Subject: Technicalities Resent-From: staff.newyork@agency.com Date: Fri, 26 May 2000 09:29:54 -0400 From: "Mitch Golden" To: nystaff@agency.com CC: tgeorgi@gucci.it, rswanson@gucci.it Technicalities May 26, 2000 *) Be Careful, Dammit. We're Under NDA. I think that someone has leaked past issues of this newsletter. Check out the Op-Ed page of Wednesday's New York Times. Here's Maureen Dowd quoting Helen Gurley Brown, editor of Cosmopolitian magazine: "I had sex last night. I'm 78 and my husband, movie producer David Brown is 83... Sex is one of the three best things there are, and I don't know what the other two are..." Regarding how older women can get men interested in them, Brown advises "If there's a man who might be up for having sex with you, take him to Gucci." OK, let's tell the client this: "Ms. Brown didn't get a hold of a copy of Technicalities. No, no - it's just that the web site we built is even better than we thought." Yeah, that's it. *) Please Make A Donation To The Fresh Air Fund Did everyone notice all that commotion last friday? Laughing and clapping, running up and down the stairs. It was some sort of fest the Creative deparment had. Those of us in Tech are by now fairly tolerant of these goings on - it's all part of this multidisiplinary thing we signed up for when we took a job here. We'd just wish that people who are playing games would keep it down to a low roar so those of us who are actually utilized can get some work done. What disturbed me more is that Jamil Ellis somehow participated in all this. There was some improv theater eventlet, and he did his stand-up comedy routine. Jamil told me his best bit was entitled "Guess My Age". (Someone else stealing my material.) As his career manager, I'm trying to figure out what it all had to do with learning WAP. I'm pretty concerned. When a kid starts to run with the wrong crowd, that's usually the first sign he's headed for real trouble. We have to be careful - as of now, Jamil is an "at-risk youth". *) Woodbridge Corrections As usual, the Woodbridge folks were not happy with your humble correspondent's reportage. I was told that last Monday they piled into their conference room, projected last week's issue on the screen and read it as a group. I'm picturing the scene in 1984 where the office gets together in the morning for their two-minute hate: My photo is on the screen instead of Emmanuel Goldstein's. The Woodbridge crowd chants "Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Tech is Creative!" Their screeds: First of all, Peter Gluck never worked for Quadris - he went even further back, to JYACC, the precursor company. I guess that means he's had more time for the memories to be repressed. Next. Benyo carefully explained what I had missed about the new atmosphere in the office: They have Lava Lamps. It seems that one of the new members of the Creative department attempted to befriend the new coworkers and brought a Lava Lamp in, thinking perhaps the officemates would find it amusing. Actually this poor soul created a monster: the lamp caught on, but in a throughly geek fashion - everyone has been one-upping each other getting a more elaborate and high-tech lamp. Someone brought in one of those high-voltage ion discharge bulbs. By now I'm sure they have a lamp that boots Solaris. Naturally Benyo had an explanation as to why I only saw the nerd journals on the magazine racks. He claims it's because the hip periodicals the office now takes were all out distributed on people's desks. How could I have missed it? Darren Zimmerman takes breaks from the Routemaster project by perusing the pages of ArtByte. I stand corrected. *) How About Room 101? I've been fixated on those new conference rooms we had built but no one is using. My theory is that no one goes in them because they don't have any names. On my floor, we need to pick a new breakfast cereal, and naturally I have a suggestion. The other cereals are all pretty much for kids. Really, is there anyone over 10 who likes Fruit Loops? For the new room, I suggest something age appropriate for those of us over 40: Uncle Sam Cereal (A Natural Laxative). But there are also new frontiers of room naming. The i-Traffic people are moving in on floors below ours, and I think we need to have another contest for the themes. Last time around, my suggestions were deemed so outre that Benyo, the judge, refused even to mention them in the e-mail annoucing the winners. (My ideas were flat out brilliant, if I do say so myself. Conference Room Theme 1: the seven deadly sins, "Pride", "Greed", "Sloth", "Lust", "Anger", "Envy", "Gluttony". Conference Room Theme 2: names of our competitors, "Razorfish", "Scient", "Rare Medium", "Organic", "IXL"...) This time I have another idea - one that Benyo _has_ to go for. How about former ACOM stock prices? I can see it now: "Hey 26 is booked up all day, and there' a client meeting in 17 7/8, but I think that we can meet in 98." *) Goal! In the tech department we're ready for the influx of new people. We've created a buddy system. Every new employee gets both a career manager and a buddy. The buddy's job is to gently introduce the newbie into AGENCY.COM ways. My new buddy is Mani Guruswamy, who started on Tuesday. Mani is a new Senior Technical Director and member of Tiger Style, who will be working on the Compaq and Coke accounts. I did the usual buddy things for him on his first day: got him a desk, a phone, computer, etc. I'm not entirely sure he's on payroll. Ritesh picked me as Mani's buddy to me out of a certain sense of irony. Ritesh and I are engaged in sort of soccer game. I try to hire scientists, and he aims for South Asians. Hey I'm hip - on his first day I wrote out Mani's name in Hindi. (I can also make a mean mutter paneer.) I'm waiting for Ritesh to match me by greeting the next scientist we get by solving Schroedinger's equation for the 1/r potential. My situation was even better than I knew. We currently have two excellent contractors working for us: Don Kovacs and Camilo Lopez. Don is a fellow with lots of experience, a careful guy who definitely understands requirements gathering and process. Camilo is a java guru, who comes to us after teaching the stuff. Ritesh and Chris hired them both. I learned this week what Camilo's master's degree is in: physics. Like kicking the ball into your own net...