Subject: Technicalities Resent-From: staff.newyork@agency.com Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 16:00:21 -0400 From: "Mitch Golden" To: nystaff@agency.com Technicalities June 19, 2000 *) Here We Go Again... It has been a few weeks since I wrote a Technicalities. Everybody knows the high bar I've been given to jump over: serious titillation in every issue. Well the past three weeks we've had a Brainsqueeze, a tech VP meeting, lots of new hires, but no sex. I have no new orgiastic tales of Benyo frolicing naked with nymphettes on bacchanalian cruises. The most exciting news out of Gucci has been a full renumbering of all their product codes - not really the sort of thing Helen Gurley Brown would be writing about. Besides, what am I to make of the statistics I find on the intranet? I have been posting all the Technicalities up there, but no one is reading them. For example, Vadim Barbarovich's blockbuster "Laptop Policy/Security Procedures for Laptops" has more hits than any issue of Technicalities, plus a five star rating, compared to the "not rated" all my posts have. Do people find the Laptop Security policy sexy? Could it be that full frontal photos of a Compaq Armada is what gets people hot nowadays? What a twisted group of people I work with. *) We Are All Geeks Now I nearly got locked inside the inner staircase a few weeks ago. I pulled my card-key out of my pocket, only to find that it had picked that moment to fail. I was lucky that the fourteenth floor door had failed to close properly, otherwise I might be there still. When I got the new card - my third - I was told that I just shouldn't be keeping it in my pocket any more. Evidently the things just can't withstand that sort of treatment. I was given another one of those spooling clip ons, and I am supposed to be using it. Once upon a time this was the sort of thing only nerds did. When I was a lad, it was the engineer with his slide rule attached to his waist that was the subject of unending derision. I guess that nowadays, the Gucci belt with a pager attached indicates the number of stock options you have. Call me old-fashioned, but I can't bring myself to do it. My card key is in my shirt pocket. *) Nerd Toys Richard Harris wrote me to express his disappointment for not being mentioned by name as the owner of the high voltage orb lamp in Woodbridge. Evidently getting publicly called a geek is now some sort of perverse badge to those folks out there, and Richard wanted his full recognition. My exchange with him induced me to do a little research around our very own tech department. Do our folks have any noticible predilection for toys near their desks? The results were rather interesting. I didn't see more geegaws in the tech department than in any other area. Yoo Kyung's ever changing collection of Korean sweets was interesting, but somehow didn't count. The IT department is another story entirely. There isn't a cubicle up there without a multitude of oddiments. Peter Randazzo has a pocket blowtorch, useful for those especially tough NT server configuration issues. His boss Danny Gumport has so many marketing gizmos - blinking balls, yoyos, and the like - that you can barely fit into his office. Is it the clients that keep us from having these toy collections? Or do we just have less time to play with them than IT? *) Speaking of Yoo Kyung David B writes: "I must say that I'm very very very very impressed! I asked Yoo Kyung to give a stab at the admin tool index page... "Basically I asked Yoo Kyung to look at this because I'm buried with the text item editor stuff and more importantly I thought this job would be a bitch and it scared the hell out of me. Well I'm testing some of the stuff that I'm working on and I'm noticing that her stuff RULES. It looks cool and even better than that it WORKS!!!" *) Growing By Leaps And Bounds We have added a _bunch_ of new folks in the last few weeks: **) Soma Choudhury - is working on the BA team. Before she came here she worked at an outfit called NexGenix, Inc, doing cool B2B and B2C sites. **) Reid Kleinman - is on Tiger Style. Reid is an old hand at VB and NT, so he'll be doing all Compaq all the time. **) Florette Massillon - is on Tiger Style. She has a couple of years at Nortel. She comes from a fashion background and will probably sooner or later be asked to do the Creative Brief for Gucci (with help from Peter Gluck). **) Eli Yasnyi - is on RICE. Eli's last job was web programming for the the government. Once upon a time he ran a cabinet making shop. Eli went from the world's oldest medium - wood - to the world's newest. We also have two interns working with us: **) Zeyad Elmenayer - doing some sitebuilding and programming for Tiger Style. See if you can guess a family resemblance. **) Jason Marlow - is working with the folks on the Colgate team. When he first showed up, he wanted to know what a new media agency did, so Ritesh assigned him to research AGENCY and write up a powerpoint. I can't wait to see it - he'll be the only one who really knows. *) A Classified Ad - At the last minute, Rick Swanson, the Gucci client, asked to place a classified ad. Gucci is looking for a new Tech Director: "Did you get laid last night? Did you even come close? Have you ever wondered in a deeply spiritual moment what it's all about? Well, wonder no more. That's right, you too can be a part of the Gucci brand promise as the E-Business Division's new E-Technical Director. 100% pure sex. 100% pure fun. Apply now and experience the thrill. P.S. All applicants must have the ability to fully appreciate and applaud the unique sense of humor of the Division's Business Director and to laugh on command." I know what you're thinking. Too bad: AGENCY.COM employees themselves are not eligible.