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Subject:RE: Taking Minutes at Meetings From:Chris Hamilton <cah_91 -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 8 Mar 2001 16:57:02 -0800 (PST)
I not only take minutes, but my doing so has vaulted
my career prospects beyond anything you'd think
possible.
First, for some background. I'm a guy. I just checked
to make sure. So it isn't *always* a gender thing. And
when I was first asked to take minutes, I was
irritated and rather cranky. But I can type pretty
quickly, edit on the fly, and I have a pretty good
understanding of the technical issues being discussed.
That was about a year and a half ago. Now, I
understand a lot more and I am frequently requested in
these situations because of it.
My understanding is good enough that I have parlayed
that minute-taking exercise into:
-- being an active part of many corporate
business-direction meetings (first as minutes boy, but
more and more as a participant)
-- being selected as a project manager for the
architecture team for a distributed message-oriented
business process server
-- writing part of the architecture
-- working with a chief architect some fairly
extensive detailed designs
-- working directly with a corporate vice president on
whatever happens to be of interest to him
-- writing requirements from nothing (and having
people *like* them) and basically filling the function
of a product manager
-- being an all-around effective and useful guy
In short, I write well, I understand, I add ideas to
the meetings, and I know how to keep my mouth shut.
And my vision of the business environment has grown
immensely, which has me looking at things and seeing
business opportunities where I used to see problems.
It was a great investment.
As with all investments, past performance is not
necessarily an indicator of future returns, and your
returns may vary. But think twice before being
insulted.
Chris
cah_91 -at- yahoo -dot- com
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