IMR: Entries: 2001: October: 17 — Wednesday, October 17, 2001

Met Out No doubt about it, our meetings are getting bigger, even as our staff gets smaller.   One of our evening receptions. I forget which. We found a jazz band in China. The Honorable Xu Kuangdi, Mayor of Shanghai. Minister Shi Guangsheng (Foreign Trade). Our organization bids my boss (left) goodbye. For another reception, Chinese music. The main board meeting of our organization. It used to be that we had one big annual meeting, with almost 100 speakers, heaps of VIPs, and 1,000 delegates, and then one administrative meeting, with no speakers but lots of working sessions and a meeting of our Steering and Board committees. It used to be that for either, we'd have our full-time staff of eight, plus two to six interns, to keep things running. Our big meeting would also involve a professional conference company, of course, but our little one was simple and we could manage it ourselves. But even in the few years I've been with our office, while our "big meeting" gets smaller (we cut a whole day off the program in Japan), our "little meeting" has been getting bigger. And this year in particular, we're short two full-time positions — including "programs manager," the person who would be the single coordinator of meetings. So here in Shanghai, there are six of us (one essentially not involved in the nuts-and-bolts as he's transitioning to leadership), plus one intern, and yet we had a program that involved six speakers and dozens of special guests. It was overwhelming. And exhausting. And I spent a lot of time running. But on the other hand, running meetings is becoming almost instinctive, and I definitely noticed this time that I could still step back and almost enjoy the drama in what might otherwise be a catastrophic crisis. Fortunately, there weren't many, and the one big one we did have came out of a parallel meeting that one of our offices called into being only weeks ago. (Even though in the end, as usual, our office will be the one falling on the sword.) Mostly it was having to reset rooms as our meal counts jumped and fell wildly (we were competing with APEC's early program) and fighting with our computer and copier vendor. Not bad, overall, for an "administrative meeting" on steroids. Our delegates did their work, and passed their statements, and they ate well and enjoyed live entertainment. But — I had to memorize names and titles, so I'm going to dump them here — they also heard from Xu Kuangdi, Shanghai's mayor, Shi Guansheng, China's minister of foreign trade and economic cooperation, Ambassador John Huntsman, Deputy U.S. Trade Representative, Jim Morgan, Chairman and CEO of Applied Materials, Khoan Vu, Vietnam Minister For Trade, Samuel Bodman, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce, and Derek Williams, Executive Vice President, Oracle - Asia Pacific. Add to that a smattering of local Consul Generals and a few other corporate and government VIPs, and you've got the last three days. This meeting, though, is significant to me and my colleagues because it is the last meeting for our boss. He's been the face of our organization for nine years, heading it from Honolulu for seven years, and a friend to all of us. (It's frightening, but I'm one of the staffers that's been in the office the longest.) He's had his quirks, his moments of stress, all sorts of staff-conferred nicknames... but his charisma and relaxed style is why I've stuck around, even when things got hairy. This might be my first job, bit I know many bosses are nothing like mine. I know many offices don't feel anything like a family. We scrambled on vague direction from other leaders to get him a gift — a Mont Blanc pen — on behalf of the organization, and of course we want to do something for him back home. But I'll tell you, he's not going to get one-millionth out of anyone what he's put in. Just looking at pictures over the years, it's clear he gave his best energy and his best years to us. He leaves, officially, at the end of November. Assuming the other open staff positions aren't filled (and I doubt they will be, given the budget pinch), that means there'll be five of us working in a suddenly huge office downtown. That's about half of what we had in 1998. And only one other person besides me has more than three conferences under their belt (I've got seven). It won't be the same.

Comments E kala mai! Comments have been disabled due to overwhelming abuse by spammers. Please click through to any of the video hosting services linked above to leave a public response, or feel free to send an e-mail. Mahalo! < October 16 · October · October 18 > © 1997-2008 Ryan Kawailani Ozawa · E-Mail: imr@lightfantastic.org · Created: 13 November 1997 · Last Modified: 14 January 2008