of stuffing your brain full of new knowledge, it was time to go back to the hotel and prepare for the banquet. This was also a good time to get as much packing done as possible, so as not to have to do it in the morning.

The dinner itself had some bumps. Our server sure seemed like she would rather be anywhere else but where she was. She stopped serving entrees to our table after serving 6 of the 10 of us. We had to beg for help again to get our entrée plates cleared and dessert served. And unfortunately for me, I was at a table full of people who despise beef that isn’t well done, with a fiery, burning passion. I had no problem with the rare cut of beef – for me, when the cow stops mooing, take it off the grill. 

The presentations at the final night banquet are usually ho-hum, not very exciting stuff. This year was better than typical. The 2 companies that received the IAAP Award for Excellence – Oak Ridge Universities and Pfizer – were genuinely excited and appreciative of the award. Of IAAP’s 35 districts, 20 of them achieved Division of Excellence status. New President Ramsay-Drow got us all revved up for the new IAAP year by speaking on this year’s theme, “Passion & Purpose.” This is also a time to say goodbyes and get pics before you part ways for another year. The reception after the banquet gives a chance to interact with the newly-installed International Board. As an added bonus, one of my friends invited me for one last round at the hotel bar. She didn’t have to ask me twice.

Coming up next, Thursday activities, including getting some knowledge I never expected that could have a wonderful effect on the chapter at home.

2010 EFAM Review, Part IV – Tuesday, July 20

2010-08-01T20:39:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, July 20 was a day of educational workshops, bookended by morning and afternoon keynote speakers. This is a change for EFAM, as Tuesday evening was always the spot for an evening of entertainment. I wasn’t sorry to see that go; the EE was almost always some tribute band playing 60s music, and that doesn’t do much for me. Having an additional keynote – and an additional recertification point – was OK by me.

First, let’s cover the workshops. I attended a morning workshop on developing an admin processes & procedures binder. Developing such a binder will be a big benefit to anyone who may have to cover for you if you are out, or as a training guide for your successor. This tops my list of August projects. I was also seminar monitor for a class on creating dynamite newsletters. I brought a handout back for our new chapter President, who is taking on the responsibility of publishing our chapter newsletter.

In the afternoon, I took a class on “More Time for You,” a class on breaking the cycle of too much to do and not enough time to do it. Some basic time management techniques were covered. It was a good class, but because I have taken enough classes and read enough books by Laura Stack on this subject, everyone else pales in comparison. I’d rate these 2 classes a 7 on a 1-10 scale.

The keynote addresses, however, were an entirely different matter.

The morning keynote was Vernice Armour, the first-ever African-American female Marine Corps pilot. Her childhood dream was to be a police officer. By age 24, she had accomplished that feat. She joined the Marines basically on a challenge from a friend. She told harrowing stories about life in the police force as well as life on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. She challenged us to acknowledge our obstacles, but to not give them power. Like many motivational speakers, she used an acronym to spell out her message – MENTOR (Mentor/mentee, Education, Networking, Teamwork, Outstanding leadership, Role model). She also used her attire for dramatic effect – she came out dressed in her fighter pilot uniform and toward the end of her talk, she took it off, revealing a normal business suit underneath. She said it was to illustrate that she was a regular person like everyone else. Of course she’s not like everyone else. She is very dynamic and inspirational.

The afternoon keynote at 5 PM proved to be equal to the task of following the morning keynote. Erin Brockovich, it can be argued, is the most famous admin of all time. If you have seen the Julia Roberts movie that bears her name, you are familiar with the story. For those that haven’t seen it, here it is: She married young and had some kids, then divorced, and eventually decided she wanted to live in California. Once there, she was in a terrible car accident. She got help from a nearby law firm, and they eventually hired her as a file clerk. One day, during the course of her work, she encountered some suspicious documents that implicated that the local utility was knowingly discharging toxic chemicals into the river that a nearby town used for its water supply. Brockovich pursued the case and, with the help of an attorney at the firm, eventually forced the utility into the largest lawsuit settlement in US history. Brockovich told of the pitfalls of becoming a sudden celebrity, the personal satisfaction of standing your ground, and the need to press onward and not read too much of your own press. She concluded by challenging us to “go out there and kick some serious ass!” (Yes, her language was a bit salty at times, which was a big shock to some of the older ones in the audience.)

IAAP couldn’t have done better in bringing these 2 fabulous speakers in. Armour’s keynote was the best I have heard in 5 years of attending EFAM. Brockovich ranks up there next to Simon T Bailey’s keynote in New Orleans in 2008. You want a 1-10 scale for these keynotes? A 12, for both of them. Afterward, I didn’t hear anyone bemoaning the loss of the evening of entertainment.

Next up will be a review of Wednesday, the last official day of the conference

EFAM Review, Part III – Monday, July 19

2010-07-31T15:36:00.000-04:00

Monday morning was voting time. Following the advice of the IAAP parliamentarian, I decided to forgo trying to get in the line before the polls opened at 8:00, and chose instead to arrive at 8:25. Worked like a charm. I was only in line a couple minutes, and I emerged from the polling place at 8:34, a total of 9 minutes to vote. There was only 1 office with 3 candidates, and that was for Southwest District Director. So, I did not have to return to the polls for a second ballot. After meeting up with the rest of the North Carolina Division attendees for our group photo, I returned to Office Expo to make sure I didn’t miss a booth.

Next up was another delegates briefing before the next business session at 2:30. This briefing reviews the process for voting on bylaws amendments. The business session delved right into the 7 proposed amendments to the IAAP International bylaws, followed by 10 amendments to the Retirement Trust Foundation (RTF) bylaws. We would vote yes or no by standing at the appropriate time. First off was an amendment to remove “full-time” from the employment requirement to serve as an International officer. This passed quickly & quietly.

Amendments 2-4 were the most controversial. By passing these amendments, it would prohibit district directors from running for President or President-Elect, require a term as District Director to run for VP, Secretary or Treasurer, and requiring a District Director to have been a division president. I opposed all 3, not being in favor of making running for office more restrictive. I rose and spoke in opposition of Amendment 2. Proponents said a District Director did not have enough experience to run for the top spot, and should serve as VP, Secretary or Treasurer first. In my verbal argument, I stated that if 2 years as a District Director did not provide the necessary experience, but 1 year as VP, Secretary or Treasurer did, why do we even bother to have District Directors on the International Board? Despite the efforts of those of us on the opposition side, Amendment 2 passed by about a 3-1 margin (2-1 is required). Amendments 2-4 were basically a package – in order for the qualifications of these offices to make sense, you had to either pass them all or vote them all down. With Amendment 2 passing, 3 and 4 passed nearly unanimously. I stood my ground and voted no on all of them.

Amendment 5 was to remove the requirement for the Bylaws & Standing Rules committee to recommend adoption or non-adoption of amendments, Amendment 6 was to remove the requirement that EFAM be booked 6 years in advance, and Amendment 7 was require a voting delegate of a chapter or division to be a member of the unit they were voting on behalf of. All of these passed nearly unanimously.

The 10 RTF bylaws were mainly housekeeping items to clean up the bylaws to reflect the RTF’s new mission statement and to provide clarity that the RTF is a business unto itself, rather than a part of the business of IAAP. The parliamentarian pointed out to the RTF trustees that there were some wording inconsistencies in amendments 4, 5, 6 and 8. So, we had to amend those amendments by voting on the changes to the amendment, then vote on the amendment as amended. Keep in mind that we’re standing up and sitting down to vote each time, so by the time we voted on RTF amendment 9, we had stood to vote and sat back down 20 times. My arthritic knees were screaming in pain. Finally, on RTF amendment 10, President Shamali realized all the RTF amendments and amendments to amendments were passing unanimously and only called for a voice vote. My raggedy knees sure wished she had caught on sooner.

Finally, amendments were done and it was on to election results. District Directors are elected to 2-year terms, so each year 3 are elected while 3 others continue their terms. President-Elect, VP, Secretary and Treasurer are elected every year. In addition, this year would bring the election of the Affiliate Representative, a person on the International Board who would represent that administrative professionals organizations in countries outside the US and Canada.

As last year’s President-Elect, Mary Ramsay-Drow automatically ascended to the office of International President. Tamra Goodall (President-Elect), Karlena Rannals (VP), Judie Yannarelli (Treasurer), Bianca Constance (Northeast District Director) and Leanne Fisher (Affiliate) were running unopposed and assumed their offices. Antoinette (Toni) Smith won Secretary and Kristi Rotvold won Northwest District Director. None of the 3 candidates for Southwest District Director got 50% of the vote on the first ballot, so the third-place candidate was eliminated and a second ballot was cast with the remaining 2 candidates. Dortha Gray won the second ballot. Sharron Butler (Canada District Director), Wendy Melby (Great Lakes District Director) and Virginia Boyd (Southeast District Director) continued in their offices for the second year of their 2-year terms.

After the election results, we heard from IAAP Executive Director Don Bretthauer on the state of the administrative profession. Trends seem to indicate companies are very slowly inching back to adding workers, primarily through temporary staffing agencies. So the worst appears to be behind us.

That concluded the official list of activities for Monday, but of course we had our second e-Groupies social gathering that evening. Again, we had a great time of bonding and came away with stories to tell all our friends back home (the funniest are too… er, uh... adult to put in print.)

Next up, the events of Tuesday – and the best keynote addresses we could have hoped for.

2010 EFAM Review, Part II – Sunday afternoon and evening

2010-07-30T18:42:00.000-04:00

The opening business section ended right on time at noon. Then it was off to Office Expo, the highlight of the conference for many. As usual, Avery and 3M had huge booths, displaying their latest and greatest. Avery is sponsoring a “box top challenge,” where chapters can compete to collect the most cereal box tops that are used to get donations to schools. Winning chapters get extra donations to their school of choice as well as to their chapter treasury. Over at the 3M booth, biodegradable pens, new pen designs and colors, and an adhesive name badge that you can put on clothing without the typical failing of the adhesive were big hits. I was also drawn to the Baudville booth. This company specializes in recognition products – small items that can be used for day-to-day recognition, such as Post-It pads, a keychain with a small puzzle, pens, etc. – all with recognition slogans like “you’re on top of your game,” “job well done,” and “you’re the best.” The host committees for the 2011 EFAM in Montreal and the 2012 EFAM in Grapevine TX (outside Dallas) had booths. The Montreal booth folks were telling everyone that if you save $4 a day starting now, you will have nearly $1,400 by the time you leave for Montreal. They were selling small piggy banks for you to stash your daily $4 in. Fairmont Hotels, Smead, Quill.com, OfficeTeam and Adecco had booths also. And as usual, Madison Area Technical College was there to promote their Associates degree in Administrative Assistance.

Sunday afternoon also was the time for district caucuses, where Chapters of Excellence were recognized and the District Director introduced the outgoing and incoming division presidents. There was also a candidate forum where you could meet the candidates for international office.

In the evening, it was time for the Evening of Welcome. This is really just a big party with a theme. This year’s theme was “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” Everyone was encouraged to wear baseball clothing; the gift bag was filled with ballpark snacks and on the dance floor, beach balls with baseball designs were being batted around. I took this opportunity to wear the hot-off-the-press official Charlotte Center City chapter t-shirt. (I’ll work on getting a pic to post here.) The shirt got rave reviews. And yes, there was plenty of dancing. I even managed to drag my raggedy self out there and dance with one of the most famous EFAM attendees, Anita from Puerto Rico. She has this straw hat she wears throughout the conference, so it’s easy to spot her. Over the last 3 years I have been able to spend a good deal of time with her at the conferences and she’s a ton of fun. I left a few minutes before the party was scheduled to break up, and got my one and only full night’s sleep.

Next up, the day I like to call “Monday Madness.”

2010 EFAM Review, Part I – Getting to Boston, and a hectic first day on Sunday, July 18

2010-07-29T18:55:00.001-04:00

IAAP’s International Education Forum & Annual Meeting was held in Boston July 18-21. It was the best one I have attended so far. The workshops were excellent, there was only a small amount of drama in the business sessions, and the keynote speakers were the best IAAP has ever brought in. And of course, there was plenty of quality socializing.

I flew in early on Friday, July 16. Real early. Had to catch a cab at 4:00 AM to get to the airport in time to get through security and catch a 6:00 AM flight. I had to switch planes in New York at JFK. The only place I got lost was the JFK food court. I did manage to get the ship righted and got to my gate for the flight to Boston in plenty of time.

JetBlue is an awesome airline. Economical, great service, and DirecTV and XM satellite radio at every seat. I hope their network expands to include more Charlotte flights. They run circles around the legacy carriers.

I was our chapter delegate, but was also serving as a volunteer and had a noon briefing to attend. I worked the registration check-in area on Friday and all Saturday morning, plus I was a seminar monitor on Tuesday and Wednesday.

It only took me a few hours to discover how expensive Boston is. Seeing a bunch of sky-high restaurant prices, I sought out a grocery store during my free time Saturday afternoon, and got some things to munch on for breakfast and lunch. No reason to pay $20 for scrambled eggs if you don’t have to. Saturday evening was the first gathering of the e-Groupies, the name those of us who post comments in the e-Groups section of the IAAP Web Community gave ourselves. It’s just a way for people who have communicated electronically for a year to do so in person. We talk about anything and everything. We have an unspoken competition going on to see who can make everyone else laugh the hardest. We always come away with great memories.

Sunday, we started with a briefing for voting delegates. This briefing reviews the process for voting. The conference officially kicked off with the opening business session. The parade of nations puts on display the flags of every nation that has a person in attendance – over 20 in all. The anthems of Canada and the US are performed, and the members of the outgoing International Board of Directors make their way in. The International President follows with a “state of IAAP” message. This year’s message from President Susan Shamali brought news of a major change – the revamping of the certification program.

Some background: The CPS has been around for around 60 years. Starting in 1988, the rating changed from being a lifetime rating to one that had to be recertified every 5 years by accumulating 90 “points” through education, leadership, special projects and electives. In 2001, the CAP was introduced as a 4-part exam, including the 3 parts to the CPS exam plus a 4th part on advanced organizational management. The intent was for the CAP to eventually become the baseline certification. That time has come. Effective with the fall 2011 exam, all those who hold just the CPS rating will automatically have their rating changed from CPS to CAP.

Another driver for the change is to streamline the testing process and allow for additions of “specialty” designations. The CAP exam will be a 1 part, 300-350 question exam. There will be an additional part available – what used to be the CAP portion of the old format – that will result in a CAP-OM designation. Everyone who already is a CPS/CAP or CAP at the time of the fall 2011 exams will have their designations automatically changed to CAP-OM. In the future, IAAP will add different exams for that final part. For example, there could be an exam for those with information technology expertise, which would give the tester a CAP-IT designation. Or, an exam could be designed for those admins who work with medical administration or records, resulting in a CAP-MA designation.

In addition to these big changes in the certification program, the recertification process is also undergoing an overhaul. These changes are effective immediately. First, it now takes 60 points to recertify instead of 90 (YIPPEE!!!!!!!!!) Also, there are now only 3 categories of recertification points – continuing education, leadership and other certifications. You must have a minimum of 30 points from continuing education, and no more than 20 points from either other certifications or leadership. There will 5 points awarded for each certification and leadership position. The leadership category is turning out to be the most controversial among those nearing the deadline to recertify. As expected, any chapter or division officer position qualifies, but only certain committee chairmanships qualify. This is where the debate is going on – what constitutes a standing committee that is active for at least 7 months of the year? Committees that are time-based or dedicated to a single event generally don’t qualify, but what if such a committee has twice the activity level of the Bylaws & Standing Rules committee, which is an automatic qualifier? Some leaders are concerned because getting recertification points has been about the only way they could get people to chair their committees, and they worry that loss of those points will make it that much harder to fill the needed positions.

My opinion is that HQ has to draw the line somewhere. Every chapter’s committees function different than the committee of the same name in another chapter. HQ is willing to field requests from individual chapters to get their committees not on the official list to qualify. As for the worry that positions won’t be filled without the recertification points, they can get past that if they can successfully apply the lessons learned in the post-conference leadership workshop. More on that later.

After Shamali’s speech, Avery handed out a few awards, and we were recessed.

I’m going to drag this out. I’ll post a new post each day for the next week; just to keep you checking back in. Perhaps I have been watching too much “reality” TV…..

Thoughts on reaching 40

2010-03-03T20:07:00.002-05:00

My 40th birthday was last Monday 2/22. This is an age to which our current society and culture has added a negative stigma. Youth & physical beauty are exalted. The vast majority of pro athletes can no longer compete at the highest level by this age. Some go crazy with material purchases or pursuit of maintaining youth (AKA mid-life crisis). My perspective is a little different.

When you are just starting adulthood, you usually feel invincible, all-knowing, and like you have unlimited time to accomplish your life goals. This inevitably leads to foolish (and sometimes downright dangerous) decisions. By the time you reach the middle of your life, yo're paying for them. That's what scares many people.

In doing a little reflection, my reaction to turning 40 is that I have much to accomplish, and I finally realize I don't have unlimited time. I don't view that as anything scary, but a call to action. I must start taking better care of my body. I must be serious about accomplishing my professional goals. And dadgumit, I need to get this reading pile taken care of.

The time for excuses, rationalizations and blame-shifting has passed. I'm the only one responsible for what I do or do not accomplish. So let's get busy!

If you watched the Super Bowl for the commercials...

2010-02-08T06:42:00.002-05:00

... then you are probably disappointed.

I have watched every Super Bowl from start to finish since the 1980 game. This year's collection of ads was the second-worst in history, topped (or bottomed?) by the 2000 game which had nothing but dot-com ads. Budweiser was the worst of the bunch. The CareerBuilder and Dockers ads, with all the overweight men in tighty whities were VERY disturbing.

Doritos had 3 ads that were all hilarious, Coke's 2 ads were good (especially the Simpsons ad), and Snickers had the best commercial of the day. The rest were either boring or downright stupid. I hope Pepsi comes back next year. They always have great ads and their absence this year was obvious.

And exactly why was everyone up in arms about the Tebow ad? Very plain, boring ad.

Maybe I'm ADD too...

2010-02-06T13:52:00.002-05:00

In my home, we have noticed that any time a new ailment is discovered, about 99.99 of all patients in doctors’ offices will suddenly have that ailment. Remember when fibromyalgia was discovered? For a while after that, a woman could go to the doctor and complain that she was coming down with multiple yeast infections, bladder infections and an inability to... ahem... respond to her man. "Oh, you must have fibro," might be the diagnosis. (I'm exaggerating, of course, and Kari, I'm not talking about you! :-) ) So I've come to be skeptical about diagnoses of the latest ailments. ADD is one of those. It's easier to count the kids that AREN'T on Riddilin than those that are.

But lately, I sure seem to be acting like someone with ADD. What I mean is, I seem to be less and less capable of tending to more than one project at a time. There's a lot of extra stuff calling for my attention - I still have a sizable reading pile, then there's IAAP and Toastmasters, and the committee at the company's Leadership Development Network that I am chair of this year. It seems like I can't keep up with more than one of these at a time.

Toastmasters has received the greatest amount of my attention lately, primarily because I am thriving there. Once you join, you begin the communication development track with the 10 speech projects of the Competent Communication (CC) manual, and you can also begin the leadership development track with the 10 projects in the Competent Leadership (CL) manual. I completed the CC manual in 11 months, which I'm told was probably some sort of record for our club. So I set myself on a course to complete each level of the communication track in a year. So on Thursday I give my first speech toward the Advanced Communicator Bronze (ACB) level. If all goes well, I'll finish in November. Since finishing the CC, I have been working on the CL projects. I should finish that manual sometime this summer. I plan to run for a club officer position for the new year (starts July 1).

The IAAP Charlotte Center City chapter has lost a lot of momentum. Only about 1/3 of the chapter members are committed and contributing. We've lost another programs & events director. I will not run for a second term as president. We're never going to get anywhere unless more folks get involved, and I have no idea how to make that happen.

The window has opened at work to volunteer to take the severance package. I have no intention of volunteering because my package is something we could live on for 3 months, and that's not enough to make me feel secure in this economy. Most people looking for work take more than 3 months to find something. The environment is getting tougher. My boss said the company will not pay a single dollar to support any of my development activities, and I sense an unspoken belief that I should drop most of them. Our department is being completely reorganized, so we'll see how that goes once the dust settles.

And with all this, the HVAC system has given up the ghost. This likely kills my dreams of going to IAAP Annual Meeting in Boston and us doing anything elaborate for the 10th anniversary this summer. Unless, of course, the bonus ends up being bigger than I think it will be.

Oh, yeah, I still got all these books to read....

Expanding the focus

2010-02-06T13:34:00.003-05:00

I started this blog as a male voice in the female-dominated world of being an administrative professional. That was following the advice of the "experts," who will tell anyone who wants to start a blog to make it an extremely narrow focus - nobody wants to read a blog that goes all over the place.

Well, I'm going to buck that advice. I'm going to use this space for whatever is on my mind. I need to do more regular "mind dumps" - clearing all those random thoughts up there, which I believe are clogging my brain and affecting my memory, like a bunch of extra files clogging the performance of a computer. Hopefully this will lead to better mind performance and some interesting reading for whoever is coming along for the ride.

People who want intimate details about Tiger are losers

2009-12-03T14:15:00.002-05:00

Yes, you read that right.

If the allegations are true, there are 2 things that sicken me about this whole situation:

1) That he cheated on his wife.
2) That people think they have the right to demand that he call a press conference and answer every question posed to him.

The first one is obvious. Even if Elin forgives him and they try to stay together, that home will never be the same. Irreparable damage has been done. It will take years, if not decades, for marital trust to be rebuilt. There's a reason they call them marriage VOWS. If there is any hint you think you would ever go back on that vow, you're much better off not making the vow at all. So is your prospective spouse.

2) The idea that Tiger must face the press and public and give details is absolutely asinine. My nephew said to me, "When you make millions, forfeiture of your privacy is automatic." I have heard many others say similar things. That is beyond ridiculous. You wouldn't want the press hounding you for intimate details about your home life, so why should Tiger be subjected to it? Because he's wealthy? WHAT? OK, show me the scale. What income level marks the tipping point into the area where you no longer are entitled to privacy? Is it because he's a celebrity? Again, show me the level of name/face recognition you must reach where you have to let cameras record your every waking moment.

It all boils down to class- and wealth-envy. When someone becomes more famous than you and/or more wealthy than you, then you decide that person no longer is entitled to be a human being who can go home, close the door, and not have to answer to anyone outside that door.

Scott Fowler, a columnist for the Charlotte Observer, made the following statement in his blog after Tiger made his statement on the website: "at least it made him seem a little more human and a little less 'I'm Tiger and I don't have to bother with the little people except to tell them what club I hit and which car to buy.' " Another classic case of class-envy. Fowler perceives Tiger's vigilant defense of his right to keep the press and public out of his private life as arrogance.

As for the women raising the allegations, I hate to be crude, but they appear to be nothing more than skanks who want a big payday. I have always held people who want wealth and fame without hard work in contempt. There are way too many people like that these days. It would be nice if VH1 would stop feeding this monster by cranking out these shows, one after another, populated by these types of gold-diggers (male and female).

Again I qualify all this by saying if the allegations are true. The evidence to support the allegations appears to be mounting, so it's probably not much of a stretch to make that assumption. I can't imagine what would make Tiger step out, especially with the reality show chick (who plays the skank stereotype too well). And it's not my business to know why. That is for him and his wife to work through.

I will pray for him, and especially for his wife, to be able to find some healing. The rest of the world would do well to do the same instead of hounding and demanding things they have no right to.

Why is this still happening?

2009-11-03T13:54:00.002-05:00

I witnessed a terrible incident on my bus ride home yesterday.

When I got on the bus, in the first seat there was a black woman with her son, who I'm guessing was about 5 years old. I went to the next seat where a friend of mine from my company's legal department (a black woman) was sitting. We started talking and catching up on things as we hadn't seen each other in a few days. A few stops later, a white woman who gets off at the same stop as me got on and sat next to the lady with her son. She had her head down, and turned on the overhead light and started reading a magazine, obviously not interested in interacting with anyone.

The little boy began saying hello to the lady that sat next to him. She did not acknowlege him, but remained focused on her magazine. The boy's mother said, rather sternly, "Be quiet. Some people are just snobs and you can't make them talk to you, even if they are snobs." The boy changed his message from hello to telling the woman to turn the overhead light off. Now she acknowledged the boy. "NO!" she said emphatically. Now the boy's mother got upset and raised her voice "What did you say to my baby?" The woman got up and headed for the back of the bus. The boy's mother continued to loudly talk junk. "That's right, you BETTER go back there!" Another passenger (a white man) said, "Your son told her to turn the light off, and she was using it." Now the mother became very loud in her response. "Did anyone ask you into my conversation? I hate riding this bus. Every time I get on this bus, you white people have something nasty to say to me!!!!!" The bus driver (a black man) told her to let it go.

As you can imagine, you could hear a pin drop on the bus at this point. I turned to my friend sitting next to me and whispered, "What's the weather gonna be like tomorrow?" From there, we resumed our own conversation and moved on. The mother could see us from her seat, and I think our friendship was obvious in the way we were interacting and it made her feel a little bit bad. After we got to a park-and-ride where most of the passengers leave the bus, including my friend, the mother looked at me and said, "I don't mean no harm." I nodded in acknowledgement but didn't say anything.

This episode made me feel terrible. It is such a shame people still act in these ways. The lady with the magazine should have acknowledged the boy. I can understand burying your head and ignoring grownups; I do that all the time myself. But she could have returned a hello to the boy. And the boy's mother had no reason to play the race card. And the biggest reason I felt terrible was for the boy. His mother appears to think that all white people are out to get her, and by her words is teaching her son to hate people of a particular skin tone.

We still have such a long, long way to go in our society. Very sad.

Calling government out

2009-10-09T10:22:00.002-04:00

My local paper, the Charlotte Observer, has a reporter named Mary Newsom who writes opinion columns and maintains a blog called "The Naked City" that follows local govermnent activity. This week, she posted a blog entry about recyling efforts here. An architect that deals with the city regularly wrote Newsom to vent his frustrations at how much paper he has to use for every re-zoning he applies for. He wonders if the city needs a "Green Guru" to help reduce some of this colossal waste. Unable to help myself, I commented on the blog on what I think would happen if Charlotte did take this step. See if you agree, regardless of what city you live in:

"Here's how hiring a Green Guru in Charlotte would play out:

Guru is hired at $500,000 a year, with a 20% bonus that kicks in if the guru shows up for work at least 100 days during the year. There's no way we could get anyone with any talent for less than that.

Then, the guru will hire a consultant to do a 7-year study of our green practices - at a cost of $21 million - and present a list of recommendations.

Next, the guru will appear before City council during a budget meeting and proclaim that he needs a new permanent department, staffed by 100 people, with an annual budget of $125 million, to implement the consultant's ideas plus whatever other great ideas that could arise on any given day.

The council will agree, and to avoid the revolt that would come from a property tax increase, will increase the hotel and prepared food taxes 25% and tell the citizens their taxes weren't raised.

Six months later, the city manager reports the new taxes have only raised 5% of the revenue they were intended to raise. Apparently, the higher taxes have driven conventions away and caused locals to make their own burgers at home. Council is shocked! All other city departments are asked to immediately reduce their budgets by 50%.

At the end of the year, the guru appears before the council to report $100,000 in savings from the new initiatives. There would be much more, but the Green Department was not given the promised revenue from the council, limiting the department's effectivenesss.

The guru is praised for doing so well with so little and is given a 25% raise.

The Observer writes an editorial about local government waste, and endorses the creation of a new government department to deal with the waste. "

C4 Bowl-a-thon set for May 29

2009-05-13T21:34:00.002-04:00

We have our first big fund-raising activity planned for the new IAAP chapter. We will be holding a bowl-a-thon on May 29, 7-9 PM, at AMF Carolina Lanes in Matthews, NC. I'm calling in all my favors. I already have 7 committments to sponsor me, some at a flat rate and some at 10 cents a pin. I've told everyone to expect no more than 300 pins to be knocked down by me total in 3 games. Bowling is fun, but I suck at it. I'm sure I will be of great entertainment value to others.

My personal goal is to raise $300.00. We have 8 people bowling now, so I expect us to easily surpass $2,000.00 in this effort. That should be plenty for us to use as an operating budget in year 1.

Here come the challenges

2009-04-23T20:55:00.002-04:00

The President of the IAAP NC Division, who presided over our chartering ceremony, asked me the other day if I had come back down to earth yet. I said I had, because we had to get busy with the nuts and bolts of building a great chapter - setting up monthly programs, recruiting strategies, fund-raising, etc. Lots of work to do!

Here in our infancy, we have been hit with two major blows. The mother of one of our members was recently diagnosed with malignant melanoma. Then, in a good news/bad news scenario, our Events Director has received a major promotion. It's a great opportunity for her, but it means we'll be losing her, and she's already had a major impact. These are things that will happen from time to time, but the timing is very bad for us as a chapter. So we have to adjust.

I juggled some scheduled items today so I could join our VP, Membership Director and Program Director for lunch. We talked permanent chapter meeting location, recruiting, fund-raising, publicity and monthly programs. The Program Director had called the meeting so she facilitated, and we all threw in some ideas. I have put outside publicity efforts in the VP's capable hands. I'm going to let the Program committee do their thing and concentrate my efforts in finding a new Events Director and working closely with membership to get recruiting ramped up. I think that's what we need more than anything else right now - more people so we can spread the work around. I'm extremely confident the Program group will give guests a good reason to come back. :-))

So the hard work of building a remarkable chapter and adjusting to life's curve balls is well underway. In spite of it being hard work and challenging, it's extremely exciting. This is one of the things I was looking forward to while we were still in the chartering process - the chance to start with an empty lot and build a great building, without hearing a lot of "we never did it that way before," "I don't think that will work for us," or other such naysaying. I'm excited to see what we will build.

C4 has been installed!

2009-04-19T17:35:00.002-04:00

The installation of the Charlotte Center City chapter of IAAP is complete.

President - James Edgar CPS/CAP
Vice President - Connie Coleman CAP
Treasurer - Linda Smith
Secretary - Carmel Brown (pronounced car-MEL)

Dianne Hughes, NC Division President, presided over the installation ceremony. There are 17 charter members of the chapter. Joining the officers on the board of directors are Deborah Hampton (pronounced deb-OR-ah), Bylaws Director; Tanya Mitchell, Membership Director; Rachel Samuelson, Events Director; and Celeste Marshall, Programs Director.

The only bad thing about the ceremony is that only 10 of the 17 members were able to attend. We were joined by 11 guests, including my wife, members from the 2 other chapters in the city of Charlotte, and other members of the NC Division. Several chapters throughout NC made cash donations to our treasury.

The installation was followed by a reception where we had a champagne toast (Dianne works for a wine distribution company that provided the bubbly), and we... well, I don't know if you can call it networking, because most of the time were just cutting up and having a ball. I felt like a 4,000-pound weight was off my shoulders. It's hard to really describe how it feels to see something you have been trying to make happen for 4 years finally come to pass.

Now comes the really good part - where we get down to the business of making a chapter that admins in the center city of Charlotte can't possibly live without. I have no reason to doubt that will happen - the program committee will spend the next few days surveying the members for program ideas, then they'll put those programs in place. We'll have great monthly meetings where we have a good lunch and a great program. We have 1 member sitting for the CAP in November, and several others will likely follow. The board will take care of all the nuts and bolts of the business of the chapter during the board meetings. We all already get along great and have a good family atmosphere when we get together. As we spread the word, guests will come to our gatherings and be won over very quickly. We'll grow like weeds. It's going to be a great ride!

Well, that was interesting...

2009-04-16T20:46:00.002-04:00

If you're going to do a speech called "Invest In Yourself," you should probably make sure you invest enough time in writing and rehearsing it.

It's been a ridiculously busy week, and I didn't remind all my friends I was giving a speech today, so none of them came. That turned out to be a blessing, as it was a disaster - certainly the worst of my 3 Toastmasters speeches. The third speech you are encouraged not to use notes. I didn't, and that wasn't wise. I forgot whole chunks of the speech, and stuttered like an idiot over some of the names of professional associations I used as examples. I still haven't kicked my habit of swaying and rocking, and now that this has been noted in 3 straight speeches it's probably all inside my head, making it harder to break out of it. For icing on the cake, I developed the mother of all cases of dry-mouth, and my evaluator noted that I licked my lips a lot. Honey, if you only knew what was going on inside my mouth! On second thought, YOU DON'T!

Well, now that I have that out of the way, I can focus on the C4 chartering on Saturday. Only 41 hours to go. Not that I'm counting or anything.....

Invest in yourself

2009-04-13T21:26:00.002-04:00

I'm sure everyone has heard this phrase before. I'm even doing a speech about it in my Toastmasters club this Thursday, highlighting professional associations and professional certifications. I'll make the point that even if you have to pay your own way for these things, you should strongly consider them. That shows you're dedicated to your profession and to being the best (insert job function here) you can be.

For administrative professionals, this is an issue in the spotlight at this time. We have an association (IAAP) that I still believe the majority of admins in America has never heard of. Despite the rising value of high-performing admins in a shrinking workforce, admins remain very low-paid compared to other professionals like engineers, accountants and IT professionals. The TV/movie secretary stereotype - loaded with sex appeal and a to-do list of grunt work, and not loaded with brains - is still out there in a lot of minds. These factors make it a challenge for us to get upper management to take us seriously. I think a lot of high-ranking corporate execs probably think IAAP is a social club where admins get together and swap nail polish and fashion tips. Given the lack of knowledge of what we do, what IAAP is, and the horrific economy make getting company dollars for the costs of being active in IAAP a considerable challenge.

In the midst of all this, IAAP's international board of directors has proposed increasing the association dues by $25.00 in all 4 membership classes. (Members of divisions and local chapters pay additional fees for those memberships.) The main reason for this, according to the board, is that IAAP depends on non-dues money for 2/3 of its revenue, and standard procedure for non-profits is to get at least half - if not more - of income from member dues. Additionally, IAAP has a dangerously low level of cash reserves, far short of the recommended 6 months of the operating budget as reserves.

The members are buzzing about the proposal. My unscientific estimate is that about 75% of the talk I'm seeing on the message boards is negative towards the proposal. Many are saying they simply cannot afford another $25.00 of dues in this economy. Several chapter leaders have said they will have to resign and not renew their membership if this passes.

I'm not the slightest bit surprised by this, given the aforementioned relative low pay of admins and spotty company support. I expect the resistance to continue right up to the convention at the end of July, and I don't expect much discussion in favor of the proposal to counter the opposition.

I'm trying to not make any hard decisions now - there's still time to debate and I definitely need to gauge the interest of my chapter so I can vote with their wishes. And I have questions of my own - the presentation from the board was very high-level, and I'd like them to drill down a level or two on what the extra dues will pay for. I certainly don't expect a dollar-by-dollar breakdown; they'll need flexibility as the economic environment continues to change. And, after all, we do elect the board members to take care of these things.

But at this point, I'm leaning slightly in favor of the proposal. And this brings us back to the "invest in yourself" concept. I don't think it's wise to wait for things to happen in one's career development, nor do I think it's wise for Plan A to be to depend on someone else (the company) to pay for it. I believe that however far I go in this profession is largely up to me. It's my job to have the latest training and the appropriate contacts in case the job path takes unexpected turns. And those are the 2 greatest benefits in being a member of IAAP. If I can get some company financial support, fantastic, I'll take whatever amount that is and be thankful for it. But Plan A is for me to be prepared to pay every cent on my own.

If something terrible were to happen, such as me losing my job or catastrophe striking my home that the homeowners insurance inexplicably didn't cover, I would have to make some hard choices. For example - if I lost my job and we had to cut some expenses, I would be willing to give up the satellite TV connection before giving up IAAP. (The Mrs. would hate that idea, but then I would get to test my negotiating skills. :-) ) Now I know that other people would rank IAAP lower on the priority list than I would. But that gets back to my original point - if you really want to be in charge of your career, and have the training and networking to help mitigate things like job loss, investing in yourself should be a high priority.

Comedy Break II

2009-04-02T21:26:00.001-04:00

I have diverse stand-up comedy tastes. This is fairly new Steven Wright - HILARIOUS!

Time for a comedy break

2009-04-02T21:06:00.000-04:00

You will be in tears by the end of this!

Looking for adventure? FLY WITH ME!!!!!!

2009-03-29T13:58:00.003-04:00

If you've been reading here since the beginning last July, you are familiar with the sentence I seem to have been handed by the Almighty that I will never, at any time, board a commercial flight without some sort of bizzare incident on at least 1 leg of the trip. Well, the curse continues as I write from Cincinnati where I have traveled to get some face time with the folks that I support that are based here.

Flight from CLT to CVG was scheduled to depart at 1:15 on Saturday, arriving at 2:35 in Cincinnati. I get a cab from my crib at 11:00 so I can get to the airport almost 2 hours early, so as to be prepared for any disaster that may strike. Well, it's been raining cats, dogs and aardvarks for several days in Charlotte, so I wasn't the slightest bit surprised to see the plane I was to be taking off in pull up to the gate at 12:55, which would mean 1:45 would be the absolute earliest we would take off. Sure enough, we actually lifted off the runway at 2:03. No big deal to me, since I'm only traveling on Saturday to get a ticket for 1/3 the price if I had left on Monday. The surprise came at 2:20 PM. The landing gear suddenly dropped, surprising since we still had 50 minutes to go on the trip. Then the flight attendant announces we were going back to Charlotte, since the weather in Cincy wouldn't allow us to get in. Then here comes the pilot to say that the landing gear dropped because the onboard computer did not recognize that he had raised the landing gear, so when he flipped the switch again the gear came down. Therefore, we had to go back.

So we went back. And parked at the gate that is the farthest from the main terminal that you can get at the Charlotte airport. (If they make me go back to baggage claim and retrieve my bag like they did in New Orleans, I'm gonna be seriously pissed.) It was the end of the E terminal, where gates 27-30 sit in a cluster; we landed at E27. We sit there for what seems like a decade before we are instructed to return to gate E14, which is the gate we originally departed from. When I get there, I see the sign over the gate says "Cincinnati - 4:05 PM." I look out the window. There is no plane there. I look at my watch. It's 3:35 PM. And they think we're leaving at 4:05. I laugh uproriously.

4:05 comes and goes, and still no plane, let alone us taking off. The plane finally arrives, we pile on, and we take off at 5:11 PM, a mere 3 hours and 56 minutes late. By the time we get to Cincy, and I collect my bag, arrange my transportation to & from the hotel for my trip, get downtown and checked in, it's 7:20 PM.

So I walked out my front door at 11:00 AM, and walked up to the hotel check-in desk at 7:20 PM. If I left at 11 and was driving, I would probably be between Lexington KY and Cincy by that time. So my airplane trip to Cincinnati took about an hour or so less than if I hda driven it.

Well, at least I'm here in one piece. Rather than try to make contact with my sister, I ordered a room service pizza & beer, watched the second half of the Pitt-Villanova hoops thriller, and went to bed. Can't imagine what frame of mind I would be if I had to do all this on a Monday!

The C4 launch date is set in stone!

2009-03-26T21:18:00.002-04:00

The Charlotte Center City chapter of IAAP will hold its chartering ceremony on April 18, 2009, at 2 PM at the Holiday Inn Center City in Charlotte. The last full week of April is Administrative Professionals Week, with April 22 being Administrative Professionals Day. This is the perfect way to kick off the week.

This is one of those rare times when I am positively giddy. I'm about to bust. The Mrs. says my face can open a branch smile.

We finally secured an Events Director and got her 2 assistants for her committee. They are off and running planning the chartering ceremony. Our Membership Director is hard at work on several prospects. Our temporary treasurer, who did not plan on holding a leadership position but was nominated by some without asking her first, is soldiering on getting our financial structure set up.

To use a football analogy, as president of the chapter I'm like the quarterback, but I have the best set of backs/receivers and offensive line imaginable. These are great people I have to work with; I love them like sisters. I don't understand why more men don't work in this profession. ;-)

Now the excruciating part - waiting for April 18 to get here.

Could someone slow the Earth's rotation for a little bit?

2009-03-26T21:09:00.002-04:00

There is WAAAAAY too much going on at once. Most of it's good, but it's still a lot - and mostly self-inflicted.

I've had about the worst week physically of my entire life. The weather is changing drastically every day here, which is normal for late March. The arthritic knees are screaming. Add to that a pulled muscle in my left calf - and I have no bloody idea how I did it. I've been walking with a pronounced limp for a week now. It's been rainy this week, so the Mrs. is equally miserable physically (but don't worry, she's still et up with perky).

I'm starting to think I bit off more than I can chew with extra professional activities. I'm part of the membership committee in our Toastmasters club, I'm Vice Chair of the membership & finance committee at the company's Leadership Development Network, and of course there's the IAAP Charlotte Center City effort (more on that shortly). On top of all this, there is the occasional annoying request from the people I support to perform a duty in my job description. Well, at least I can never go to bed at night thinking, "What a boring day today was!"

More on C4 crossing the finish line

2009-03-21T09:11:00.002-04:00

Saturday morning, and a break in the furious action to catch everyone up on what has happened in the past month since I updated the blog.

You've likely seen my post of frustration where we were stuck on 13 members for quite a while, looking for those last 2 so we could get moving. One person had asked management for the money for dues, which was granted, but instead of 2 days for the accounting department to cut her a check, they took about a month. I finally received it this past Tuesday.

In the meantime, I had continued to communicate to the group of members and prospective members through email. There is one person on that distribution list that has never responded to anything I have ever sent, but also never asked me to take her off the list. She passed the word to a colleague of hers, who actually used to be a member of IAAP back when it was called PSI. I had lunch with her and she asked for an application - and said she was going to pay dues herself instead of waiting on the boss.

Well, when I got that 14th payment, I sent everyone a note and challenged the prospects to take action since we only needed 1 more person. On Wednesday, the aforementioned prospect's colleague and one other person who had been recruited by another member turned in their stuff, giving us 16 members.

The only thing that surprised me at this point is that I didn't jump up on my desk and do a happy dance. The many months of effort had finally paid off. I'm sure I had a big, stupid grin on my face the rest of the day.

As if this effort wasn't hard enough work, now the REAL work starts. We have to get the chartering ceremony together, get our paperwork filed with IAAP HQ, get our bylaws in place, and make sure everyone has something to do. The 14th person with the slow accounting department works at an uptown hotel, and she agreed to be our events director. Two others agreed to be her assistants on the committee. I probably need to get our membership director an assistant or two and we'll be all set there. We'll settle a lot of the outstanding issues at our regular chapter meeting this coming Wednesday.

And as you might expect, now that the word is out that this is really going to happen, two other people have said, "count me in" and there may be 2 others. We could be looking at 18 charter members and maybe a membership of 20 at the chartering ceremony. Momentum is building, and I think we're going to be a force to be reckoned with.

We call ourselves "C4"

2009-03-21T09:06:00.003-04:00

Can't remember if I said this already or not, but at our January meeting someone noticed that saying our full chapter name- Charlotte Center City chapter - is 4 words that all begin with C. So we could informally call ourselves "C4" for short. You can see where this is going - someone said, "C4 - we're gonna blow up this town!" :-))

As you can tell, we are bonding quite nicely!

We made it!!!!!!!!!!!

2009-03-19T21:32:00.003-04:00

The Charlotte Center City chapter of IAAP now has 16 members, surpassing the 15 required to charter a new chapter. FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It has been darn near impossible for me to sit still since 10:30 AM yesterday when I got that 15th payment in my hands.

Now the pace really picks up. We have our regular monthly meeting this coming Wednesday, with the focus on adopting bylaws and planning the chartering ceremony.

More blog posts coming this weekend about recent events. For now, I have to get some sleep!

The stress of air travel

2009-02-16T11:00:00.001-05:00

I'm skeptical as to the authenticity of this (possible publicity stunt), but if it's real, I wish I could have seen it in person!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbVw7entkxg

Come on, tell me the truth!

2009-02-08T11:21:00.002-05:00

There is something that I have seen a lot since I've lived in the South, but I suspect it happens everywhere. I call it the "what you want to hear" syndrome.

We were warned of this phenomenon in the Bible. I Timothy 4:3 syas, "For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear." I started seeing something relating to this over the years whenever I would invite someone to visit my church. People would say they would love to come, then never show. I began to suspect it was a case of the person telling me what they thought my itching ears wanted to hear. I imagined it was part of the Southern culture of putting being nice and not hurting anyone's feelings above even the truth. But like I said before, I'm sure this happens everywhere and not just the South.

Now I think I'm seeing it again with IAAP recruiting. There are several potential members of our IAAP Charlotte Center City chapter who have said, "I'll be sending you my dues payment this week." If that had happened, we'd be chartering now. I have tried to avoid bringing it up - I have felt awful asking people to fork over money in this terrible economy. But hey, tell me the real story. If you don't have the cash, or if you think I'm a jerk, or if you just don't want to commit to anything right now, or whatever the reason, go ahead and tell me. I would rather hear "no" than a "yes" you don't really mean. The false yes just gets my hopes up only to crash down later - especially now, when the effort to start this thing nears its 4th birthday and we only need 2 more people. Let's hear the real story, folks!

The move to Office 2007

2009-01-31T15:27:00.003-05:00

My company is finally getting around to upgrading from Office 2003 to Office 2007. Different departments are doing it at different times. My department's window for installing the upgrade opened 3 weeks ago. I did it the first day. Some others are not going to do it until IT puts a gun to their heads. (This makes some of my work a bit more chalenging - I can't do one of my manager's weekly reports with the new templates until everyone gets around to installing the upgrade, for example.)

So far, I have adjusted pretty well. I am still hunting around for some of my favorite buttons, and the flyout menu from the "Office" button clashes with my magnification software. But other than that it's been a smooth transition. 2007 has some great templates, which I've started to use. I haven't used PowerPoint or Visio yet, but I'm getting along with Word and Excel just fine.

So how's everyone else doing on the transition?

Time to brag about my WONDERFUL TEAM!

2009-01-30T22:18:00.003-05:00

I wonder if others who have chartered chapters of professional organizations will testify that what is happening to my effort is how it usually happens.

Things started quickly, then faded to an absolute standstill, then a new field of prospects emerged and we moved fast again, then hit another lull, then came back, and now that we're on the brink of accomplishing the goal, the entire group is getting excited and going all out to finish the job.

I just love this group of superstars in the IAAP Charlotte Center City chapter. Tanya didn't initially volunteer to be Membership Director, one of her co-workers volunteered her. But she willingly accepted the challenge and has already began reaching out to her contacts and may have found one that can secure us a regular meeting location. And my dear friend Gayle, with her very pronounced Southern accent that I'm always picking on, sent an email to the Executive Assistants of the company's executive leadership team talking up our effort and providing my contact info. Two of them contacted me and expressed interest. And in general, when I have talked to different members since our meeting Wednesday, their voices are different. You can hear the enthusiasm in their voices as we discuss how to get over this final little hump, and what a powerful, impactful group we are going to be.

I'm sure you can pick up on my excitement in these written words. I sent a note to the chapter members this afternoon letting them know that once we have these 2 people, I'll send a note and quickly move to organize a meeting so we can get busy working on the chartering cermony. I also said that somebody better be near me when we get that 15th person to give me Vallium or some other downer, cuz I'm gonna need it, I'll be so jacked up with excitement.

Wonderful people, these members of our chapter. If I had the disposable income to do it, I'd buy a billboard on I-85 and put all their names on it. But I'll just have to settle for posting all their names here on the blog, which I'll do as soon as we launch.

IAAP Charlotte Center City chapter - within inches of the finish line!

2009-01-28T19:26:00.002-05:00

I have spent the last week recovering from the arthroscopic surgery on my left knee. The knee is still a little swollen and sore but the follow-up appointment today ended with the PA giving me the go-ahead to return to work tomorrow. I can already tell that this is going to make me able to move a lot better.

I left the doc and went to our latest meeting of the IAAP Charlotte Center City chapter. This was our best meeting yet. We only had 10 attendees due to a "if you value your job, you will be on this conference call" edict from an exec in the department of our Bank of America members. Nonetheless, we got a lot accomplished. We now have nominations and bylaws/standing rules committees in place, a membership director, a regular meeting date/time set in stone, and a member that will set up a Facebook page for the chapter. (Obviously, I'll have a link to that once it's up.)

We have 13 paid members, and if some promises and conveyed enthusiasm are followed through, we should have the other 2 in a day or two, possibly several more. The newly-appointed membership director called me 3 hours after the meeting to say she already was working with a prospect. (Go on with your bad self, Tanya!). The nominations committee will be taking nominations for a week, then officers will be named and we can get busy planning the chartering ceremony, which will probably end up being the last week of February or the first week of March. I'd be doing a happy dance if my surgically-repaired knee would allow it.

How do they survive when you're out?

2009-01-24T16:22:00.002-05:00

This time out of work for my surgery has me thinking (I know, DUCK!)

One of those great quirks about being an administrative professional is that you get to be everyone's backup. Other people in your department go on vacation or business trips and they put your name and number on their voice mail and email out-of-office auto-reply. But what about when you are out? If there's another admin in your group, you have to cut deals to get her help. If there's not another one in your area, you have to reach out to other admin friends for assistance. In my case, my group never really had a dedicated admin before my arrival 5 months ago.

So I have thought a few times this week how everyone is getting along. I know things are probably in good shape; I tried to make sure every loose end I could think of was tied up before rolling out. I know I have worked other jobs where even being out 1 day leaves a disaster area where your workspace used to be that is so big you expect FEMA to show up to help clean up. That is probably where I developed the impatience for health problems and desire to rush back that my wife is giving me such a hard time about now. Although I'm really getting better. REALLY!

local IAAP chapter update

2009-01-24T16:05:00.002-05:00

As promised, an update on the new chapter efforts...

No action from the day before Turkey Day through the college football bowl season, for obvious reasons. Holidays and families and vacations and stuff and what-not. January has brought more activity. A couple more folks have signed on. As of end of day Tuesday when I began my brief medical leave, we have 12 of the required 15 members to charter. Another prospect was trying to navigate the online joining feature at IAAP's website. That will be a lot easier once we charter and officially exist - then new members will be able to join the chapter online.

This coming Wednesday morning, I have a follow-up appointment with the PA of my surgeon. I will proceed from there to the next organizational meeting of the IAAP Charlotte Center City chapter. We're going to discuss some specific stuff - getting a nominating committee together to take nominations for chapter officers, try to nail down a set meeting day/time, start the process of getting some bylaws together, etc. What would be really wonderful is if these last 3 folks willl be able to jump in early in the week and beginning plans for the chartering ceremony will have to be added as an agenda item.

So young, yet so decrepit

2009-01-19T19:26:00.002-05:00

One reason for the extended absence from the blog has been my health. As winter has set in, my arthritis of the knees has become very close to unbearable. There are some things I do that would be considered routine that I'm going to simply have to stop doing unless something can be done.

So I saw an orthopedic surgeon last week. He said he thinks we can improve my quality of life with some arthroscopic surgery (and at the same time buy some time, since no surgeon wanst to do total knee replacement on anyone under 50, and I'm just turning 39 next month).

So I'm going in Wednesday at noon for a scope on the left knee. It's an outpatient procedure, and I'll be home by late afternoon. Then it's a week of rest and some simple home exercises until a follow-up Dr. visit next Wedneday. By that time, one of two things will have happened - either my wife will have driven me insane, or I will have driven my wife insane. Either scenario will cry for me to get out of the house. ;-) The fact that I do office work is an advantage.

So, I'll have plenty of time to read, write and think. The thinking could be good or bad, depending on how the body feels. It really isn't fun to be in this spot, where my first orthopedist said my knees are in the condition of the average man who is 40 years older than me. This afternoon I got off the bus and saw a pack of kids running across the parking lot of the shopping center where the bus stop is. I thought, "Ah, I remember when I was able to run." Now simple walking is a chore.

But the thing to do is focus on what you have, rather than what you don't have. I may not be able to run or play football anymore, and I've never been able to see very well, but I have a great wife, lots of good friends, and of course, my legendary sense of humor.

That perspective can be seen in my friend Kari. She's in her mid-twenties and battles fibromyalgia among other ailments. She's a good friend and it hurts my heart to hear all that she's going through. But she has a resiliant spirit and is a delight to be around. Check out her blog "Young and Ill" http://youngandill.blogspot.com/ even if you aren't young or ill. We all are ill at some point in our lives and she has some good insight.

Stay tuned for my IAAP chapter update soon. Lots of good things have happened and we're almost ready to launch.

Still here!

2009-01-19T19:24:00.002-05:00

Just in case there are one or two people who check to see if this blog is still alive, yes it is. I'm doing an overhaul of my use of time and it should result in more stuff here. There will definitely be more posts in the next few days (the next post will explain why).

Covey words of wisdom

2008-11-18T20:31:00.001-05:00

I'm going to become a complete Stephen Covey groupie at the rate I'm going. First, I arranged a Franklin Covey time management seminar for my leadership team. Then I purchased a Franklin Covey planner designed around "The 7 habits of highly effective people." Now, a full month behind, I'm getting to the October book in IAAP President Barb Horton's book club - the aforementioned "7 Habits." I'm just barely into the chapter on the first habit, "Being Proactive." Early in the chapter, Covey discusses how being proactive is taking responsibility for your own actions, and not letting your circumstances or others determine your path. Let me quote him directly:

"It is our willing permission, our consent to what happens to us, that hurts us far more than what happens to us in the first place. I admit this is very hard to accept emotionally, especially if we have had years and years of explaining our misery in the name of circumstance or someone else's behavior. But until a person can say deeply and honestly, 'I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday,' that person cannot say, 'I choose otherwise.'

This is probably the most powerful, and empowering, statement I have ever seen in print. Although I'd like to think I am not one to blame my position on the actions of others, I know I can fall back on the crutch of "the hand life dealt me" - blaming my lack of development on circumstances.

The first step in solving any problem is defining the problem. This one paragraph has done that for me. I can't wait to see what the rest of the book brings!

We sure could use some good news, couldn't we?

2008-11-17T19:00:00.002-05:00

As the effort to get the last few needed people signed up to start the new IAAP chapter continue, I have to be more patient than I'm used to being. The economy is so rotten right now that asking anyone for money is risky business. It seems like forever since we got any real positive news. Even at my company, which appears to be healthy and has plenty of liquidity, had a terrible 3rd quarter. We've been asked to give extra pause before we spend any money to make sure we are being the most efficient with company dollars as possible.

I do think we have reason to hope. Although I did not vote for Barack Obama, I was extremely impressed with his interview on 60 Minutes this past Sunday. He completely passed on the invitation to call the nation's current financial leaders idiots (I have called them that many times). He appears level-headed and well-equipped to deal with the partisan hysterics that will be lobbed at him once he's sworn in. Perhaps this really will end up being the change we need.

Real progress on the new chapter

2008-11-17T18:53:00.002-05:00

The efforts to establish the Charlotte Center City of IAAP continue, and with real progress. We now have 10 paid members ready to go. Only need 5 more. I've been harassing my friends to beseech the Lord, Old Testament-style - pray, go out back, chop down a tree, build an altar, burn some incense, pray some more. We will be having lunch as a group next Tuesday. I'm really hoping those last 5 will have paid up so we can pick a chartering date.

We already have tons of ideas for speakers for meetings, fundraising, and recruiting. Everyone is getting along great. Once we get going, everyone else better put on their track shoes if they want to keep up with us!

I didn't know you could do that!

2008-11-17T18:37:00.003-05:00

If the question is asked, "Are you always up to date on the latest technology?" the answer is, sometimes. I would say I'm in the middle of the road. I'm almost never the first one to get the latest gadget, but once I get it I adapt quickly. I'm also as unlikely to be the last to get a new gadget as I am to be the first.

So, I suspect the "light bulb switching on" experiences I had the first week of November will be news to some, while others may say, "Dude, what took you so long to figure that out?" Boss Man asked me to pull together a time management class for him and his direct reports, including me. We added a few people one more level down the org chart to make it worthwhile cost-wise, and we all gathered in Cincinnati for the class. You have probably heard of it - "FOCUS: Achieving Your Highest Priorities" from Franklin Covey. They have several versions of the class, and we took the one that is Outlook-based. Before you report to class, you do an assessment that graphs for you how much time you are spending on truly urgent/important items. In class you spend some time defining urgent and important and their opposites. The importance of daily and weekly planning is laid out in a practical manner. And my favorite - we learned some tips on maximizing the time management tools in Outlook. I had no idea that you could combine the calendar and the task pane, but you can! We also went through how to add categories to tasks, such as an ABC category. Then you label your tasks A, B, or C, then number the tasks within each letter according to priority. Then you can sort by ABC and your tasks show up in the order they need to be completed. Those simple changes have made my daily planning so much easier to do that I'm actually doing it every day.

If anyone finds themselves needing to organize a class, I highly recommend Franklin Covey. And our instructor, Sydne (pronounced Sidney) Kalet was fabulous. Ask for her if you can get her! :-)

Now that I have some tools to get my life in order, perhaps I'll get everything done and have time to read and blog more often.

Why worry, it's only money

2008-10-10T06:39:00.001-04:00

Jumping in here to debunk any rumors that I am dead...

Watching the financial world go completely berserk has been fascinating, made even moreso by the media. I sure would like to see something, anything, reported on without a gigantic serving of hyperbole covering the story.

After hurricane Ike, the Colonial Pipeline was very slow to ramp back up. Problem with that is that is the pipeline that supplies Charlotte with about 70% of its gasoline. Supplies started to dry up and lines at gas stations began to lengthen. Now here come Charlotte's 5 TV stations, 20 or so radio stations, and the local rag the Charlotte Observer (or the Charlotte Disturber, as a lot of locals call it), all screaming bloody murder that lines are long and, heaven forbid, some stations might actually run out of gas. Naturally, everyone in town completely freaks out and runs out searching for gas, even if they had 3/4 of a tank. People lined up not only to top off, but to fill gas cans they brought with them. This left people further back in line POed and a few physical confrentations arose. Things have returned to normal, but everyone is saying around the water cooler, "Gee, if the news outlets hadn't have freaked out, the people probably wouldn't have either." I agree.

I see thiss in the financial world also. I have always said I thought that in order to be employed on the floor of the stock exchange, you have to take an exam to prove you have bipolar disorder. You can only work there if a change in wind direction completely freaks you out and sends you into a meltdown. The media is fueling the fire.

In contrast, there's my new boss. As the Dow Jones has lost 40% of its value in the last year, he's been taking it in stride, knowing it will eventually bounce back. When I had a meeting with him this week, he mentioned that he sent a text message to his son, saying, "Well, I lost $100K yesterday." He's been investing in his 401k for over 30 years, so he's saved up a good bit and has seen all these ups and downs enough to know the ups always outnumber the downs, and the ups end up being to a stronger degree than the downs. So he knows we'll all be OK, eventually.
If only the news outlets and traders on the floor could be as calm....

From off the top of my head, and other strange places IV

2008-09-09T20:59:00.002-04:00

Question to ponder: Which is more dangerous, a shark that smells blood in the water, or an admin who has had her/his supply catalog stolen? I'm betting the farm on the admin.
A couple years back, while longing for a good snow, I started calling Charlotte "the doughnut hole" because every time a snow approached us, it died before it got here, and then manage to regenerate itself once it passed us by. I'm starting to feel that way again with these tropical storms. We didn't get anything from Fay until it finished taking that hard left turn at Florida and going all the way to Texas before being forced back east over us. We got nothing from Hanna and looks like we will get nothing from Ike. No one ever wants a deadly storm, but until Fay we were 20 inches short of rain in the last year and a half. Another good soaking from tropical storm leftovers would do us a world of good.
Another typical Panthers game to open the season. These guys absolutely refuse to blow anyone out. Only last-second wins apply here. Gonna send us die-hards to an early grave.
Answer to another question you've been pondering: Yes, the way to a man's heart IS through his stomach. Buffalo wings, pizza (meat toppings only), beer, and large amounts of chocolate light the way best.

What is Professionalism?

2008-09-09T20:44:00.002-04:00

IAAP members know President Horton is conducting a book club - each month we read a book and there is a section of the forum on the IAAP website to discuss the book. As always, I'm grossly behind on my reading - the discussion for the first book closes next Monday, and I'm barely through chapter 1. But the book - Becoming a Person of Influence by John Maxwell and Jim Dorman - is extremely interesting. It got me to thinking about professionalism - a term that is pretty readily tossed around, including by me. The characteristics Maxwell & Dorman list that exist in people of influence - integrity, nurturing, faith in people, listening, understanding, etc. - are much the same thing we look for when deciding if someone is acting professional or not. It really boils down to how you treat people. The better you treat people, the more influence you will have with them.

Now, if I can manage to get the rest of this book read before the book club moves on to the next one....

The new gig and the new chapter

2008-09-09T20:33:00.002-04:00

First week on the new job is going smoothly. The new boss said he can't give me much direction because he's tied up working out logistics for the team retreat next week. I said that's OK; I already have my own list of action items to take care of. He likes that I can find work to do without direction. I think, well duh, I'm not getting paid to lounge around, I'm a professional over here! The team is very friendly. I had lunch with my boss' boss' admin yesterday, getting a feel for the environment. I came away with some great tips on how to handle some of the... er, um, personalities on the floor. I'm really looking forward to getting to know everyone on the retreat next week and working with them.

IAAP CHARLOTTE CENTER CITY CHAPTER UPDATE: Today was a VERY good day. I met with some admins from one of Charlotte's mega-banks to give them information about the new chapter. When I got done speaking, they were not only receptive, but downright enthusiastic. The chapter's next organizational meeting is September 23, and my goal is to leave that meeting with 15 checks in my hand. I think I have a very good shot of pulling that off. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Moving on!

2008-09-03T21:19:00.002-04:00

I got the call from the Cincinnati hiring manager with an offer. I accpeted, and the behind-the-scenes HR stuff got rolling. With my replacement on the current job already in place, I'll be able to transition quickly. I'll begin reporting to the new boss on Monday. Still working out the details on moving up 8 floors and such. I'm terribly excited! It's a load off my mind to have this taken care of.

Now it's on to the exciting challenge of working in a brand-new position. I'm not bound by what the last admin did, or any other such nonsense. The job will change and evolve over time, and I'm really looking forward to that. The new group is quite laid-back and informal (big change from the current environment).

I foresee my biggest challenge as adjusting to being able to make mistakes. In the group I'm leaving, all mistakes are seen as catastrophes. The new group, as laid-back as they are, are the type that say, "Hey, let's try it this way," and if it blows up in their face, they'll say, "Well, let's try a different way next time," and move on. That is going to be an adjustment for me. But that's a good problem to have!

The "Pins & Needles" portion of the process

2008-09-02T19:29:00.002-04:00

Hope everyone had a great long weekend. I had my fantasy football draft (I WILL RULE THE WORLD WITH THIS TEAM!!) and some Cracker Barrel dinner with some friends to keep my mind away from the 1,000,000-pound elephant in my room.

I emailed my old boss after returning from Cincinnati, saying Jeff had a great poker face and I had no clue how I did. She said, "Must have been good. Expect some good news after he goes through the HR stuff."

Then this morning, 2 events happened that led me to believe I'm all in. First my current boss told his new EA to update our team phone list to include her, and delete me. My guess is that he heard something from HR. Then one of my would-be teammates (who I worked with a couple years ago) pings me on the IM system and says, "I'm hearing good things!" I said, "You're hearing more than me. What do you hear?" She says she hears paperwork is being pushed, in spite of the hiring manager being out of the office through today for vacation time.

I got a surprise call from HR last week requesting my presence to interview for a completely different job - as an Executive Assistant - I applied for a few weeks back. That is Thursday morning. If I hear nothing on Wednesday on this Project Controls job, I'll go ahead and go to the EA interview just to keep my bases covered. But if they offer the job tomorrow, I'll take it and cancel the other interview, in spite of the fact that the EA job is a higher rank. I feel really good about the Project Controls group and that is my first choice.

In the meantime, I have a massive chest cold and can't sleep worth a crap, as if the anticipation isn't insomnia-creating enough. Another great gift of air travel.

To answer a few questions that have been lobbed my way: This job will be based in Charlotte, even though I will be supporting 1 person in Charlotte and 4 in Cincinnati. That is because Ohio, and Cincinnati in particular, is the mother of all union workplaces. Basing the job in Charlotte will prevent the company from having to deal with the administrative headaches of adding another employee to the union ranks. Fine with me. I have nothing nice to say about unions anyway. I will become one of those regular business travelers though. I would be expected to go to Cincy at least once a month, for between 2-5 days at a time. Fine with me there also. I'd get to see my sister regularly, and with a Hilton hotel within 4 blocks of the office, I will rack up Hilton HHonors points at such an alarming rate that Paris will get worried I'm going to steal her inheritance.

This proves my family ain't normal

2008-09-02T19:14:00.003-04:00

Now, we all know I couldn't just simply fly somewhere and back and be done with it, now could I?

I know y'all heard about the FAA computer snafu last week (see http://news.yahoo.com/story//ap/20080827/ap_on_bi_ge/faa_communication_breakdown ). I, of course, was right in the middle of that. My plane to Cincinnati was delayed an hour while our flight plan was manually fed into the system. (I had visions of some 1,000-year-old bureaucrat typing on a computer using only his index fingers.) Leave it to me to crash the entire eastern half of the aviation system. I just can't understand why my wife thinks my family is normal.

Eventually we made it though. I met up with my sister, we went to a nearby Skyline Chili and spent the entire evening catching up. Next morning I made my way over to my company offices and met the hiring manager for the job I seek. We spent most of the morning together. He has one heck of a poker face. I left thinking I answered every conceivable question, but not convinced I had landed the job. He says he'll be traveling Thursday and on vacation Friday - Tuesday, so I'll hear after that.

Incredibly, the flight back was seamless. In fact, I got an earlier flight and got back to Charlotte an hour and a half early.

Who wants to bet that the next time I fly, my flight will be delayed due to the trickle-down effect from the blizzard in Miami?????

Business Travel... woo-hoo!

2008-08-25T21:04:00.002-04:00

In my career, I have yet to hold a position that required any regular business travel. There's a good chance that's about to change. After Boss Man concluded I wasn't the best fit for his job, the serach began to find me another position in the company. Looks like I have found one, working with someone who was my supervisor about 4 years back. Her current manager needs an admin to support him and his 4 direct reports. Of the 5 people I would support, 4 are based in Cincinnati. So, I would be expected to spend a few days a month in the Cincinnati offices but I would continue to be based in Charlotte. I talked to the boss by phone week before last, had breakfast with my old boss, and met 2 of the remaining 3 last Thursday (1 guy couldn't make the trip so he was in on the interview by phone). Tomorrow, I will fly to Cincinnati to meet the remaining potential teammates and spend some time with the hiring manager. My old boss says I'm pretty much in, unless I make a complete idiot of myself on this trip. Even if I am an idiot, I know how to fake it real good, so I'm not worried about me.

What I am worried about is the travel. The remains of tropical storm Fay are FINALLY making their way into the Charlotte area (we've been praying for some good rain from this thing to break the drought). Problem is, the rain is getting here just in time to make life a living hell for anyone traveling by air on Tuesday or Wednesday. Charlotte, for all that's right about it, struggles at the airport. The biggest culprit is US Airways, which has 80% of all Charlotte flights. US Scare-ways, as I like to call them, is among the world's worst at on-time performance as well as baggage handling. So I expect the odds of my flights either direction being on time are somewhere between zero and none. Good thing I'm flying at 2:45 on Tuesday and my meeting isn't until 9 AM Wednesday. Of course, I don't want anything to spoil my plans to meet my sister and get some Skyline chili!!!!!!!! And of course, those that have been reading since the first post of this blog know about my mis-adventures getting back from New Orleans.

Wish me luck. Yes, both the job and the travel. :-)

Chapter building, reading list stress

2008-08-18T19:21:00.003-04:00

The informational meeting for our new chapter went well, if only sparsely attended. I spent a great deal of time over the past week checking in with prospective charter members as well as our Division's new chapter building committee. Things look good; we have about 10 people who have given their word to join, and at least another 6 or 7 that are highly enthusiastic. Three people have told me they are very interested but can't commit now. I appreciated that. One of the quirks about living in the South that has always bugged me is people being willing to lie to spare people's feelings - like when you ask them to do something, and they enthusiastically promise to do it, when they have aboslutely no intention whatsoever of doing it. But rather than saying that, they'll tell you what you want to hear and then blow you off later. Drives me nuts. Anyway, I have another group of prospective members to follow up with this week. I still have dreams of a September chartering. I'm always open to ideas on how to get folks from talking about writing that check to actually writing it. I'm quite weak in that area.

Another area I am terribly weak at is reading. Oh, I can read just fine, as good as anyone. It's actually opening the book and doing the reading that is so difficult. Consequently, my reading pile is almost as tall as me. (Yeah, I know - short as you are, J, how bad can that be? Heard that one coming a long ways away.)

I want to participate in Barb Horton's book club and just bought the first 3 books at Amazon.com. I bought Simon Bailey's book at Convention, since I missed half his keynote address doing convention volunteer stuff. I read Laura Stack's first 2 books and loved them so much I bought her third when it came out in January, but haven't read it yet. I bought Joan Burge's book on becoming an inner circle executive assistant at the Reno convention and haven't read that either. There are 2 spiritual books on my desk also crying out for attention. I hardly ever get to visit these fabulous blogs over on the right-hand side of the page. And then there's all these Dilbert collections to read.

GOOD GRIEF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Anybody know of a good speed reading class?

New IAAP chapter coming soon!

2008-08-11T18:56:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow we're having another informational meeting for prospective members of the soon-to-be-chartered IAAP Charlotte Center City chapter. Allow me to get newcomers up to speed...

About 3 1/2 years ago, I was a member of a chapter and serving on the board. Another board member and I talked a few times about how the experience of being in this chapter had not being working as we had hoped when first joining years earlier. The chapter met in the southwest section of town, a challenge for many with ever-lengthening commutes and rising travel costs. One of us (can't remember which one) mused, "Wonder why we don't have a chapter downtown?" My fellow board member said, "Well, let's start one. There's plenty of admins downtown to make a good-sized chapter." So she resigned her position on the board and announced she was going to start up a new chapter downtown. I followed suit soon after, announcing I would join the downtown effort.

We started marketing ourselves and soon had about a dozen people express serious interest. However, only 1 person filled out an application. Many said they would join once the chapter was formed, but to form the chapter you need 15 PAID members. There was a mild dispute over when meetings would take place - after work vs. lunchtime. Interest began to wane. Then my co-founder and I both went through some major life events - job changes, severe health challenges, and family concerns. The dream of the new chapter was on life support, barely breathing.

You know how it is often said, "I'd rather be lucky than good"? Well, this spring we had a wonderful stroke of luck. My boss, who is actively involved with the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce, gave me the names of some executives at The Shaw Group, a Louisiana-based company that has a large presence in Charlotte, and who is assisting Duke Energy by supplying engineering and construction for some new power plants being built. Boss Man needed to meet with a few Shaw executives to discuss some Chamber-related matters. So I began the typical communication trying to get 4 or 5 executives in the same room at the same time. One of the Shaw admins I was emailing with had "CAP" after her name. Once we had the meeting set up, I went back and told her I was sitting for the CAP in May, and did she have any advice for me. She gave me her CDs with practice questions and mock exams. I asked her if she was in IAAP, and she said yes, The Shaw Group had a corporate chapter, but it was disbanding and the 11 or so in Charlotte were looking to stay in IAAP, but that their memberships were to expire at the end of August. It took all the restraint I could muster to keep from jumping up on my desk and doing a charismatic happy dance. "I have a place for you folks to land," I told her. So I met a couple of them for lunch to see where they stood. I also asked for the lists of members-at-large from our division and district from the division' s new chapter building committee chair. I found some folks on those lists that worked in downtown Charlotte, as well as a couple of people in my company that expressed interest in the offort. One of them filled out an online application and joined IAAP, and immediately set about recruiting people.

I set up an informational meeting in mid-July, and only some of the Shaw folks could make it, but it was very promising. Upon returning from International Convention in New Orleans, I moved quickly to set up another meeting. The new member from my company created a tri-fold flyer and put a few copies on our bulletin board outside the cafeteria last week. Two colleagues have already called me asking for more details. There will probably be a dozen people at the informational meeting tomorrow.

So now, we are back to the point where we were 2 1/2 years ago - lots of momentum and eager prospects ready to go. Now the challenge - how to motivate the prospects to actually submit an application (read: plunk down some money for dues). We weren't able to get over this hump before. I want to get this airplane off the ground so bad I can taste jet fuel. Keep your fingers crossed for us. And if you want to drop a comment with advice on how to motivate folks, feel free!

(Also, I'm not opposed if you want to petition the heavens Old Testament-style - chop down a tree, build an altar, burn incense, chant supplications to the angels, etc.)

Conflict Management

2008-08-08T21:32:00.004-04:00

This is the "here are the problems I'm dealing with" portion of the blog. ;-) I have 2 acquaintences I'm in conflict with and am not sure how to navigate the mine field.

Before I get to that, an observation about me from the new EA... In the last post where I mentioned that assisting with the transition was the right thing to do because not doing so only hurts the new person, and she hasn't done anything to me - I told one of these 2 folks I'm having problems with that story, with the new EA present. She later said she deeply appreciated me standing up for her and looking out for her. She added that she thought I was a bit too nice in our office, and as a result allowed people to walk all over me. She said that she had heard from several sources, "to support this VP, you have to have a very thick skin and be able to push back on him" She said that working side-by-side with me the last few weeks, she believes that I need to stand up for myself more.

I can see the point and believe there is some merit to it. Although I'm not sure it's completely accurate, I said I would take her observations to heart and consider how I could change that. Like I'm fond of saying, I think that's the professional thing to do - listen to others' opinon, even if it's critical, and examine it for whatever truth might be in there and act on it. Being the Southern Belle that she is, she kept saying, "Please don't think I'm being mean!" I assured her I didn't think that way, that I appreciated the feedback. And I did - it's always nice to get good feedback from a kind person who isn't giving you a performance appraisal while offering such feedback. I'm also attempting to use that type of mindset to work with these folks I'm having trouble with.

Now, on to the acquaintences. I'll call them "The Defender" and "The Wet Blanket." Defender is similar to the reference in my last post that is in conflict with some other admins. Defender seems to approach new relationships like a boxer entering the ring with the hands up guarding the face, ready to strike. If you offer constructive criticism, Defender usually interrupts you in mid-sentence to provide perfect defenses for the behavior. I tried to offer some gentle, constructive criticism recently, and after 3 or 4 times getting interrupted with defenses, I gave up. At a recent event, Defender and another person were going back and forth, and the tension was mounting. Everyone in the room could feel it. I attempted to defuse the situation by making a wise crack about technology that never works, which was the source of the conflict. No one bought it - everyone just looked at me like I was a complete idiot. Oh, well, I tried!

Then there is Wet Blanket, another person I interact frequently with. When you want to try something new, WB can quickly and eloquently explain why there is no way that will ever work. I haven't heard a new idea yet that WB wasn't able to shoot down in a matter of seconds. Complicating the matter further is that WB is pretty emotionally sensitive. Good things are said, like "emotions don't matter," but if you attempt to present alternatives to what has always been done, WB reacts as if she believes you have just hurled insults.

Of course, putting all this out there makes me sound like a defender and wet blanket myself. I wish I could think of other ways to put out there what I'm trying to work through. I think very highly of both of these people and consider them friends. But.... they just each have this one thing that makes them a challenge to interact with. Since both of them tend to take even constructive criticism personally, I don't know how I can help them. And that goes back to the new EA's constructive criticism of me, that I let people take advantage of me.

What it all boils down to is conflict avoidance - I'm the world's foremost expert at it. With these folks, I would just as soon let them be, and just plow through the very difficult waters of working with them as needed without saying anything. But that's not going to do any of us any good. It will just make me need stronger blood pressure and sleeping pills than I'm taking now.

What are your thoughts?

Office politics

2008-08-08T20:30:00.007-04:00

Some folks who visit me here know the story of my current job, but here's the Reader's Digest version for newcomers. I started in my current role in March 07. This is my first job supporting a single executive (to this point in my career I have only supported teams). My VP moves 1,000 miles an hour all the time, and he pounds the 73 people in his department very hard and works them to death. He's also among the most friendly and generous people you'll ever meet - the classic Jekyl & Hyde. After almost a year with him, he decided I wasn't the right fit for the job. He called in the HR guy and they told me they were going to find me another job within the company and bring someone else in to be his EA. Boss Man committed that if my replacement was found before another job for me was found, that I would remain in his department backing up the new EA and filling in gaps of support for his other direct reports as needed. I was OK with the arrangement and offered to help wherever necessary to select or train the new EA. I made a conscious decision to be as big of a help as I could, in spite of the fact that I was, for all intents and purposes, being fired from this position but not from the company. My reasoning was this: I'm a member of IAAP, and hold the CPS and CAP ratings, and the "P" in every one of those acronyms stands for "Professional." Making sure the VP and the rest of the department have as painless a transition as possible, and also getting the new EA in a position where she/he can succeed, is the professional thing to do. Countless times in the past 3 months, I have been doing something to prepare for the transition and people have said, "The VP has treated you so horribly. Why are you working so hard to make this easy for him? Why not just say 'screw him'?" The answer to that is that such actions would not hurt the VP, they would hurt the new EA, because the VP is still going to expect the new EA to get things done and won't accept "I'm new here" or "James didn't leave me any guidance" as an excuse. The new EA hasn't done anything to me, so why should I make it harder on her?

So I've been training this new EA, who is new to our company, coming from the banking industry. Calling Charlotte "Banktown" is gaining traction, as this is the second largest banking center, behind New York and just ahead of San Francisco, and the HQ city of the #2 and #4 banks (based on dollar value of total assets). I was in the banking industry at the start of my career and enjoyed it for the most part.

We were talking about office politics the other day, and the new kid says she can't possibly imagine more intense office politics than at the big bank she just left. I said no, it's more intense here. The banking industry has bigger egos, but this company is much more politically-driven. An example of what I mean is that at the bank, position is everything. Once you advance to the point that you have a workstation with a door, you can take that as a license to treat those who do not have a door on their workstation as if they are a lower life form than you are. I don't see that in my company. The Group Executives (the cats who report to the CEO) are very friendly and open. If you run into one of them in the halls, they will say an enthusiastic hello. If you're on the elevator with them, they'll talk, and maybe even cut up with you a little. I don't believe any large company has better people at the top than we have here. But it's all about alliances. If the exec you support needs a meeting with another exec, you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting the meeting if the EA has a beef with you. As an admin, you have to invest a lot of time schmoozing the higher-ranking admins, getting on their good side. You really need to do that first, even before you dive into learning your new position. And once another assistant perceives you have mistreated her/him, your goose is cooked, and I mean forever. These folk hold grudges better than anyone else I have ever met. It's on display in my business unit. The BU I'm in is headed by a President, who has 4 VPs reporting to her. There's a total of about 165 people in the group, and there are 6 admins. Right now, there is a good deal of infighting, back-stabbing and gossip going on among the admins. One EA has gotten on the bad side of 2 of the others, and both sides are trying to get the other EAs to align with them against the other camp. It's quite repulsive, to be honest.

So who else has an "office politics" story? How do you navigate the waters?

From off the top of my head, and other strange places III

2008-08-05T21:50:00.002-04:00

Why is it you always feel like you need a vacation when getting back from vacation?
Speaking of needing a vacation from vacation, the Mrs. and I barely made it to church Sunday, we were both so tired. The Mrs. is quite the celebrity in our church, since she has cerebral palsy, uses a wheelchair to get around, and yet is always so sunny, perky and outgoing (ugh!). As usual, people were practically stepping on my head to get to her to say hello to her. When at IAAP convention I'm an Oprah-like celebrity. Now I'm back to the real world, back to being Steadman. One of these days I'm just going to say the heck with it and change my name to AnJanette's Husband - first name "AnJanette" last name "Husband."
How does a 2-pound box of chocolates make you gain 5 pounds?
Don't you just love 2-faced people? There are a couple of these in my office. I get back to work this week to hear that I was the subject of some unflattering office gossip. My response was, basically, "whatever." Someone asked if I was upset. "No," I replied. "These folks talk about other people to me when the people aren't there, so why shouldn't I expect them to talk about me when I'm not here? Doesn't matter to me what they say about me - tomorrow morning, the sun will come up right on schedule." I'm too old and life's too short to be consumed with what other people think of me.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we invent one piece of corporate office technology that actually WORKS?????????????
If you watch "Dateline NBC" you know one of the hosts claims to be named Stone Phillips. Here in Charlotte, we have a weatherman at one of the local TV stations who claims his real name is Larry Sprinkle. I'm not buying it, from either one of them.

The blog lives on!

2008-08-02T18:32:00.002-04:00

IAAP Convention is finished, but the running of my mouth is not. Far from it. I will continue to write about my chosen profession, my life as a rare male within it, and anything else that comes to mind.

As you can see, I am also still playing around with the layout, looing for one I really like. I'm glad this site has about 47,000 different templates to chose from. :-) I'm getting around to adding links to other bloggers and sites that I have found useful. Feel free to suggest more.

Oh, yeah, I keep forgetting to tell everyone... My digital camera sprouted legs and walked off on me last Saturday morning, pretty much right after I got my convention registration materials. So my accounts of convention will not be accompanied by pics, unless anyone has any of me they want to send along.

What is this place?? Oh, yeah, it's my house.

2008-08-01T18:58:00.003-04:00

Well, a mere 29.5 hours after checking out of my New Orleans hotel, I finally walked through my own front door. I must give props to American Airlines for taking good care of me during my extra day. The New Orleans Airport Hilton is a very nice place, they gave us a $20 meal voucher which took care of dinner, and the AA employees at MSY were very careful to be nice to me. (I wonder what causes that?) The added bonus was getting to spend some time with Celine and Mel, natives of northwest Washington, for the first time. We had dinner and breakfast together and departed New Orleans from gates next to each other. Super-cool people. We saw a number of other stranded convention attendees, easily identifiable by the red, white and black tote bags we all got. It must have been amusing for others to see people moving through the airport, spotting an IAAP convention bag and running over to greet each other, even if it was amongst total strangers. More of that special admin bond!

The flight from NO to St. Louis was about as perfect as a 21st centrury plane flight can be. We got there 30 minutes early. Flying in, I could just barely see the arch. If only I could have captured on film 50 tourists leaning over each other trying to look out of those small airplane windows to see a landmark! Going from St. Louis to Charlotte was a bit trickier, since they oversold the flight by 3 seats. But they got their 3 volunteers to stay behind (NOT including me) and we got to Charlotte only a couple minutes behind schedule. I caught the city bus downtown and the express bus out to my street, and here I am.

The fabulous New Orleans food absolutely destroyed my recent NutriSystem success. I'm up 14 pounds. The adult beverages are probably more to blame than the food, but I'm still blaming the food. That's my lie, and I'm sticking to it.

I hope everyone that attended the fabulous convention made it home OK. Those that didn't make it, I hope you never have to go through what we displaced travelers had to go through. Like I said, they treated us OK, but it sure was exhausting.

A little more "minority" perspective

2008-07-31T23:11:00.000-04:00

We all toss a lot of jokes around about it, but it really is fascinating to be one of only about 5% of an entire profession. When I tell people what I do, it almost always takes them by surprise. And when I tell them how long I have been at it, the surprise level rises. That part I believe is gender-neutral; I think most people see being an admin as something you do before going on to something else, something like a college kid who is working at a car wash now but expects to be a marketing executive in a few years. But if you get in a good situation, this is a pretty cool way to make a living. It's impossible to get rich doing this, but if you do it long and well enough, you can make out all right. It's great to be working with a person or group that you contribute to helping them succeed. Yeah, it's the boss who gets the monster bonus and lots of recognition from the senior management, but it's satisfying to know that without me, he absolutely never would have had that presentation he made that looked so great, because I know the boss has no clue whatsoever how to insert media clips and clip art, nor does he have a clue how to refill the stapler. In the group I work for, there are 5 administrative people directly or indirectly taking care of 73 other people. When the 5 of us are doing well, the others can do what they do best, and at the end of the year we can have our year-end banquet where everybody gets to pat themselves on the back because we steamrolled over our incentive targets and brought ridiculous levels of revenue to the company, again! In my group, I also have the satisfaction of knowing that the other 68 people who aren't admins are quite aware of our contribution and don't hesitate to thank us. The big boss is tough to work for - everyone in the whole department agrees with that - but a stickler like him is good at offering thanks when he gets the help he needs. So when people ask me, "OK, so what are you planning to do to move up from being an assistant?" I ask, "So what's wrong with being an assistant?" Before they can answer, I answer for them - "not a darn thing!" :-)

People also ask, what's it like to work with an army of women? To be honest, the only time I really consciously think about it is when I'm having lunch with other admins or other female co-workers. Why then? Because women can be so funny at ordering time. I don't think I've met a woman yet who can't turn ordering lunch into a Crocodile Dundee adventure. You want the whole dadgum meal on the side, with at least 2 substitutions. Just cracks me up! :-))

But seriously... I really don't think about it all that much; I think women are more conscious of a male admin than a male is about the female admins. Not that we object to that or anything. The sort of celebrity that the male admins have at IAAP convention is just fine with us. My friend David and I are always in a bit of a friendly competition to see who can have the biggest female entourage at any given event. But overall, I just enjoy building working relationships and friendships with people who know what I'm dealing with in the office and can help me out when I'm stuck, and knowing I can do the same for them. And I certainly couldn't possibly imagine life without my IAAP friends.

From off the top of my head, and other strange places II

2008-07-31T18:59:00.000-04:00

These old-school airlines crack me up. Expenses (mainly fuel) keep going up and up, and to help their revenue keep pace, they have decided the best way to do that is to reduce the number of planes that fly as well as the number of employees on the ground to help customers. As irritated as I was to be standing in a 2-hour line to get a new flight, I can't imagine how the ONE ticket agent felt. Yes, the ONE ticket agent who had to deal with 150 disgruntled customers. Has it not occurred to anyone to explore the possibility of maybe keeping more planes flying but reducing the number of seats in them? Even if that didn't change the revenue all that much, it sure would make flying more comfortable for the 98% of us who are not 5-2, 111 pound narrow-framed females that every airplane seat is designed for. All stadium seats and hotel conference room chairs are designed for that type person also. Again, who designed this mess?
I wonder why they announce, "your seat cushion can be used as a flotation device" when flying over Arizona or Nebraska...
I spent last Saturday afternoon between tours with Adrienne & Voncile, IAAP friends from Atlanta (but I've forgiven them for that). Memo to any other male admins out there: if you have free time and spend it with 2 or more women, rest assured you will spend that free time window shopping. That allows you to see some fascinating things, such as 4-inch high-heeled shoes. Since my wife uses a wheelchair to get around and only wears sneakers most of the time, I have never had a reason to look at other shoes much. These 4-inchers I was looking at amazed me. You literally have to bend your foot in half the wrong way to wear these things. On top of all that, these were some really wild colors - hot pink, leave-you-blind gold, etc. "Why would anyone wear these," I asked. "Well, if you dance on a pole for a living, these are part of the required uniform," was Adrienne's quick answer. Anybody that actually wears them, God help you and your podiatrist bill.
Who are those circus clowns wearing Cleveland Indians uniforms? And when will the real Indians be released from their captors so they can play again? The circus clowns are painful to watch.

Going home... NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2008-07-31T18:44:00.000-04:00

The regular readers already know about my misadventure getting from Charlotte to New Orleans. The trip back will end up making the trip here look like child's play.

With an entire free morning on my hands, I left my Country Inn & Suites room and went down to the Hilton for a while. I managed to make up for missing almost all of my friends at the banquet by seeing a few of them leave the post-convention workshops and giving them proper goodbyes. I checked out of the hotel and hopped a cab to the airport. Got there in plenty of time, ran into yet another friend I missed at the banquet, grabbed a bite from a concession stand and headed to my gate. Oops - FLIGHT CANCELLED DUE TO MECHANICAL FAILURE. Oh, great! So now it's over to baggage claim to reclaim checked luggage and back to the ticket counter to try to get another flight. While in line, I get an automated phone call from AA stating they have re-booked me on another flight - for Friday morning. Wonderful, I was supposed to go back to work in the morning. Other people around me are calling AA to see what they can do. Apparently, absolutely every seat on every airplane on every airline to every city that New Orleans serves has already been sold. (What raving moron designed this business model the legacy airlines are using, anyway???) By the time I get to the ticket counter, I have been in line for well over 2 hours andmy knees are in agony similar to what they were Monday after standing up as a page and going through Office Expo and being on my feet all day. Maybe that's it - the airlines figure, herd the angry displaced customers into a line, give them ONE ticket agent to serve them, and by the time they get to the counter they are so exhausted they will take whatever bone they throw at you. If that's the case, it worked on me. I took the 10 AM Friday flight, and AA gave me a voucher for a room at the Hilton New Orleans Airport and a $20 food voucher. That won't even be enough to pay for the booze, but I'll take it. The hotel is very nice.

So it looks like I'll be in Louisiana one more day. Called a counterpart in the office and asked her to send a note to the team that I will be in on Monday. I'll probably work on actual work stuff this evening and in the morning and perhaps get around to adding more details to some of my previous posts and give everyone a preview of other coming attractions. Never a dull moment when you're anywhere near me!

I can't believe it's over already!

2008-07-30T23:45:00.000-04:00

This is the worst part of convention - the end. I don't think I have done anywhere near a good enough job of conveying the experience to those that aren't here. You spend this week bonding with people who completely understand the issues you face in the office, you become friends so fast you feel like you've known people for decades when you've only known them for days, and quite frankly, having to part company is such a downer. I'm feeling worse than usual this year, because I managed to not see almost all of my closest friends at the banquet and I won't get to say goodbye to them, which REALLY stinks.

Well, at least I can do something virtually. Patti, Nancy, Adrienne, Voncile, Anita, Barbara, Vanessa, Sheila, Marie, Lynn, Mary Gayle, Lynda, Davondra, Mary B., Judy Y., Michele V., Donna - I love you bunches and thank you for your friendship. Melissa, Tina, David, Roberta - thanks mucho to you for the wise counsel you gave me this week. And to LaTonya (aka The AdminPro on the IAAP forums), I wish I got to meet you before the end of the convention. We need to see more of each other! And to those who are sitting there thinking, "Now why didn't that inconsiderate fool mention my name?" - the answer is that I have the memory of a dead ant and I'm bound to leave someone out. Please accept my apologies.

The end of convention doesn't mean an end to the blog. I'm going to keep blabbering about all knids of stuff. I probably won't post again until the weekend, but keep me in your list of bookmarks. :-) Tomorrow will be another day of travel, and like an idiot, I'm going to work on Friday. Well, once I get back to work I might be able to get some sleep!

Convention educational workshops

2008-07-30T18:51:00.001-04:00

Here's the list of workshops I took at convention this year, in chronological order:

Tips & Tricks on Meeting Planning (Tue)
Learn How to Get Organized (Tue)
Working at the Speed of Tomorrow (Wed)
There's No Such Thing As Multi-Peopleing (Wed)
We Need To Change. You Go First. (Wed)
Understanding What Your Customer Wants (Wed)
Email Management (Wed)

After the close of the third business session (and hopefully for the attendees, a little lunch), educational workshops take over convention. I attended 2 classes Tuesday afternoon and five on Wednesday.

The first class was on meeting planning. I have no idea if I will be doing this or not once my job situation settles, but it's something admins are doing more and more of all the time. At my company, we have about half a dozen people who this is all they do, and so that group usually does a lot of the heavy lifting if I or one of my guys has to plan something big. But it's also something I find interesting. We went through some "meeting-eese" if you will, taking words you hear a lot and matching them up with definitions. We spent a good deal of time looking at RFPs - what they consist of, what to ask for, and how to save money whereever you can. It was a good class; too bad my body suddenly realized it had been averaging about 4 hours of sleep for 3 straight nights. I was having to fight off the nods big-time. But a very useful and interesting class.

Then it's on to the Pendaflex organization class. When I told my wife I was taking this class, she laughed at me. She's a total "fly by the seat of your pants" kind of person, and I appear absolutely anal in comparison. But compared to my boss, I'm a complete sloth. I believe there is no such thing as being too organized when you work for someone like that. Pendaflex execs are surprised that 40% of sales on hanging file folders is still that disgusting green. While their not going to turn away from the business, they emphasize colors in their presentations. It helps you keep subjects separate and makes things easier to find. (I agree; I have yellow, red, blue and purple hanging file folders myself.) One thing that made an impact was thier statement that piling is not a sin like many of us think it is. You ask are you a piler or a filer, and the pilers often look down and confess to being a piler like they are confessing to stealing a candy bar from the store. Well, Pendaflex has a line of products to make things easier for pilers to get to. I am sort of a hybrid piler-filer, and I'm going to look into their PileSmart stuff to see if I can get things more in shape in my space.

Wednesday morning brought 2 sessions with Dale McCoy, who I had never heard of before convention. He is a good early-morning speaker - he is not too loud and obnoxious, but is high-energy enough to keep you engaged. Working at the Speed of Tomorrow discussed the problem in the workplace as not that things are changing, but that things are changing faster than ever. There's No Such Thing As Multi-Peopleing clarified that you cannot treat people like tasks. There was a list of 8 desires typical office workers have. He asked us to rank them in order of importance. After just a few seconds, he revealed that it's a trick question. These were human desires, which you cannot rank in order of importance like you can tasks. That's the whole "multi-peopleing" problem - we expect humans and human behavior to fit in the same boxes we do tasks and inanimate objects, and it doesn't work. A very nice perspective that I look forward to including in my trip report to the boss. ;-)

The next 2 classes, "We need to change. You go first" and "Understanding what your customer really wants" weren't very good. The speaker (same one for both sessions) is a self-proclaimed stand-up comedian like me. But he's not anywhere near as funny as I am. He never really did get around to any actual seminar content in the first session. In the second session, there was again very little content but he told 2 stories - one about an experience he had as a Circuit City floor sales employee and one about experiences he had in trying to re-book flight son Northwest and Southwest Airlines - that gave great examples of how to treat customers, and they did not involve the tired old phrase "the customer is always right." The customer isn't always right, but he is always the customer.

The day concluded with Email management, taught by a consultant who knows a lot about technology but doesn't have the slightest concept of time. She ran 20 minutes over time in the session before mine, and ran over on ours as well. But she did have a lot of information to cover. I'm not sure I can apply much of what she presented; she believes in hard rules like only checking your email twice a day for an hour at a time. Darn near all the work I get comes by email. It is rare when any of the folks I support hand me hard copies of stuff and ask me to do something with it. But I come into the office every Monday morning with at least 50 emails in the box. I'll be doing some searching during the week next week to figure out how to apply her principles to my completely email-driven job responsibilities.

The Volunteer Experience

2008-07-30T18:34:00.000-04:00

Volunteering was a blast. This was my first time doing so, and now I think I'll do it every other year (the years that my wife doesn't come to convention with me). I worked as a page for the first 2 business sessions and took admission tickets from attendees. I was at the first door people passed by, so it was the door most people used. I am an introvert by nature, and all this being sunny, outgoing and perky is downright exhausting. I came up with a neat trick to make it fun. A lot of people asked, "If I turn in my ticket and have to leave the room, will I be allowed back in?" My response was, "If you smile at me really big, I'll let you back in." So people were re-entering the room with the biggest, cheesiest, most exaggerated grins they could muster. It appears to have made an impact. Some people are now greeting me in the halls by saying, "Hey, Mr. Door Man!" and giving me those cheesy grins, and on Wednesday a number of people expressed disappointment that I wasn't there to take their ticket. Some of my friends from previous conventions saw me later and said, "I wanted to say hi to you this morning, but you had so many women hanging on to you that I couldn't get anywhere near you." I'm getting such a big head that going back to real life on Friday is going to be quite a culture shock. ;-)

I definitely encourage any convention attendee that has never volunteered to do so. It's yet another avenue to make new friends, and serving others really does make you feel good.

Let's try this again...

2008-07-30T17:52:00.000-04:00

OK, I will now attempt to re-create my lost post from this morning...

A commenter asked for more business session detail. Well, Sunday and Monday were quite contentious. During the normally-routine adopting of the convention program as the official agenda, a motion was made to add "Good of the Order" to the Tuesday business session. After the maximum allowable time for debate, the motion was narrowly defeated. I'll add my $.02 on "Good of the Order" later. There were a ton of candidates running for office and so it took a while to hear all the 2-minute campaign speeches. There were 95 distinguished chapter presidents (as usual, not all were present to receive their watch). So Sunday's session ended nearly an hour late.

The amendments to the by-laws and standing rules, mainly centering on campaigning rules, was the Monday hot topic. Each amendment had a good deal of discussion. The most talked about wat the amendment to establish penalties as severe as a lifetime ban from running for office for violations. An amendment to the amendment was passed to remove "including a lifetime ban" from the amendment. Once that was taken out, the amendment was adopted.

Tuesday, the election results were announced and the new board installed. There were 2 items of new business for the delegates to consider: 1) To require the board to establish general guidelines on what constitutes misconduct that could cause a board member to be dismissed, and 2) to require that all chapters have the capability to accept online membership applications (as opposed to now, where a new member can only join the association and a division online and become a member or division member at-large). Both resolutions passed.

My general observations on the business sessions:

I think I'm the only member of the entire association that doesn't have a passionate position on "Good of the Order." Everyone seems to be extremely passionate for or against it. I lean slightly against it but can see the reason why everyone on both sides of the issue have that stance. The few meetings I have been to that had this feature didn't seem to add a whole lot of value, so I wasn't too fired up when it was eliminated. But I understand those who think it is wrong to have to be a voting delegate to speak to the assembly. I thought the Tuesday new business items showed that avenue to be a better one for getting things done. The board was opposed to both of the motions, so simply urging them to be considered during "Good of the Order" could be easily ignored by the board, and the urging of adding chapters to the online membership application had been ignored for some time. But now the board is required to implement it, since it was introduced as a business item and passed by the voting delegates.
The sessions were a bit tough to sit through this year. Some of the arguments for and against the amendments and new business didn't stay on topic, and I don't think President McCoy's scripts were proofread very well. There were a lot of typos in the scripts, stumbling of words (particularly during the amendment debates), and the time allotments were off - we went an hour overtime on Sunday and got out an hour and a half early on Tuesday. I hope I don't sound like a wet blanket here; I know everyone who put the sessions together worked very long and hard on them. But I do hope things run a little smoother next year.
With all the turnover at HQ and the dismissal of a board member this year, I sense tension and lack of complete trust between the association leaders and the general population. I think the leaders need to spend some energy this year reaching out to the members even more than they have in the past. I do not expect anyone to put anyone's personnel files out in public view by any means, and I don't think the perception out there is the board's intention. But a lot of members in general feel the leaders have adapted an "it's none of your business" attitude about sensitive matters. I expect all the leaders would vigorously deny that to be the case, and I hope that divide can be bridged as we go forward.

Technology is fabulous. When it works.

2008-07-30T08:11:00.000-04:00

In order to save myself a little time, I turned the laptop on before going to bed last night (or more accurately, this morning). I got up and just spent a lot of time adding a very lengthy post. Clicked the save button, and was redirected to the hotel high-speed internet sign-in page. Signed in, and my post was gone. AAAGGGHHHH! And now it's time to go get some breakfast and head to a full day of educational workshops. I'll try to re-create the post later. Growl............

From off the top of my head, and other strange places

2008-07-29T01:08:00.000-04:00

I thought it was just my own town. But no, cab drivers in New Orleans also are convinced they are going to die in their vehicles if they have to sit through one more red light, so they ain't doin' it.
It's really starting to look like I am going to spend nearly a week in New Orleans without ever setting foot on Bourbon Street. I guess that just means I have to come back. ;-)
If "the clothes make the man," why are lifeguards so popular?
I mentioned that administrative professionals come to this convention and become instant and lifelong friends in a matter of minutes. Among the things that we share that build that bond so quickly are the knowledge that we, more so than the executives, make the office run as well as it does, that it's hard for others to understand (and hard for us to properly convey) how valuable we really are, and that we are above average drivers and everyone else on the road is a raving idiot.
Speaking of idiots, how dumb do you have to be to think that it's OK to wear sandals or flip-flops when you have corns, bunions, jacked-up toenails, and skin that hasn't encountered lotion since the Carter administration?
I'm really thinking about duplicating a sign a fellow admin had on her wall at my first real job 15 years ago. It said, "Lack of planning on your part does not constitiute an emergency in this area."

7/28 - More business and a short break

2008-07-29T00:53:00.000-04:00

Well, at least this morning I have a chance to have my hotel's free breakfast before reporting for duty. Same duty as yesterday, manning the first door. For some reason, a lot of folks are running behind. Business session starts at 8:30, and it's nearly 9:15 before I'm not taking tickets. So I missed a large portion of the keynote address, which was about releasing your inner brilliance. The speaker did a masterful job of integrating the association's 07-08 President's theme of "Forward Moving" into his program, and kept it lively and engaging. Having missed big chunks of the presentation, I bought his book.

The association business today is voting on proposed amendments to the association by-laws and standing rules. Some years this goes by smoothly, other years, some amendments are hotly debated. This year is one of the latter.

After the business session concludes, it's back to Office Expo to see anything I didn't see yesterday. For those who are voting delegates, the voting starts at 2 PM. Several offices have more than 2 candidates, and those situations almost never result in 1 candidate getting the required 50% plus 1 required to be declared the winner. So there is a second ballot with the top vote-getters from the first ballot. For those not voting, the remainder of the day is free. I get a chance to go back to the room and rest my now-screaming knees. The North Carolina Division has dinner at 7, a great chance to catch up with others in your state you don't see all the time. I spent a good deal of time talking to the Division President and New Chapter Building chair from this past year about the Charlotte Center City effort. More on that coming later.

The forum users have their second official gathering (last night just kind of happened). We discuss our views on the issues facing the association, and swap a humorous anicdote or two. Just a couple. ;-)

I'm excited about maybe getting 6 hours of sleep tonight. Maybe. Tomorrow the election results will be announced, educational workshops will begin and more networking over food will take place.

7/27 - before dusk to late night

2008-07-29T00:25:00.000-04:00

Sunday is the official start of convention. Working as a page, I was required to report in at 6 AM after turning in at midnight. A caffiene IV is in order. My assignment is to take attendees' admission tickets at the door. I was lucky enough to get the first door attendees would pass, making it the one most would go in. This required more perky, sunny, outgoing, and friendly behavior in one hour than I might normally be capable of in a month. But I had fun with it. When attendees asked if they turned in their ticket then had to leave the room, would they be allowed back in. "Only if you smile at me real big," was my reply.

This was the first business session, where the president and Executive Director have a few remarks, along with the introduction of candidates for international office. Awards are given to chapter presidents for outstanding achievement. It's supposed to take 3 hours but takes nearly 4. Then after a VERY short break, it's off to the district meetings. (The association is divided into 6 geographical districts, and each district is divided into divisions, mainly by state, with some divisions being comprised of more than one state. The divisions are divided into local chapters.)

After the district caucus, there is time to go to what is the highlight of the week for some, the Office Expo. Dozens of vendors are represented with the latest in office products and services, including lots of free samples. Line up barrels of free samples and watch grown people turn into little kids in an instant.

Acco Products has a new paper cutter. The blade is housed in a casing that prevents you from cutting yourself when using or changing it. Instead of an arm on a hinge, the blade moves along a guide and cuts the paper. This is the greatest thing I have ever seen. Once I saw it, I realized that all of my bad career moves over the last 15 years could have been prevented if I only had this paper cutter. I would have finished my weight loss program by now if I had it. This paper cutter can also cure cancer and solve the Iraq problem. I MUST have this thing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After this, I'm hanging out with 3 of my NC member pals, Mary, Davondra & David. Like me, David has the built-in celebrity of being a rare male member in this female-dominated group. We regularlygive each other a hard time over who has the bigger fan club of female members. The 4 of us are hanging out in Harrah's casino while grabbing a bite to eat, when we encounter Anita, another fairly famous member. Anita is from Puerto Rico, and is well-known in the association for her boundless energy and the straw hat she regularly wears. She informs me that I will be dancing with her at the evening festivities, and I have no choice in the matter. This will be very interesting.

The last event of the day is the evening of welcome. All the candidates for office are placed at stations throughout the event area so people, especially voting delegates, can ask questions or othersied get to know the candidates better to help them be best informed before heading to the polls on Monday afternoon. There is also a DJ and dancing and other activities. While mingling around way too close to the dance floor, Davondra grabs my elbow and drags me into a conga line. When the line breaks up at a song change, I look up and see a straw hat headed my way. All of this is a problem, since I have dancing ability roughly equivelant to your basic dump truck. Having arthritic knees doesn't help any. But I fake it good enough and a few minutes later I have to find a place to sit down. When the evening of welcome ends, a few online forum users spend a little more time hanging out. Another late night, ending at 12:30. Good thing I don't report for page duty Monday until 6:45 AM!!!

The tours and the friends

2008-07-27T17:24:00.000-04:00

A little more background for the uninitiated...

If you practice a religion that brings you opportunities to convene with other members for a regional, national or international gathering, you will be quite familiar with the aspect at the IAAP International Convention. People screaming greetings at other people from across the room, more hugs than you can possibly imagine, and people gathering in groups all over the place, until all hours of the night. At my first convention in Reno in 2006, I remarked to a veteran that the atmosphere at our conventions resembled that of some of the religious conventions I have attended. There are a number of reasons for that. In both instances, you enter the gathering knowing there are hundreds or thousands of people who have common experiences with you, who will understand a life situation you are in with only a few opening words, and who share common goals and visions. It's quite common for you to see someone you know, you greet them warmly, and your friend introduces you to another member of the group you have not met previously, but the new acquaintence gives you a big ol' bear hug. With the IAAP convention, everyone is familiar with the challenges you face in your office, career direction, and knuckleheads you have to deal with on a daily basis. Building friendships is very easy and quick.

So Saturday was the day before the official start of convention, and you saw that atmosphere everywhere. I spent most of Saturday with a dear friend from Atlanta, along with her roommate for the convention that I had not met previously, but by the end of the day I felt like I had known her for years. We went on a city and cemetary tour of New Orleans, viewing the unique tombs they have here, because you can't bury someone underground here - your loved one is likely to be floating along in the Gulf of Mexico in short order if you do. The tour bus took us through the section of town where the levees broke. The repaired sections are a different color than the rest of the walls, which I imagine will help keep the memory of the storm around long after everything is repaired. There were scores of vacant lots that used to have houses on them. The stories of devestation, as well as miraculous recovery, were plentiful. Along with my experience of riding by the Superdome Friday, this helped drill into my brain further that I should appreciate everything I have, and to keep material possessions in proper perspective. The dinner that night was a good place to put that into practice. We paid $70 for a short shuttle ride, an OK Cajun dinner & music. The folks that ordered steaks were less than thrilled with their food. I thought the food was OK, not great but not bad either. It was probably overpriced, but I just chalked it up to part of the New Orleans experience. I was mainly happy spending time with friends and swapping stories with new acquaintences.

Then it was back to the convention hotel for a meeting of the members who utilize the forums on IAAP's website. I am the only man (outside of IAAP headquarters staff members) that post on the forums with any regularity, and so I have attained an extra level of celebrity with the other posters - it's almost like I'm sort of a cult hero. The group had already been together for a while when I got there, and when I did, everyone greeted me in unison, like everyone used to greet Norm when he entered Cheers. After that party broke up, a couple forum users invited me to their room along with another member, and the 4 of us took care of some bubbly and continued to swap stories, one of which will keep us absolutely doubled over in laughter for months to come. Got to bed at 11:57 - a little late considering I was to report to work as a page for the business session at 6 AM Sunday! Oh, well, as Sam Elliott said in the movie Road House, "I'll get all the sleep I need when I'm dead."

Never thought a sports stadium would give me chills

2008-07-25T21:15:00.000-04:00

If anyone has ever visited a place of historical significance, you know that being present where something that changed the course of history can be emotionally overwhelming. Well, I got that today coming into downtown New Orleans. The cabbie drove right by the Superdome, and a big, fat chill ran down my back. This is my first time here, and going by there obviously made me think of the aftermath of the hurricane. Here I was, next to the place where thousands of desparate people sought refuge, and the building basically turned into a third world country overnight. I saw the bridge where Shepard Smith of Fox News was reporting, and pointed out a dead man behind him on the highway, someone obviously who was trapped by the storm and was trying to get to the Superdome.

Quite a chilling moment. I imagine if I ever get to New York and am anywhere near where the World Trade Center towers once stood, I'll probably pass out.

IAAP 7/25 - "You have NO IDEA how glad I am to be here!"

2008-07-25T20:51:00.000-04:00

Those were my words to the young lady who checked me into the hotel at exactly 7 PM Central Time, bringing an end to my 15-hour travel day. Oh, yes, there's a story. Wanna hear it? Here it go..........

Well, first I should offer some background. I have a genetic makeup known as albinism, which results in a person with no pigmentation in their skin, platinum-blonde hair, and low vision (that's a person that can see some, but not very well - usually around 20/200 vision as opposed to the standard 20/20). So since I have low vision, I cannot operate an automobile. You'll need that information to understand part of my lengthy travel, and nerves of steel and a great sense of humor to understand the rest. Also, in anticipation of this convention, I had booked my flight months ago, cashing in some AAdvantage miles to get the tickets. Well, a couple months ago, they changed the schedules and had me sitting in the Dallas airport for 5 hours before catching the plane to New Orleans. (Man, what?????????) I called and asked if I could have one of the 2 flights that left earlier. No, they said, "only a certain number of seats per flight can be taken by redeeming miles, and those slots are sold out on those flights."

OK, now on with the story...

Got up at 5 AM Eastern Time in Charlotte, cleaned up, threw the last few things I needed into the ol' suitcase, kissed the wife goodbye and left the crib at 5:50 AM. Caught the city express bus downtown, then had to wait a little while before the city bus to the airport began its run. I got to the Charlotte airport at 7:20, right on time. I had already printed my boarding pass, so I just checked the one bag, breezed through security in 15 minutes, and arrived at the gate in plenty of time for the 8:20 flight to Dallas. Flight took off and landed on time. Things are going great, right?

Oh, don't worry, it's about to get very interesting. I'm wandering around the Dallas airport and suddenly decide to take a chance. I walk up to an open ticket counter and ask if I can have an earlier flight. "Sure, we can put you on standby," the agent says. "We can't guarantee that your luggage will make it to the earlier flight though." OK, I'll take the risk. So I get on the earlier flight as I was #1 on the standby list. Still going great, right? Not for long!

We land in New Orleans on time, 2:40 Central Time. Sure enough, my suitcase didn't make it. So I stroll over to the baggage office and ask if the suitcase can be delivered to me, so I can get downtown and get checked in to hotel and the convention. The response was pretty much, "Uh, no, that's your problem. You're the one who got on an earlier flight. Either wait for your bag or come back and get it yourself." Wow, what knock-me-over customer service!! So much for their being any advantage to being an AAdvantage member.

Now the fun really begins. I check the arrival board and find out that my original plane will land at 5:40, not 5:05 as planned. AAARRRGGGHHH!!! A little while later, I overhear 2 airport employees grousing about the Dallas plane being pushed back again, to 6:15. Now I'm REALLY unhappy. I called the AAdvantage "customer service" number and got the same cool reception I got at the baggage office. The plane finally lands at 6:18, and I get my bag about 10 minutes later, nearly 4 hours after arriving at the New Orleans airport. I get a cab and check in to my hotel at exactly 7 PM - right when convention check-in and Happy Hour both close. :-( :-(

You can rest assured that my desire both to remain an AAdvantage member and to ever see the New Orleans airport agin will not exist once August rolls around.

At least I can show up at 7 AM to register at convention tomorrow, since my tour doesn't start until 10:30. Now it's time to seek out a stiff drink!

IAAP International convvention

2008-07-25T20:48:00.000-04:00

This is a good time to start the blog. I am in New Orleans for the 2008 International Convention for the International Association of Administrative Professionals (IAAP). Like the profession in general, IAAP is about 98% female. So any guy stands out. Makes you somewhat of a celebrity, and I revel in every minute of it!

So I'll be posting a lot over the next week or so about the convention. It is my third in a row and I'll probably never miss another one.

So what is this all about?

2008-07-25T20:44:00.000-04:00

As noted in the "about me" section, I am a rarity - the male administrative professional. It brings an interesting perspective that I thought I would share with anyone in cyberspace who would be interested. Always feel free to add your thoughts.