Party hearty

The building where I work has two atria, one spanning floors 6 through 8, and the other spanning floors 9 through 11. The internal staircases in these spaces were designed to resemble the double helix of DNA, and they’re rather cool:

The down side of these areas is the noise level, if you happen to have an office opening into them, because they’re basically just big-old sound chambers. But if you don’t mind that, they’re impressive meeting venues.

On 30 June, an email went out to everyone at the atrium end of the ninth floor, advising us that they were in fact going to hold a retirement party there yesterday:

What is interesting is that we were being given notice that a noisy party was going to take place and:

a) We weren’t invited to it

b) If we thought we might find the noise distracting, we should anticipate it and not noticeably close them off, because that might look like we were raining on their good time

As it happened, I did close my door when they started setting up beforehand, but when I heard the bluegrass music, I quietly opened it, because it wasn’t bad. To my discomfort, I discovered that the musicians had set up almost directly in front of me, and therefore all the audience were staring into my office. And the CEO happened to be right next to it, and he leaned in to comment, “You didn’t think you were going to work, did you?”

Please, God—let this week be over.

Forget it, Jake; it's Twitter

The Twitters-dot-com is so entertaining. Sometimes you just have to let it wash over you and do its work.

For example, I don’t think that either Radia, the original tweeter, or Leticia, whom I apparently follow for some reason or another, understands the irony of putting forward this endless loop diagram of the effectiveness of prayer, and giving it the hashtag #prayforGermany.

Or, for that matter, of changing your profile picture and urging #prayfor[anything], without taking some appropriate action.

Social reach

Everyone knows that on the Internet no one knows you’re a dog. And of course you can make your social media profile into anything you want.

And, believe me, I see a lot of them on Twitter, especially on my “professional” account. They follow me because their social media management application finds some keyword in one of my tweets… Actually, their social media management application connects with me, and sometimes sends me a direct message (DM) to assure me how thrilled they are to be connected, and why don’t I like their Facebook page, download their ebook or visit their website where I can admire their awesomeness.

Or, in this guy’s case, he doesn’t even bother with the automated faux DM; he just invites everyone to set up a Skype session:

I’m not sure why, though.

Welcome to it

Okay, well, not to be a complete drag, but let me just share with you what my work life is like this week:

And this is what I’ll look like in two weeks when I have to give an all-staff presentation ("staff" being highly intelligent, skeptical about any kind of organizational change, and very quick to ask bolshy questions in public forums) about a “transformation” project that was put together by external consultants but must appear to have been created by internal teams. Actually, created by "tiger teams". And, specifically, "tiger cub teams".

It's going to be a long, hot summer.

Gratitude Monday: Looking away from the Gates of Hell

Man, July has certainly turned out to be a bitch, hasn’t it? And we’re barely halfway through it. Dunno about you, but I’m having to reach kind of deep into the gratitude grab bag to find an upside of anything.

It’s hard for me to decide which side to root for in the one-night coup in Turkey, but news reports yesterday of 6,000 people being taken into custody by Erdoğan frankly is not heartening. Actually, what it is is a start, and Erdoğan will have a field day settling old scores. This is a guy who shuts down social media and regularly stifles what passes for a press in that country. He doesn’t like dissent; imagine what he’s going to do with this opportunity. The undertakers of Turkey are going to be in business for a long time.

As for Nice, I have no words.

And, as of writing, Baton Rouge is a crime scene after a deadly shootout between police and one or more gunmen.

Honestly, world—WTF?

My fallback position in this kind of situation is art. So I’m mainlining on Mozart and Tracy Chapman, and I’ve gone back to Rodin for a manifestation of how I’m feeling:

This is a sketch he did for his commission, “The Gates of Hell”, which is pretty much what we’re looking at.

So my rather small gratitude today is that there are places I can go to pull away—even for a short while—from the world.