Chris said, How unfortunate to be taken to task over this - a RIM related issue and yet we suffer through countless useless "Friday ponderings" about trivia without anyone pointing out the waste of time and space they occupy.

I have to disagree with that assessment.  I don't always reply to the Friday Ponderings but they are a nice break as mentioned by others at the end of the week. I think they also serve a very important purpose- they help us loosen up and interact with others more freely. A person's social skills do not improve by managing information most of the time. I had an IT network engineer tell me that if he wanted to talk and work with people he wouldn't have gone into IT. The RIM profession can be a dry subject matter at times. Many people would rather chew broken glass than work in Records Management or have to deal with some of the people who work in the profession. In the end, that doesn't turn out well.

I have been at RIM gatherings and conferences with some people who said nothing and didn't move. In some cases, I was wondering if we needed to check if they still had a pulse. I think RIM professionals try so hard to appear professional we often end up looking and sounding like cold, emotionless robots. The Friday Ponderings offer us a chance to practice on interacting with each other in a more informal manner. In my experience, this is how things get done in the work world. Knowledge and expertise can only get you so far in most situations. It comes down to sense of connection especially when the stakes and dollar amounts in question are very high. The old adage "It's not what you know, but who know" still rings true today.

The Friday ponderings give us a chance to practice connecting more informally on a quasi-records/information topic with each other so we can do the same when working with others in our organizations. As a profession, I think we definitely need the practice.

Rob Seibolt, CRM
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Manager-Records and Library Services
http://www.mriglobal.org







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