From: Sushi (Sushi_at_ragingbull.com)
Date: Wed Jun 02 2004 - 16:50:55 PDT
>On 6/3/04 @ 7:30 AM, Ed Kummel wrote:
>
>I had a manager who one time during a meeting, he
>suddenly stopped talking and stared at me. I wasn't
>looking at him because I was taking notes on my Newton
>and didn't notice that he had stopped...I was catching
>up on what he was saying. When I finally caught up, I
>looked up to see everone looking at me. He then said,
>"are you playing games on that thing?" I told him that
>I was taking notes. He didn't believe me and said that
>I need to prove to him by sending him the notes I was
>taking...Talk about a paranoid ID-ten-T (write that
>out to find out what he is)
>Needless to say, he wasn't a very popular manager. We
>were all happy to see him leave...except when we found
>out that he took a teaching position at GMU for
>teaching management methods.
Your story brought back some memories with using my Newton in the Quality
arena. It was back when the Newton 2K first came out.
My new boss, an older gentleman, had heard I was a gagget type person.
At the time he was very computer illiterate, so he was suspect about
gaggets and their use. He thought of them more as toys and that real
work could not be done on them. On the plus side, he was a smart guy and
learned easily.
In the Quality arena, it is common to have 3-5 day Strategic Planning
Conferences or SPC for short. During the first SPC that we had where he
was the boss, I had my Newton out taking notes using it in portrait mode
and handwritting recognition. It worked great.
However, he too thought I was playing games. He was up in front of the
group facilitating so he could not see what I was doing. He off course
asked since he thought that I was not paying attention to what was going
on. I informed him politely that I was taking notes for the conference
for our After Action Report (AAR) and doing some other work related items.
He had a hard time believing me and was suspect of my actions. As I
mentioned, he was not too knowledgable about computers back then and did
not even want to look at my screen to see what I was doing. In his case,
he probably thought I would just have some info showing to cover what I
was doing.
I had to figure a way to get his confidence in me and my Newt in a soft
way/approach. An idea came to me that evening. So the next day, I
brought my keyboard and connected it. And then proceeded to continue
taking notes. Of course he heard the pitter patter of the keyboard.
That got his interest since it now fit his concept of a computer. He
actually wanted to see what my Newt could do after the second day.
Of course he wanted to know why I had not used the keyboard the first
day. I demonstrated the handwritting recognition. He was impressed. So
to answer him I mentioned that it was too hard to keep up with the
handwritting recognition (it wasn't but that was the excuse that I used)
and that the keyboard made it easier. He liked the answer and said what
a wonderful idea. At the end of the conference, I connected to my PC and
transferred the notes then shared with him and the rest of the staff. He
liked the Newt.
Needless to say, I was happy with the result. But what really made me
beam, was when at another seminar some 3 months later, he asked if my
Newt could handle some spreadsheets/control charts that we were doing. I
gave it a shot including printing out the result by faxing. He loved it!
After that he was a true believer in Mr. Gagget. I started mentoring him
in computers at his request. Today he is quite adept at using his
computer and the typical MSFT Office type applications.
Sushi
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