Trinkets
I’ve mentioned before (I think) that I’m not really big on keeping trinkets around. I had a closet full of trophies in the home in which I grew up - debate, math, soccer, etc., and I had my sister take them all to the trophy shop to be taken apart and donated. I don’t have my high-school yearbooks. In fact, I didn’t even get a yearbook my senior year. I don’t have my letter jacket, or class rings. None of those things have much if any meaning to me.
The company where I work also gives trinkets. At certain anniversaries of enrollment, they give you a nice piece of lucite to commemorate the occasion. I’ve been with the company for 15 years, and I’ve gotten a bunch of lucite from them but don’t have any of them around anymore.
But there’s one trinket I’m hanging onto for now.
This year, I gave four presentations at various conferences. Each presentation was different, to a different audience, over a different set of material. All of those conferences had nice welcome dinners, get togethers for the speakers, opportunities to meet with others in the same industry, etc. However, at one of the presentations this year, I received another nice piece of lucite. On it, is inscribed simply:
Name of Conference
Thanks for being so smart!
2011
That’s all it says. I think the thank you line is a little silly. But this is my favorite trinket (aside from my wedding ring and any picture on the fridge) because this was given to me by geeks for being able to present to geeks.
A lot of the presentations I give are to more “professional” types. Stuffy people in suits who are just waiting for this geek who doesn’t even bother to wear a tie to mess up and say something stupid. And I do say stupid things - usually intentionally.
With geeks, I don’t change a thing. With geeks, though, I speak the same way not to raise eyebrows, bring attention to myself, or to shock, but just because that’s the way we geeks talk. I’m not professional. I don’t know about resource allocation, I know about resource injection. I don’t know about management structures, I know about data structures. We make statements like “YGWAGAM” “RTFM” and “play the wiki game” because those have meaning to us that’s just as meaningful as buzzword bingo words are for the Dilbert management set.
So this trinket, I appreciate. It was given to me by my people. And not because I achieved something, but because I had the pleasure of hanging out with people way smarter than me and sharing a little bit of what I’ve learned and hacked together through the years.
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