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Hooray for meeting logistics!
Dec. 20th, 2013 12:05 amI got stuff together basically enough for the meeting, though I could always have done better. Better would of course include sufficient notice.
Previous iterations of this meeting have involved what I shall borrow a leaf from someone else's book and call "the saddest card sort ever"; I might say "the most awkward card sort ever" if there wasn't so much 's' assonance in the former. The general idea is to, in a meeting room that has to be vacated at the end of the hour, write items on post-its and clump them with like items. The items are things that either were good about the past year (and should be continued), or bad/needs-improvement about the past year, with a bonus round of things we should do next year. Due to the lack of suitable substrate, the post-its are then gathered up in a vaguely sensical order, but in the most ad-hoc of ad-hockery fashions, and dumped on the local transcriptionist to transcribe.
As certain parties also mentioned, this is the sort of thing that, given a room that doesn't have to be vacated at the top of the hour, and a manageable group size, sounds like a possibly vigorously entertaining discussion -- bring up topics suitably neutrally, talk about them, maybe get some things resolved, maybe make a game plan. Our group? Well. Our group is a little too large for that sort of thing to be practical...
This is my first year actually being in the room for the year-end wrap-up. Last year I was conference called in. The year before that, I hadn't quite been hired yet.
This was also the first year that there were great honkin' sheets of paper with suggested headings taped to the walls, and the first year that some of the submissions were pre-written, all in a somewhat large version of my handwriting on identical yellow post-its, in ultra-fine black Sharpie. Large enough for maybe someone standing a reasonable distance away to read. As it turned out, it was also large enough for the guys seated in the out-of-state building to zoom in on it with the conference room camera and actually read it. I was impressed, and pleased with myself. The Stage Manager and the tall designer with the glorious mustache helped put them up.
There was less card sort, and therefore less awkward and sad, this time. Everybody had post-its. Everybody had pens. There were also three separate iterations of sweets: a Secret Santa had left Grandmanager with some cookies reputed to cause beautiful dreams, I had brought my blue pumpkin basket with various less-likely-full-of-gluten items to liven up the proceedings, and Rocky was celebrating his 10th anniversary with the company, and brought mini boxes of See's.
When the exercise was over, we took down the sheets. The newest new guy, the one who I snagged the kahlua chocolates from at the White Elephant (though they were then snagged from me) helped also, because he is very good at being tall. The newest new guy reminds me a bit of Tupshin. I think it's the forehead and maybe the hair.
Tomorrow, I'm going to finish transcribing all the post-its in their contexts. There will be further things to do after that, but that's something to think about tomorrow.
Previous iterations of this meeting have involved what I shall borrow a leaf from someone else's book and call "the saddest card sort ever"; I might say "the most awkward card sort ever" if there wasn't so much 's' assonance in the former. The general idea is to, in a meeting room that has to be vacated at the end of the hour, write items on post-its and clump them with like items. The items are things that either were good about the past year (and should be continued), or bad/needs-improvement about the past year, with a bonus round of things we should do next year. Due to the lack of suitable substrate, the post-its are then gathered up in a vaguely sensical order, but in the most ad-hoc of ad-hockery fashions, and dumped on the local transcriptionist to transcribe.
As certain parties also mentioned, this is the sort of thing that, given a room that doesn't have to be vacated at the top of the hour, and a manageable group size, sounds like a possibly vigorously entertaining discussion -- bring up topics suitably neutrally, talk about them, maybe get some things resolved, maybe make a game plan. Our group? Well. Our group is a little too large for that sort of thing to be practical...
This is my first year actually being in the room for the year-end wrap-up. Last year I was conference called in. The year before that, I hadn't quite been hired yet.
This was also the first year that there were great honkin' sheets of paper with suggested headings taped to the walls, and the first year that some of the submissions were pre-written, all in a somewhat large version of my handwriting on identical yellow post-its, in ultra-fine black Sharpie. Large enough for maybe someone standing a reasonable distance away to read. As it turned out, it was also large enough for the guys seated in the out-of-state building to zoom in on it with the conference room camera and actually read it. I was impressed, and pleased with myself. The Stage Manager and the tall designer with the glorious mustache helped put them up.
There was less card sort, and therefore less awkward and sad, this time. Everybody had post-its. Everybody had pens. There were also three separate iterations of sweets: a Secret Santa had left Grandmanager with some cookies reputed to cause beautiful dreams, I had brought my blue pumpkin basket with various less-likely-full-of-gluten items to liven up the proceedings, and Rocky was celebrating his 10th anniversary with the company, and brought mini boxes of See's.
When the exercise was over, we took down the sheets. The newest new guy, the one who I snagged the kahlua chocolates from at the White Elephant (though they were then snagged from me) helped also, because he is very good at being tall. The newest new guy reminds me a bit of Tupshin. I think it's the forehead and maybe the hair.
Tomorrow, I'm going to finish transcribing all the post-its in their contexts. There will be further things to do after that, but that's something to think about tomorrow.
