I know I’m being made fun of, but I can take it. Let me explain.
As colloquium organizer for the department, I have a lot to do. It gets even more hectic when one is trying to enhance one of the week’s colloquia into a campus-wide event. This is what will be happening with Monday’s. So I’ll be shopping on the weekend for extra refreshment goodies, and have spent the whole day so far (which was supposed to be a research day) exchanging hundreds of emails in an attempt to coordinate meetings, refreshments, and dinner companions for my distinguished guest. (Just managed to snag two Deans, so I am very pleased).
In addition to the standard poster which the Departmental Administration Czar, Lisa Swanson, has enhanced with some colour touches for the special occasion, I -control freak that I am- have decided to do another poster which will be lighter on the eye and more attractive to the younger set, who are not likely to come to a departmental colloquium, and even less likely to come to a dry-sounding physics event. So I slapped together the poster (above right), and because I was supposed to be dealing with all the other stuff I already mentioned (no! no! I was supposed to be writing a paper!), Lisa volunteered to go around campus and put some up in some of the places where we don’t usually bother advertising.
Now, I spent rather a lot of time yesterday and today explaining why the posters had to be put here, here and here, and especially there, because the students congregate here, here, and here…etc…..(yep, you say “control freak”, and I say “I like things done effectively”) and I think I must have ticked Lisa off a bit – and not without justification. Anyway, in response to my email just now with subject line: “How’s the campus looking?” (genuinely wondering how the USC 125th anniversary celebrations were getting on), I got three photos. I think she’s trying to tell me something. Anyway, I think that they’re rather good and unintentionally rather nicely fit my “got energy?” campaign (riffing on the “got milk?” campaign of the Milk moustache people.) And they show you a little of the USC campus sights. So here goes:
“got energy?” and Lisa in front of some footballing thing or other. I suppose those guys are famous in the sports world and you can all identify them:
“got energy?” and Lisa in front of that interesting sculpture I pass a lot when I go hang out in that favourite nice shady spot near the Cinema-Television School and Thornton School of Music:
“got energy?” on a posterboard advertising lots of (other) interesting and fun things on campus (I’m taking my mum – who’s visiting – to that Ransey Lewis concert in a couple of hours):
The students are sure to come to it now. Right?
So anyway, as it says on the poster, if you are “interested in the energy future of your planet”, come along to Caltech’s Nathan Lewis‘ excellent presentation entitled “Scientific Challenges in Sustainable Energy Technology” at 4:15pm in SAL 101. Refreshments (including nibbles and energy bars) on the lawn outside at 3:30pm.
-cvj
October 9th, 2005 at 11:32 am
Aw, that reminds me of my days as an undergrad. How nice
October 10th, 2005 at 3:49 am
to be honest, your slogan “got energy?” makes me want to go to THIS colloquium! I heard about it from Dr. Thompson, but now it sounds fun
.
October 13th, 2005 at 3:41 pm
“that interesting sculpture”…hey, it’s the Giant Baby Double-Ended Medicine Spoon! I haven’t seen that in way too long.
October 13th, 2005 at 4:29 pm
Hi Maggi: I think I’m supposed to say: Fight On!
-cvj
October 14th, 2005 at 7:30 pm
[...] The next aspect of the other pointy end of the sword is that it is just so time-consuming. It is essentially like organizing a miniconference every week. Some of this is my fault. (I can’t do things by halves, I have to do things in doubles, or I just don’t like doing it.) This is because you have to spend the days leading up to it making sure that the advertising is adequate for the type of speaker and topic that is coming. We have a regular posting in the usual places, and some posters up around the department. Not surprisingly, about 25-30 people show up if you’re lucky. That’s just wrong, and embarrassing. In several cases, the topic is of interest to some of our colleagues in engineering, or biology or chemistry. So in those weeks, one has to make sure that special extra advertising is put on. Then there’s meetings. The speaker comes for the day, or half a day if they’re local to the region, and we’re paying with actual folding money (and/or good food; see above) for them to come, and so we should make sure that they get a chance to have one-on-one meetings with everybody who wants to (as time permits). So you first email everybody you can think of about the event. Then you try to get from your colleagues some time windows when they can meet with the speaker. You can end up exchanging hundreds of emails this way in a short time, until you’ve built a schedule. It is particularly bad when it is one of the larger, more campus-wide events which in my wisdom I try to do, since this can involve several other departments. I might even make an extra more “fun” poster to bring in the odd random punter from the general campus community. (The “got nano?” one this week riffs on my earlier “got energy?” reply to the “got milk?” campain. See earlier post.) [...]
October 14th, 2005 at 11:19 pm
[...] Well, you’ve read my whining here and here about being terribly distracted by having to organize departmental colloquia every week. You’ve noticed that the extra grundge work sometimes comes about because I want it to be a fun, inclusive event every week, with everybody having a great time while learning a lot, meeting their colleagues, and with a great deal of good ideas and conversation resulting from it. Achieving this requires effort, and when it does work…it is really, really worth it. [...]