Sorry, Been Busy

God, the past two weeks...

My team at the office is still effectively down to 50% of its normal headcount thanks to departures and a family emergency of my manager. He's doing what he can remotely, but he's had bigger things to worry about than office stuff so we're all doing double-time and I've been stepping into the management role.

While we've had no major crises, I've been busy every hour of every business day with (a) my own project list as the sole engineer for the production data center, (b) various team projects we have in already in progress, (c) company projects such as our annual payment card audit and (d) misc issues as they come up in our production & non-production environments. Being nibbled by ducks is a good comparison: not life-threatening, but annoying/frustrating in a thousand little ways.

At least my part of the performance evaluations are completed and submitted. I still need to do my list of goals for 2013, but I need some information about the enterprise and operations goals first so I can align my wishlist with the official program.

In the interim, I still have my regular square dance calling gigs and personal appointments. We were supposed to de-winterize the trailer last weekend but we decided all of us had too many work commitments to spare time away from the office; we'll try again March 29-31. I've also cancelled some discretionary appointments and projects to make room for work hours.

This weekend & early next week, we're going to North Carolina for the annual CALLERLAB convention, a conference of square dance callers. The timing isn't great work-wise, but I'm ready for the escape. I'm not getting away scott-free, however: I'm a panelist moderator for an hour session on marketing dancing using social media with Kris Jensen, and I'm representing the GCA at the inter-organizational roundtable meeting and the business meeting. And I'll be reporting back to the GCA in July with the stuff we cover at this conference.

As I type this, I've packed my suitcase. I still need to pack my personal items into my backpack (camera, tripod, laptop, tablet, etc.), but that takes only 30 minutes in the morning. I also want to make copies of the GCA's "The Call Sheet" journal and registration forms for the GCA's caller school to offer on the promo table. I also need to ship two hard drives back to our New Jersey office tomorrow morning before I depart.

I really need a lot of sleep right now, but I'm doing better than I feared.

DC Lambda Squares Update

Tonight, we held the annual membership meeting and board elections for the DC Lambda Squares.

For the most part, there wasn't any dramatic news. We're making a bit of money off our fly-in festivals, losing a bit on our community dances and club nights, and losing a great deal off our classes. On the whole, we had a financial deficit but there's more than enough cash in the bank and certificates of deposit to handle that.

We've created a committee to re-evaluate how we do our community dances. I proposed the board offer a list of items or projects and ask the members to consider sponsoring these special expenses; to demonstrate how it could work, I also committed to covering 50% of the caller's fees for our next dance (another dancer volunteered to cover the other 50% after the meeting).

Four of the five board positions up for election were all re-elected by acclamation. I think it speaks volumes that the folks who are staffing the presidency, membership chair, secretary and one of the two at-large positions were willing to continue for a second term and are comfortable working with each other. They are, as a certain upcoming movie would say, an effective team.

I kept out of the volunteering trenches, for the most part. I've already spent some years on the board and on the 2009 IAGSDC convention executive; further, I have a lot of duties related to my square dance calling for several clubs and my vice-president's role with the Gay Callers Association. I'm not getting burnt out, but I stretching just a wee bit past my comfort level at the moment so some restraint is a good thing.

There were lots of good ideas for recruitment and fundraising offered at the meeting: I'm looking forward to seeing many of these put into operation, as well as whatever we can learn from the upcoming CALLERLAB convention this weekend.