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BobLeeBackStory

Hi! I'm Robert E. Lee, and I had the honor to suggest the "Amplify + Effectiveness" part of the acronym "AYE" for the conference name when Jerry and gang were looking for a catchy conference name in the SHAPE forum.

I was feeling cheap when the first AYE conference was being designed in late 1999, early 2000. In August, 1998 I left a job before acquiring a new one.I found the job market much less friendly at age 51 than it had appeared before, and I searched in the metro Boston area for 5 months without success. We decided to sell and move to the Rochester, NY area where I have kin, and search there.

I landed a job with a rent-a-programmer shop, but didn't much care for the life style. In September 1999 I landed a job as a Senior Software Architect with a consulting house that had big growth plans in the Rochester area. In November/December, their biggest cash cow, Xerox, tanked concurrently with Kodak, and expansion plans turned suddenly into retrenchment plans.

As last in at high pay, I was first out. Unfortunately, by this time my resume was looking like red flags waving in the wind. Subsequent interviews died out with mutterings of "overqualified applicant." By mid-2000, I was feeling total lack of discretionary funds, but I watched the formation of AYE through the SHAPE discussions and through the read-only side of the AYE Wiki.

My wife landed a job through a temp agency that turned out to be para-educator in elementary special education. She liked it and urged me to sign on, so in Summer, 2000, I joined the special education game as the lowliest of teacher's aides. I actually enjoyed it. A lot. But will those of you enjoying less than $13K/year please raise your hands?

With both of us working, we now made 1/5 of my prior salary. Conferences and workshops were out of the picture!

Through 2001, I followed the way AYE came off and the way AYE 2001 SHAPEd up. Pretty interesting. Most of the people whose opinions matter to me via SHAPE were present.

In 2002, I got involved with reviewing Johanna's writings. I pointed out why her article in Software Development magazine, about reducing the pain of layoffs, roused fury among the readers: it was about reducing the Manager's pain, not the laid-off employee's pain! (Well from where I sat, that was pretty obvious!) But JR and I are near opposite temperaments, so I see where her blind spots reside in her writing. After some shape correspondence, she asked if I'd be interested in reviewing her forthcoming book on Technical Hiring. Of course, I said "Yes!" -- pretty cool to read it earlier for free! Of course, now that I've read the drafts, and made suggestions, I enjoy it all the more seeing it come together.

Also in 2002, I asked Jerry to cross-post a reply to KenEstes on the Wiki. Jerry countered that since I had "named the conference" he and the conference hosts would grant me honorary free Wiki membership.

Neat! Virtual conference via Wiki isn't bad. I had the opportunity to creatively dialogue with most of the hosts and guests prior to the AYE 2002 conference. Wiki dialogue really is a comfortable way of getting to know people's thinking if you are Intravert/Intuitive in MBTI.

More stuff here...to be continued...

Around August,2002, something came up that paid my conference fee, and I scrounged frequent flyer miles as a birthday present. Cool!

In November, I actually met most of the SHAPErs and AYE hosts and everyone I had been in contact with face-to-face. It was awesome!

Like Jim has said elsewhere, I had visualized each virtual contact and when I actually met them face to face, not one of them were as I visualized. Of course, they were all exactly who they should be, and now I can't quite recall my mental pictures from before.

--BobLee 2002.12.10