Just Jennifer

Call it Life in a Fish Bowl… Half Box… Cubicle Cubbies or Jenny in a Box, we’re all making some changes to our office environment here at Videomaker, and it’s been pretty interesting to observe.

Videomaker has been at it’s 3rd and present location for a good number of years, and it seemed time to freshen up and rearrange the office.

Several departments work closely together, like our Editorial Dept. and the Production Dept, but the layout wasn’t efficient for one-on-one interaction, and some staff members were pretty isolated from others even within their own departments.

The Production  Dept. was on the opposite side of the building from the Editorial Dept, for instance, so we agreed to merge office space.  Production and Editorial merged with IT, creating a Super Cubicle Center we’re dubbing ProdITorial.  Sales and Marketing have also moved into a Super Center, …”Sarketing?” “Mar-sals?”… and we’re all trying to get used to each other’s differences.

Some who were in full 3-sided cubicles are now in open-air space, (like me) while others are more enclosed, (like Tech Editor Mark).

What was interesting to watch was how our daily habits have changed… “Where’s the printer” became a game similar to watching mice in a maze who have traveled around their familiar surroundings for months suddenly having to find their way around it again when someone moves a couple of the dividers.

Some of us like it more open, others prefer the enclosed space. Poor Susan and Melissa no longer have windows, and are now trying to Feng Shui their space with personal touches like fish bowls, plants, and mirrors.

The office previously had six long divided sections, each with 3 or 4 cubicles on each side of the divide. Now we have three “Super Cubicles” as I like to call them, with larger open areas in the center.

John joked that we need to make a true lounge in the center “quad” of our Super Cube to look what people assume our “Videomaker Lounge” community site must be based on, as everyone knows we have a fun office full of games like basketball tournaments, old-fashioned popcorn machines, and we used to ride around the nearby park in a old-time Surry on lunch breaks.

I have the garden table, bar stools, twinkle lights and umbrella ready, we just need the Tiki torches and luau skirts!

Here’s a photo of Life in an office environment that would be fun to work in. I sent our I.T. guys the photo with a request, but they have yet to build me a super fish tank!

My Second Post.

So I seem to have become the Guinea Pig for getting a Videomaker Lounge blog up and running.

After many trial and errors, we discovered that I’m a Bozo. Yep. That’s right. The computer thinks I’m a Bozo. That’s what I was told, anyway. It kept spitting me out of the system, suspecting that I’m doing some illegal internet activity, maybe even some s.p..a…m’ing. Notice that I didn’t even spell that correctly, just in case.

What this meant was that I couldn’t add an avatar to my member sign on. This discovery had our wonderful I.T. guys scratching their heads for a while, but they are such brilliant guys that the problem was solved. This might be why so many of our members don’t have avatars, so I’m looking into that, and will report on it… somewhere!

So we got my member sign on to stick, then I had to deal with the site admin when I made my blog page. A number of the pages don’t allow the user admin abilities, rendering them useless, so after some more trial and error, we are discovering which ones are mere dummy pages, and which ones actually work, and will fix those when we can get to them. I’m meeting up with the really cool Art Department next week to work on that. Again, as soon as I know.. you’ll know.

I think I have a shoot scheduled right now, so I gotta run!

Finally… I’ve created my blog page and joined Videomaker’s Lounge.

I’ve been needing to create my blog, and join The Lounge, for a long long time, now, but I’ve been busy with the many duties I do here at Videomaker.

We all wear multiple hats, and this week I am trying to firm up assignments for the upcoming West Coast Summit in Pasadena in April; finish proofing the May issue of the magazine that goes to to the printers next week; beg and bother writers assigned to the July and August issues to please get their stories in; finish editing the June issue so I can send it to our marvelous art department so they can do the magic they do, … and… I’m writing the May Quick Focus column on how to sign up to The Lounge. So I guess I better get myself signed up! It’s not as intuitive as I thought, but I’m not as techy as the rest of the guys here, so I’m lucky to have them as my support.

Well, I must get back to proofing, or this issue will never make it out the door!

Welcome to my new blog, Jennifer VideoChick.