One Business Card

The day before I left for Boston (yesterday) I worked through my list of things to do before leaving work. The last being - and my favorite - out of office and forward phone. I said goodbye to my work mates and drove home. It wasn't until I got home and started packing that I realised I had forgotten one very important thing for someone traveling half way across the globe for a conference - my business cards. I only had one left. I had given the second one away the night before. That wasn't exactly business related. I ALWAYS forget to take my business cards with me, to meetings, work dinners, any situation where someone(s) are pressing them eagerly into your hands and you have to demure, saying you forgot to bring your own might suggest you don't actually have one, or, worse, you are not important enough to hand them out. I have boxes of business cards at work, every time my title changes, new business cards arrive and the old box is relegated. I think I have had eight or nine over eleven years. That is almost one box of cards a year. And it certainly says something about the elasticity of our roles these days. I keep the cards, one day I imagine I will give a PowerPoint presentation and flick through them to emphasise the point: it's a long time since I've been called a 'Legal Librarian'. Anyway, back to the one card. I will keep it with me and think hard about who I give it to, I won't drop it into a bowl at a publishers booth keeping my fingers crossed for a prize. This is the first challenge I will set myself over the four days of listening, networking and shaking hands at AALL, Boston. Amanda