Tag Archives: economics

Branches – –

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Jack actually makes it in time –

This week has been a bit strange, what with Wendy being away for two weeks helping her parents and me keeping an eye on the (very hard working) guys trimming back the tree overhanging our house.

tree

But then there was this –

My friend Dirk who engineers my radio show is also a video guy and he startled me a year ago with a proposal to make a documentary film of my life. As we worked on the radio shows he had become interested in all the things I mentioned, including why I moved the US, my various different careers and my musical life.

He started with a great number of videoed interviews with me and the original idea was to try to cover all of that. The first version I saw was an hour long and dived all over the place. Interesting to me but probably few others!

But once he decided to focus essentially on the musical side it all began to make more sense.

It was fascinating to see how he went about it, chasing after people who knew me and persuading them to share their observations then painstakingly transcribing their interviews. Busy folk in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and even in Scotland.

But then he had to turn it into a narrative that made sense, where one interview meshed with others and where various musical interludes contributed.

It finally went public a few days ago.

I think he did a wonderful job. I hate to use words like ‘humbled’ and ‘honored’ but this time I have to. I’m so grateful to him and to all my friends who took the time and trouble to contribute so thoughtfully.

I’ve been emailing today with my sister about an audio interview with our mother that Wendy helped me do twenty years ago and it reminded me how important a legacy these seemingly fleeting things can be.

The video can be seen here –

https://vimeo.com/382758864

 

Power ain’t Necessarily – –

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Jack gets way over his deadline but pleads Christmas recovery  –

I noticed that Christmas has become a very ‘on-line’ thing over the last few years and that got me thinking.

Random thoughts – – –

I got my first computer around 1998, just after the college where I worked began to introduce them. Prior to that I hand wrote memos, handed them to my secretary, who typed them, copied them and then sent them to the designated recipients. There was a whole protocol around memos including who was ‘CCd’ and how that could be used as a weapon! I learned – – –

Back then there was hardly an internet as we now know it. There was eventually an ‘intranet’ within the college, and on my personal computer at home (with great difficulty) I could eventually connect via ‘dial up’ with the college.

Ah – dial up! One of the guys at the college could imitate that sound perfectly

I joined ‘America on Line’ (AOL) and got an email address, which I still have. Back then, in Scotland, you connected to your email via dial up. They had three numbers for the whole of the UK and Ireland! So getting your emails was sometimes a frustrating experience. But that was just to get your mail and not to surf the internet. There wasn’t really any internet!

When I assumed the position of Head of Construction Trades, I found by accident that the Department had ten computers. The trouble was I couldn’t find them. After a search, I was told that the computer department had pauchled fifty by attributing them to other departments! So eventually ten Commodore Pets briefly were in my department as they were wheeled to the dumpster – – –

pet

The final story is much later. I had been promoted again, had gained my MBA and was teaching management classes. Like everyone else I had great difficulty getting any kind of urgent response from the IT team to fix any problem (check out ‘The IT Crowd’ on YouTube https://youtu.be/nn2FB1P_Mn8). Nicola was their manager and was in one of my evening class programs. That night we discussed the different forms of power within organizations – hierarchical, fiefdoms and expert. Expert was the one! As soon as I had explained expert power to Nicola I never had an IT problem again.