And Futhermore....

I have been fortunate to attend some wonderful conferences throughout my career. 

Conferences, workshops, meetings, summits, classes, courses, showcases, forums, round table discussions, speaker series, presentations, seminars, webinars...  Many different names for opportunities for professional development, networking and a little mind expansion. 

The majority of these events have been hugely beneficial and I count myself extremely fortunate for the opportunity to attend.

Some of these events have had enormous impact on my life and my thinking.  Bigger than what I received from many of my college courses!

But some of these events have been colossal wastes of time.

Enter the Franklin Covey 2-day class I attended about a year ago. 

I had never been to a Franklin Covey sponsored workshop before but I certainly had heard a lot about them.  I was excited to participate!  Let's just say this might have been one of those times in life when expectation and reality didn't exactly hook up.  However, after two days, I came away with one of my prized professional possessions...a possession that will be with me somewhere in my office no matter where that office might be for the rest of time...my Talking Stick. 

After two days, I left the workshop with The Talking Stick and I had finally learned that it was what had been the missing from my managerial arsenal for all these years. 

The wording on the bottom of The Talking Stick sums it up best:

H

How to use the Talking Stick:  Only the person holding the talking stick is allowed to speak.  Once that person feels understood, he or she passes the talking stick to the next person.  Caution:  Use of this Talking Stick may result in amazing, synergistic results!

So THAT'S they key to successful professional communication....The Talking Stick!  As long as I'm holding The Talking Stick I can speak and argue my case until the other party comes around to my way of thinking.  At last, a way to hold an entire meeting captive for as long as I want!  If I have The Talking Stick I get to speak until I'm understood.  For as long as it takes!  I mean, who can argue with me as long as I'm holding The Talking Stick?  Pure genius!

Oh, and did I mention that attending this class where I received this bit of communications gold cost $250 smackaroos?  Yep...I'll let that soak in for a minute...The Talking Stick was mine for a mere $250.  I know, I know....

Totally worth it.

Please Don't Quit Me!

Hi everyone!

I haven't posted anything on the Dotopotamus for about three years now because:

1. My rig has been busted.
2. I am in a fight for my life and have no time.

That's right, my computer has been down for awhile. The whole experience has been one giant exercise in frustration. So much so, that I plan to write about it as soon as I can. But that might be next week, because...

I'm in a fight for my life!

I am so insanely busy and stressed at work right now, that today alone I:

1. Started to hyperventilate,
2. Didn't go to the bathroom for 10 hours because I just couldn't find the time, and
3. Grabbed my back in utter pain when I, literally, heard it go "SPROING".

In my line of work there is always "the big event" looming out there. I'm always and forever working towards that big event. Everything gets pushed to the side because of the myriad of details associated with THE BIG EVENT. This particular big event will happen, whether or not I'm alive to see it, this Friday from 6:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m.

I plan to be drinking heavily by 11:30 p.m.

And the real rub? As soon as this one is in the can, I'll start working on Monday towards the next big event.

I'll share the details with you soon, because they are funny. These details are many but some highlights involve:

1. 650 people trying to sit in an event space that only holds 500,
2. A troupe of mostly naked women wearing only porcelain - yes, I said porcelain - boustieres, and,
3. The Governor of Oklahoma.

It really is pretty exciting.

So, I'll hope you'll stay with me through the agony that is the planning for THE BIG EVENT and I'll get back in a posting groove next week.

In the meantime, check this out! To show you my level, or non-level as it seems, of mental activity these days, I couldn't figure this out. My dad sent this to me and I finally had to say "uncle" and ask him where the freaking man was. But once he told me it was so obvious. Let me know how long it take you to find the man in the coffee beans:

Taking the Good With the Bad

I had a pretty tough few days at work. A project I'd been working hard on launched...

and crashed...

and burned.

There were no survivors.

I've been thinking about it non-stop since Thursday and have decided that there are some things I could have done better. And there are many things that others could have done better.

I like to do everything myself, because I can better control a situation. But this project required a big, diverse team of people, most from outside my shop. Together, we used words like community collaboration and strategic partnerships and public/private model. We met. Lord, did we meet. We talked and planned and debated and plotted. I felt like we had done solid work - turned over all of the stones, so to speak.

I was excited. This was new and interesting stuff. We had the attention of many.

But then key players went gonzo and did their own things, unbeknownst to me. Things that ultimately jeapordized the project. Things that I didn't know about until the zero hour.

But I'm so proud of my inner circle - we rallied and did everything we could to make the situation better. We were a team. A little team fighting a big ugly beast.

Yet I'm left feeling defeated and angry at those who chose to call their own shots.

Ultimately, I've decided that it all boils down to egos. Overinflated egos. It's hard for big egos to be part of a team. Giant egos want to call their own shots. I don't work well with these humongous egos. Because in the end? My little ego ends up feeling bruised and battered.

So on my walk with Dot this morning, I knew I had to start shifting my thinking or this was going to eat me up. I realize that I did the best I could in that I helped create a great plan. I could not control those things that went wrong. Many people are calling the project a "success" because parts of it worked. Many are saying that we should feel great because we took a risk and tried something new and with what we learned, we will hit a home run next time out. Some are saying that I'm over-sensitive and need to just get over it because I'm the only one who's really worried about it. So, I'm trying to do those things.

I also started thinking on my walk this morning, how much I'm using the word "hate" these days. "I hate him because he didn't listen to me", "I hate this trainwreck of a project", "I hate big egos", "I hate the guy who cut me off in traffic this morning", "I hate onions on my hamburger". Stop it! Enough! I've always hated haters, and I don't want to become one!

It's Christmas, right? I want to be more lighthearted and merry and jolly! Damn it, I want to be more jolly. So today, I am burning my "I heart Scrooge" t-shirt and, as the song goes, I'm donning more gay apparel. More. Gay. Apparel. Fa, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, laaaaa,

So, I'm working on it...

In that vain, I am now going to perform an exercise right here in front of you, my friends. That's right, in public, with all eyes watching. It's one of those "gratitude" exercises. Because in truth? I have so much to be grateful for.

In pure stream of consciousness mode, with no over thinking it, I'm going to see how long it takes me to list 100 things that I like. These don't have to be monumental things. These don't have to be in any kind of order. These don't even have to be things I love. I just want to flood my brain with things I like, instead of things I hate.

Ready?

GO!

1. Family
2. Nieces (they get a special nod)
3. Friends
4. Dot
5. Home
6. Public Televsion
7. Coffee with cream
8. Plants
9. Colorado
10. Magazines
11. Camera
12. Creativity
13. Movies
14. Art
15. Texas
16. Good lighting
17. Nature
18. Travel
19. Accessories
20. Antiques
21. Decorating
22. My mom's sense of style
23. My dad's sense of humor
24. Music
25. Singing
26. Pizza
27. First kisses
28. Second kisses
29. Football
30. Blogs
31. People with senses of humor - who can laugh at themselves
32. Pretty clothes
33. Red
34. Flowers
35. Flea market floral oil paintings
36. Small towns
37. My brother's ability to make a friend of whoever he meets
38. Mom Jo stories
39. Piano
40. Romance
41. Rain
42. Montana
43. France
44. Mom's meatloaf
45. Babies/children
46. Memories
47. The Blues
48. Love
49. The Last Stop
50. My iPod
51. Doing good work

I'M 14 MINUTES IN AND COMPLETELY STALLED OUT! This is proving difficult...so now I'm really going into stream of consciousness. Good must prevail! Positive must push out negative! Come on brain... Come on heart...people are watching...

52. Losing weight
53. Dreams
54. Tennis
55. Good stories
56. Color
57. Dancing
58. Bed and Breakfasts
59. Taking pictures of signs
60. Freshly fallen snow
61. Guerro's maragaritas
62. Live music
63. New Orleans
64. Christmas Eve church service
65. When Beth gets me laughing
66. A completed home improvement project
67. Technology (I don't get it all, but it amazes me and makes me curious)
68. Riding on snowmobiles
69. The mountains
70. Oklahoma
71. Inside jokes
72. Any scene from Urban Cowboy...come on, it's a classic!
73. Musicals
74. Shopping
75. Happy endings
76. Over-the-top western cut shirts with emroidered roses, fringe and pearl buttons (see #72)
77. Pedicures
78. Wildlife
79. Boat rides/river rafting
80. Being the only granddaughter
81. University of Colorado
82. Mom's brownies
83. The Sunday paper
84. Crisp, clean sheets
85. A good hair day
86. Taking walks
87. A well-run system
88. Finding the perfect gift for someone
89. Tall men
90. Paris perfume
91. Refrigerator magnets
92. The moment you know you've made a new friend
93. Having enough money
94. Old photo albums
95. Eclectic style
96. Food cooked on the grill
97. Cartoons
98. Hard wood floors
99. Bargains/A good deal
100. Peace on Earth

WOW! That exercise took 27 minutes, my friends. Should it take that long to make a list of things you like? I don't think so. I need to do more work on shifting my thinking and being more positive.

I'll work on it...

Job Satisfaction

You know those experiences you have in life that are so funny and surreal that you can hardly believe they are happening to you? Those experiences that, no matter how hard you try to perfectly encapsulate their retelling, you will never be able to adequately relay how truly funny they were?

Well, this is one of those because I’m not sure I can describe how this experience cracked me up.

But first I'll back up a bit.

It has been such an honor talking with, and interviewing, so many World War II veterans and their families as part of the outreach campaign we’re engaged in at work. This is a companion project to Ken Burns’ new film, The War, which premiered on PBS last night. (tune in…amazing stuff…). Oh, and check out our fabulous project web site. And you should share the WWII stories from your own family. You can do so on the aforementioned fabulous project web site. It’s important that we collect and preserve these stories for future generations.

Okay, shelving the shameless self promotion for now.

I had no idea how strongly I would be affected by this project. I knew if would be emotional to some degree because, well, we’re talking about World War II and that whole 60 million people dying thing is an overwhelming downer, for sure. But I never expected so many of these personal stories to touch me so deeply. Case in point, on Friday I had to shut my door and CALL MY PARENTS because I was in tears over all of the stories I had heard that day! Yes, the always professional and super duper appropriate weeping at work…always a winning move. And I wasn’t just crying. I lost complete control. Sobs, losing breath, snot running everywhere, couldn’t stop. Sweet.

All because as I listen to these people talk, or read their stories, I think about what they went through and I become overwhelmed with the enormity of it all. As I heard one person put it last week, humanity just dangles by a thread and it is a constant necessity to balance out evil with good. And these people went to war against evil.

But it hasn’t been all tears, breakdowns and random acts of curling into the fetal position. Some of this has been a riot.

And therein lies the story that I will never be able to adequately describe to you.

Meet Lee Smith and his lovely wife Carolyn.

And by lovely I mean absolutely-certifiably-off-the-charts crazy.

But in a good way.

My friend and colleague Ashley and I went to the Smith’s home in lovely Tulsa, Oklahoma to interview Mr. Smith (retired Colonel in the Air Force) and a group of his WWII buddies who do extensive outreach with the Tulsa Public Schools. These guys are amazing, especially when you consider their age, because they are constantly on the go, in the schools every week sharing their first-hand perspective, and believe me, these men definitely saw the war first hand.

After a bit of trial and tribulation, Ashley and I find their home. Small, cute, in a nice neighborhood that has been there for awhile because they have gorgeous, tall trees. Mr. Smith is in the yard and waves us in as we park and get out the car.

After a genuinely warm welcome Mr. Smith takes the lead and brings us into…well….what can only be described as the carnie house that time forgot.

We had to walk in very well defined “pathways” because there was SO MUCH clutter and junk stacked floor to ceiling everywhere. I’m serious – 85 years worth of STUFF that you could only maneuver through via the path. This actually wasn’t so shocking to me as I have first-hand, life-long experience with this particular lifestyle enjoyed by a few of my family members… but that’s another story entirely.

What was making me feel like I was walking through a carnival fun-house of horrors gone wild was THE BOOMING PIPE ORGAN MUSIC PLAYING JOHN PHILLIPS SOUSA’S THE STARS AND STRIPES FOREVER. And when I say booming, I mean that you would not have heard a word anyone was saying. You would have had to yell HARD to be heard and even then you’d have to be right up on that person’s ear. I had to consciously work hard to resist the urge to clap my hands over my ears.


As we neared the end of the path through this SMALL house, we finally see the delightful source of the madness. A little, bitty old woman dressed in a moo moo and a shower cap was sitting at a huge pipe organ, playing Stars and Stripes Forever over and over again. The music wouldn’t end! My ears were melting off but she just kept playing louder and louder! You know the picollo part of that song? I thought my ear drums were going to shatter when she hit those high notes.
But the whole time, Mr. Smith just smiled adoringly as he watched his crazy little hobbit play on.

After TEN MINUTES she finally stopped. My ears were ringing. She whipped around on the huge organ bench and looked at Ashley and me and you could see her face fall when she yelled out, “Well is it only you two? Where are the cameras?” I guess when she heard we were from a television station she thought she was going to be playing for a big TV audience and she was pretty miffed when she learned it was just the two of us.

And by miffed, I mean inspired to play 20 MORE MINUTES OF THE LOUDEST PIPE ORGAN MUSIC YOU’VE EVER HEARD. Real patriotic stuff, too, like the anthems for the Marines, Air Force, Army and Navy. Ashley and I were mostly paralyzed, and as I was straining to take this all in I took pause to really soak in what I was seeing.

We are talking a lovely, antique Wurlitzer pipe organ that you would see IN A EUROPEAN CATHEDRAL. One of those that has three levels of key boards, hundreds and hundreds of levers and pedals and it curves around, encasing the player almost 180 degrees.

And the pipes. The largest pipes were as big around as a telephone pole, and you could see them go up into the ceiling and beyond, they were so tall. Mr. Smith motioned for me to follow him and he opened a door that led to a room directly behind the organ that housed the rest of the organ pipes. Hundreds and hundreds of organ pipes of all widths and heights. I later learned that they had added this room on to the house to accommodate the organ.

It was the kind of organ I’ve only seen in movies. The kind the Phantom of the Opera would play.

And Mrs. Smith just wouldn’t stop playing. When her husband finally forced her to quit, the humor was really on then. She is a little pistol of a lady and I do believe she’s insane. But not in a sad dementia/Alzheimer’s way. It’s more in an I’m-really-old-and-I’m-going-to-do-whatever-I-want-to-do-and-I-don’t-care-one-lick-bit-what-you-think-about-it kind of way.

She is awesome.

And the most annoying person I’ve ever met.

Because she wouldn’t STOP TALKING!

Here I am trying to get Mr. Smith’s story – Mr. Smith who is so tall and distinguished and well spoken – but I keep getting interrupted by crazy wife who repeatedly stopped me when I was in mid-sentence to tell me a fart joke or to show me some silly little trinket or doo dad she had. Ashley had the brunt of it because she was trying to keep Mrs. Smith occupied and away from me so I could work. Ashley got hit with a full-frontal attack of the crazies, for sure.

At one point, a couple of Mr. Smith’s WWII buddies came over to share their stories with me and that was funny in and of itself, watching these old guys try to duck and run whenever she would come near them. But she wouldn’t be deterred! If Mrs. Smith wanted you to see the faded and worm 1980 newspaper article featuring her and her organ, she was going to follow you through every path winding through the heaps and mountains of paper in the room until you stopped what you were doing and acknowledged her.

It was all hilarious.

Just when Mrs. Smith would get calmed down and I could focus again on the veterans, we would all jump out of our skin because she had snuck back up onto that mutated organ and started to play a little bit of Jingle Bells or Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer for our amusement.

TWO AND A HALF HOURS LATER, Ashley finally drags me out, because we were late for our screening event and there was no sign that any of the madness was going to let up on its own accord. As we left, we were serenaded out by the loudest full-on-pipe-organ version of God Bless America you have ever in your life heard.

I LOVE THESE PEOPLE!

Those of you who know me know that I love the characters, and I am proud to add this sweet little lunatic and her distinguished husband into my book of favorites and this experience has certainly made it onto my top-10 list of favorite professional experiences, the first to actually come from Oklahoma.

These pictures won’t do it justice, but here are a few…





I couldn't hear right until the next morning.

From My Urban Dictionary

BLUETOOL.

A person who wears a Bluetooth wireless earpiece everywhere they go to seem trendy and important. Places to spot bluetools include restaurants, movie theaters, malls, gyms, grocery stores and cars.

When I walked into the elevator following a work meeting yesterday:

Bluetool: Hi, how are you?

Me: Hi. I’m great, and yourself?

Bluetool: Oh, sorry. I wasn’t talking to you, I’m on a call. You know, Bluetooth.

Me: Bluetool.

Philanthropy - Give and Take

Somewhere in me I have something BIG to say about philanthropy and nonprofit organizations and fundraising, but it just hasn’t found its voice yet.

I know that I am constantly amazed by people’s generosity and the variety of good and important causes that exist to make our world a better place. And I am forever impressed by successful, creative fundraisers. To be a great development professional you have to have so many different skills.

But also churning around in this gray area of my thinking on this subject is the impact of “the great idea”. That ground-breaking philanthropic idea that creates a shift and changes the entire fundraising enterprise. Like Easter Seals did years ago when it was the first organization to send free address labels with their solicitations, or the original organization that decided to offer a premium, or thank-you gift, for certain giving levels, or the dawn of the mega-gifts like Warren Buffet’s staggering donation of 30 billion to the Gates Foundation. These are only a few of the many great ideas of philanthropy that have had enormous and lasting impact on giving decisions and fundraising activities.

I’m thinking about this today as I’m tripping down memory lane after reading the article, “A Time to Thrive” from the April 5 edition of The Chronicle of Philanthropy. This detailed article reveals how many charities are setting new fundraising records through traditional and not-so-traditional means (7 in 10 charities raised more money last year than in 2005, and nearly a quarter of organizations said they achieved gains of almost 50 percent or higher.)

A big section of the article told about Lance Armstrong and his Armstrong Foundation in Austin that raises money for cancer research. It just so happens that every part of Lance Armstrong’s personal story fascinates me, not the least of which is the impact and success of his foundation. Talk about the right time, right place thing working out to its perfect manifestation – this guy has been able to leverage his cancer survival, phenomenal sports success, celebrity and personal passion into an amazing organization.

But the part of the story that made me feel good today was when I read that the sale of the yellow Livestrong bracelets has grossed $65 million since 2004. That is truly amazing.

Lance Armstrong’s management firm that handles his business dealings was also our partner at the public television station where I worked, helping us produce Austin City Limits for PBS. As a result of that partnership, I had the amazing good fortune to be part of different ACL projects and meetings and got to know these people a little bit.

We were in a meeting one day preparing for our big ACL Gala and a friend from this firm handed me a little plastic bag containing one of the Livestrong bracelets. She said that this was a new thing that they had developed in conjunction with Lance’s foundation and the bracelets had just arrived that day. She explained to me its symbolism and how they were hoping to get people to show their support for cancer awareness, research and treatment by wearing them.

Little did I know when I put that bracelet on that day that I was one of the first to be wearing the next great idea in philanthropy. I thought the bracelet with its simple, yet powerful, message was cool and the idea had meaning, and I could certainly see Austinites getting into them since Lance was one of their favorite sons, but I had no idea (and neither did they!) that the yellow bracelets would quickly become an international phenomenon and would touch people’s psyches in the way that they did.

And to think that the Livestrong bracelets went on to spur an entire philanthropic (and commercial) industry where almost every “cause” jumped on the band wagon and produced their own bracelet for their constituents to show their support. We certainly did at public television – our bracelet is blue and says “Support public television”. A couple of the programs that we air during pledge drive created a bracelet for their show and offered it as a premium. For awhile, these different bracelets were everywhere.

The fad has certainly quieted down since its inception, but I still see people every now and then wearing the yellow Livestrong bracelets and I am reminded of the importance and impact philanthropy has in our world and how the next great idea might be right around the corner.

And how any one of us can play a part in its success.

To Make a Long Story Short

Ernest Hemingway once said his best work was a story he wrote in just six words:

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Here’s my six word story for today.

“New job? Exciting! And possibly deadly.”

I am pleased to be transitioning into a new job within my organization. The more I think about it - and I spent a lot of time thinking about it yesterday - I’m feeling those excited jitters in my stomach that give me a rush and make me nauseous at the same time. New frontiers. New possibilities. New chapters. It’s good to know that we will be able to bring some focus to our educational services, something I feel strongly is important.

I am grateful for this opportunity, and for those who have supported me in this decision.

Here's to shaking it up and keeping it new!

Office Trash Talk

I will never talk disparagingly of coworkers on the Dotopotamus. That’s just not cool, not fair and not always smart. So why do I feel the need to say this? Because I’m about to talk despairingly about a coworker. Here’s how I make it okay. He’s not really an employee of my organization. He’s on contract. We hire his company to clean our offices twice a week. He’s our vendor. Makes my talking disparagingly about him totally okay, right?

Because the truth is, I think I’m this close to losing my cool and giving this guy a big, ugly dose of BACK OFF!

He’s a very nice person. Seems like a smart guy, too. But he’s a non-stop talker who must speak every single thought – and I mean every single thought - that goes through his mind. I find myself getting twitchier and twitchier every time he comes by.

Over the course of the last few months, he’s developed the habit of commentating on what he’s dumping out of my trash. The combination irritation, embarrassment, anger, humiliation this stirs up in me has almost reached its boiling point, and I fear I’m going to snap one of these days and have to add ballistic meltdown to the list of things that make me irritated, embarrassed, angry and humiliated.

Wow. You sure are throwing a lot of newspapers away today. Maybe if you read them more frequently and didn’t let them stack up you wouldn’t get so far behind.

Have you really drunk 7 Diet Cokes since Thursday?

Are you sure you want to throw away this pen?

Man, how many revisions of this report to ConocoPhillips to you do, anyway?

I thought I smelled rotted apple.

Looks like someone has had a sweet tooth this week…THREE ice cream bars?

It’s CONSTANT! So then I feel the need to justify my garbage with every comment he utters.

Well, we were in pledge and there were three of us hanging out in my office between breaks and we all had an ice cream bar, so all those wrappers aren’t really mine.

I frequently use a red pen and that one finally ran out of ink so I had to throw it away and get another one.

Yea, I guess I’m wasting a lot of trees but I want to make sure I get ConocoPhillips just the right report.

Sorry, I’ll throw my apple core away in the kitchen from now on.

The other thing he does that I love so much? When not giving me running commentary on my trash, he’s looking over my shoulder at what I’m doing on my computer.

So, why do have that paragraphed highlighted yellow?

Wow, why do you think that project should cost so much money?

Hey, do you know how to do Excel?

Do you have to have a password for that web site?

Oops, looks like you misspelled charity. But I’m sure you were going to use spell check before finishing.

Non-stop color commentary.

When he’s vacuuming, he just barges in. No asking if this is a good time. I’ve been on the phone with donors and had my executive director and a board member in my office for a sit down meeting and he just comes on in with the vacuum cleaner, shouting really loudly above the noise that he’ll only be a minute. Oh, sorry, Mrs. Fitzroy, I know you can’t hear me over the vacuum cleaner, but IT WILL ONLY BE A MINUTE!

For the life of me, I don’t know why I’m letting this person get to me so much. How do I tell this nice, chatty guy who really does an incredible job cleaning our offices, whose services I really do appreciate, that he’s making me nuts? That when I hear him coming I find myself desperately trying to find a reason to escape my office? That I’ve come to identify Tuesdays and Thursdays with dread?

To stop the madness and spare my sanity, I’ve decided to do these three things.

1. Stop letting him bug me. I’m going to see the humor and just let it go.
2. Never again comment on something he said about what he found in my trash. He can question my banana peels, discarded agendas and scribbled on post-it notes from now on…I will not respond! I don’t even think he’ll notice because he’s not looking for conversation – he’s just voicing his every thought bubble.
3. Start putting really weird things in my garbage can for him to find.

That’s right. I’m going to start throwing away things that he won’t expect. Cryptic notes that say things like “test results not good”, or fake phone messages that say the FBI called, or Barbie doll bodies with their heads missing. Maybe the occasional condom wrapper, wine bottle cork or empty tampon box. Granted, in reality I don’t think I can let my professional guard down QUITE that much, and I realize that if I took this much time doctoring my garbage I’d be just as weird as he is, but that is completely BESIDE THE POINT!

A Little Kitsch Is Good For The Soul

My friend Traci gave me this funky wine cozy and it makes me laugh. Big points for the kitsch factor.

This is my BIG week at work. In addition to our Festival (aka pledge drive) we are hosting PBS President Paula Kerger and documentarian extraordinaire Ken Burns at big events on Wednesday and Thursday. Lots to eventually share on that front.

Some days at work exemplify "other duties as assigned" better than others. Among many things, here are some of the tasks I accomplished today:

Organized conference call with the Governor's office.

Testified in the "who peed all over the bathroom on Sunday" mystery case.

Hosted a meeting with two representatives from WGBH who have decided to swoop in take over Oklahoma.

Had to burst the bubble of two representatives from WGBH who just THOUGHT they were going to swoop in and take over Oklahoma.

Explained to the caterer for the fourteenth time that I wanted gold napkins at the event dinner and not blue.

Negotiated a peace accord between production and engineering over a pending federal grant.

Went to the dollar store and bought 150 gift bags.

Created a seating chart making sure that there was sufficient room between the Ds and the Rs, and that various divorced couples were at opposite ends of the room.

Herded six high energy escaped black lab puppies from the middle of the street back into their fenced yard while holding crazy, barking Dot's leash in one hand and her poop bag in the other.

I say this to be funny because I never really know what's going to happen from one day to the next. I guess that's why we all continue to get up in the mornings. Just to see what happens next.

Dress For Success

It’s an exciting time at work as we are in the midst of planning some upcoming special events that I suspect will act as great promotional and fundraising tools for our public television network. I feel reenergized by this work because, for many different reasons, special events are a rarity here, and I’ve missed them and what they can bring to the organization.

I look back on my former professional life in Austin and I have to laugh because there, the exception was NOT having an event during a week. I remember one particular stretch where we hosted a station-related event of one kind or another 7 nights in a row. On average, we had at least 1 event a week, and more often than not it was 2 or 3, often on weekends and almost always after 5:00. I must admit I miss the creative teamwork that went into making those events work, as we work more in silos here, but there was an exhaustion factor there that I don’t feel here and in the end, our return on investment on those events wasn’t always worth the effort. I believe there is a happy medium somewhere between my previous and current situations that best promotes excitement, interest and success.

But not-so-gracefully looping back to my point, we have a couple of great events coming up. And they require invitations.

Invitation writing is an art. One reason I like events so much is because each one is its own separate creature, unique unto itself. So what might apply to one event, won’t necessarily apply to the next, and this is certainly true of the language, look, design and tone of the invitation.

As I’m doodling with the invitation copy I’m stuck on that most-dreaded “attire” line. The attire line used to be the bane of my existence. It’s one of those lines that seem to divide people into camps – those who want to be straightforward or leave it off altogether and those who want to be super cutesy with the description. I tend to fall in the first camp, but my experience with special event fundraising has usually leaned toward the second. This was especially true when working with high profile community volunteers or board members on the planning committee. They ALWAYS seemed to think it was really important to be as creative as possible with the attire line.

The problem?

No one ever understood what it meant.

So what did they inevitably do? Call me. I spent numerous collective hours on the phone telling people what to wear to our events.

To prove my point, I looked back through my files and portfolio and jotted down these examples of suggested attire I found on invitations from the past ten years:

Night on the Town
Glitz and Glitter
Jeans and Jewels
Austin City Limits Chic (my personal favorite – you might as well call this one “Anything Goes”)
Dress to Impress
Fabulous Frocks
Hot, Hot, Hot
Boots and Bow Ties
Fiesta

In fairness, there were the occasional classic descriptions, too:

Black Tie Optional
Professional
Business Casual
Formal

The real rub was this; Austin is a very stylish town and the types of folks who came to our events were usually the types who attended every other social event in town so they really knew EXACTLY what to wear. So why call fashion-challenged me? I hated having to discuss with the major donors and beautiful people whether or not “Summer Picnic” meant strappy sandals and a sundress or linen cropped pants and a fancy straw hat. Because really? I didn’t know myself what most of these descriptions meant!

But I lost that battle all of the time. Oh, just thinking about it makes me cringe. If you only KNEW the kind of people I was dealing with on these planning committees you would so feel my pain…

It’s different here and I guarantee the attire line won’t be an issue. I just hope we can infuse our events with a little bit of creativity and enough inspiring moments that people will leave with an exciting impression of the Oklahoma Network, not caring one bit if their table mate was wearing haute couture or shabby chic.