Technology is Not Chocolate

Hi Readers! I know - SLACK!! But I have what I consider a good excuse. I am currently in DC attending a American Society of Training and Development conference with 8000 other people (good God!). And before I came up here, I decided I should finally cave in and get a PDA. Yeah, yeah, I'm behind the times, whatever.

So I spent several hours Saturday securing one and struggling to set it up. Not that it's that hard - it's just different. The buttons seem really small to me. The track ball is a pain in the butt. I know I'll get used to it, but.....ugh.

I already see how people get addicted to these things and it is a little scary. When there's a second of downtime, instead of making small talk with the living humans sitting next to me, I whip out my new Blackberry. (Why no IPhone? I tried one in the store and it was way too hard to hit the right "keys". I have giant hands and that thing was a trip straight to hell.)

So I'm losing interaction with the people around me for the sake of checking my e-mail. Is this a good trade-off? I have to say I don't think so - it's not like every e-mail I get is someone wanting to hire me for a speaking engagement. Most of them are not important. Hell, most of them aren't trying to buy from me, they are trying to sell me something. But it's the way of the world, isn't it? I got the darn Blackberry so I would stay connected - to Tweet more (like the world really needs more Tweets) and to be more responsive to clients.

BUT I also got it so I could receive pictures from my hot new boyfriend! I could send him pics on my old phone, but I couldn't receive his. Well, guess what? I still can't get his pictures and now he can't get mine. GRRR! So that will be yet another time waster trying to figure that out. Ah - I long for the day when all this technology stuff will be seamless. I'll probably be dead by then, but I'll be smiling from beyond the grave.

No big chocolate news, although in the giant Expo here (nothing like Candy Expo, by the way - this is all training stuff - zzzzzzz) most of the vendors are using chocolate to lure attendees in. They aren't even bothering with other types of candy - well, a few are, but by and large the others have seen the light! Chocolate is irresistible. People will even endure the attentions of a sales person for free chocolate.

I also saw a session by Mars about how they are changing their corporate culture. It was lead by one of their high corporate HR people and an outside consultant and I felt like I was trapped in a Dilbert cartoon. No real world examples, but loads of jargon. I have an MBA and it totally hurt my brain. There was no free chocolate. I asked.

I'm off to sessions, but don't worry - I'll be back home and back to chocolate soon!! Keep the faith!