Subject: Technicalities Resent-From: staff.newyork@agency.com Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 09:57:08 -0500 From: "Mitch Golden" To: nystaff@agency.com, Fern Shlauter Technicalities March 31, 2000 *) A Fine Mess I've Gotten Myself Into There was as usual a flurry of commentary about my last issue of Technicalities. Your humble scribe is, as you can imagine, by now fairly well inured to the buffeting of the currents of popular opinion. This time, however, I was flummoxed by one of the comments: Ritesh was upset because I failed to mention "that Sundar is from India and that he is a graduate of a world renowned technical university in that part of the world." (I note that Ritesh couldn't remember the name of the school.) Now you know that there are certain people (who shall remain nameless) who start to get nervous when I mention that Woodbridge is in New Jersey. I always endeavor to make them as happy as I can, and, as you may have noticed, in my reportage I _never_ call attention to the race, sex, creed, sexual orientation, or national origin of any current or past employee or employees of AGENCY.COM. (Except of course for that of James McHugh, who is "the best employee we have, truly a fine example of the Scottish stereotype to which we all aspire.") Now I have the guy who signs my paycheck insisting I write something, but the people who actually cut it will come down on me if I do. I'm sure you see what a bind I am in. Let me see if I can get away with it if I put it this way: Sundar Ramaswami is the best employee we have, truly a fine example of the South Asian stereotype to which we all aspire. *) Gucci Goings On Well, the Gucci Strategic Discovery is proceeding apace. Marysia and Sean are cogitating on the following issue: given what we've learned about Gucci, what would a department called "Customer Service" do? And as the Tech Lead on the project, I'll have to figure out how to automate whatever it is. *) Clarification Over dinner, our Gucci client describes a game he played in college. It was called Hellball, and it was sort of like field hockey, except that it was played with a kerosene-soaked, flaming roll of toilet paper instead of a ball. As you can probably guess, the tournament ended when someone set fire to a building. As he finishes the story, he remarks "Is this going to make it into Technicalities?" I decide to visit the meeting of Quality of Life committee, at the invitation of one of members. As I enter, a question is raised as to whether I should be allowed to stay: Am I too senior to be allowed? A somewhat contentious debate ensued, which they held fully in front of me. (Now I know how it feels to be a contestant in a beauty contest.) By a narrow margin they decided to let me stay. As the final vote is tallied, someone comments "Is this going to make it into Technicalities?" A large group of people are having meeting to discuss the project plan for a new client. As we are discussing subtleties of the Information Architecture, one of the project managers inexplicably pulls her shirt halfway off. After I remark on this, she says "This better not make it into Technicalities!" Someone brought her boyfriend into the office one evening. I was, as usual, here late, and she made an introduction. "This is Mitch, who writes Technicalities." I want everyone to know that I do not lead my life in order to write this newsletter. Your reporter is merely a rather hapless individual, desperately trying to avoid being staffed onto my sixth project this week and trying to learn the names of the people who are sitting near me today. (And failing at both, by the way.) On the Great Chain Of Being Of AGENCY.COM, I'm closer to Chauncy Gardener than Chan Suh. I am merely present as the absurdities of life happen all around me. I am tabula rasa, the passive observer of the ambitions, hopes, and fears of others. I like to watch. *) Can't We Get Rid Of Him Already? When we hired Kristjan Varnik, at the beginning of the year, we promised we would send him to London to work on the BA account. Accordingly, he chose not to take an apartment, and instead slept standing up in the closet of the place of a friend of his. AGENCY.COM believes in testing the loyalty of its new employees, so we didn't send him to London for 3 months. The London office is desperate for tech people, up to an including a new vice president, but evidently it was felt that the hazing had to take first priority. As the cold season ended, his friend told Kristjan that the closet space would be needed to store winter coats, and so he would have to move to sleeping on the fire escape instead. Kristjan told us that he was enjoying the fresh air, but was concerned because the rainy season was about to start. We decided that we should finally relent. So Real Soon Now Kristjan is going to work in the London office. Because the hazing was ended prematurely, we decided not to make his London apartment too cushy. Actually it's in Liverpool - he'll have to commute. And actually, it's not an apartment, it's just a closet - but hey, he's used to it. At least it's a walk-in closet. *) Welcome To The Club One of our developers is tech leading a project for the first time. Yesterday he had the client castigate him for something he had no control over. I thought to myself: Wow, he's surprised by this - it's his first time! The stories I can tell: When there was a fire in the phone tunnel under Broadway and our T1s were cut, I got slammed both for the fire and because our client had for months failed to configure their own backup servers. I once had a client cut my head off because he thought I wasn't as old as Tony Ward. So I as I listened to the tale of woe I thought: It's good to see people learning. *) Geek Fashion Has everyone noticed Debra Ronsvalle's new poster of the Java API? The whole Tech Department is lusting after it. *) Lord, Not Again One of the most sacred responsibilities of the Technicalities is to report on the social nights out of the Tech department. This time, it was sushi and karaoke in a restaurant uptown. Have you ever spent the night listening to your colleagues screaming 80s songs into a mike with reverb? Have you ever seen your boss do an air guitar? Consider yourself lucky. This trip was, as usual, organized by Jamil and Eugenia. As in all the parties they put together, there was way too much food. At least it was sushi this time. Most members of the department were too shy to show up. David B quoted a military regulation forbidding fraternizing with the officers. James said his kilt was at the dry cleaners. Accordingly, the department was dessicated of its musical talent. This was a karaoke bar unlike any I had ever seen before. All the rest have a mike and maybe a little stage at the front of a big room. A whole croud of strangers listens to you make a fool of yourself. Instead, this one had multiple little booths, in which each party would sing privately. Everyone felt sort of sleazy in there, I think because it subconsciously reminded us of those pornographic movie booths at the back of X rated video stores. The night started inauspiciously, with Jamil doing his Louis Armstrong immitation to "Wonderful World". And it went downhill from there. For hours and hours, the videodisk flashed the words to the songs below bizarre non-sequetur images, and the group did to the melodies what was recently done to the Seattle King Dome. One of the high points, I thought, was Yoo Kyung doing a song in Korean, with four of us as her backup singers. At least we only sang the "Na, Na, Na, Na" of the chorus. Traff singing the Barbie Doll Song had a certain perverse charm as well. The last song I put on was Devo's Whip It, which I realized was about the same age as some of the younger members of the group. As the song ended, someone remarked "That's a Project Manager's song!" I had to leave shortly after that, at around 10:30. I hesitate to think how much longer it went on. We were only 1/3 done with the sushi, and about 1/1000 done with the video disk.