Grow Old Along With Me...

ME & THE DANCER

I love everything about my Gramps; his incredible humor, his astounding intelligence and his endless energy.  That’s right; my 88 year young Gramps runs circles around most of my friends, both intellectually and physically. In fact, on October 16 he even earned the title of ‘The Dancer’ at my wedding (mind you, there were 200+ people competing for that title!). This past weekend I spent some time with Gramps. I learned some valuable lessons about power walking, horse racing and living blackberry-free!

The first thing I noticed this weekend was Gramps’ impressive, busy time – at one point he was bored with me and left me at Starbucks while he made his daily rounds walking the mall. I was literally ditched. After 4 rounds of power walking he yanked my Twittering hand from my blackberry and dragged me along. During our trot he told me that I am going to get Arthritis from texting too much and my social skills will be gone by 40 if I keep my nose in my blackberry. This conversation got me thinking… so on the way home from the mall-a-thon, I of course took out my blackberry and Googled “shopping effects on longevity” and boy was I surprised by the results.

Carell Makes General Stores Trendy (that's what she said)

Steve Carell – just the name makes me laugh. I immediately picture his character from LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE running as fast as he can to hop into that van-on-the-go. Aside from making millions laugh both on the small and the big screens, Carell has a list of unique accomplishments; Carell has made Marshfield MA locals thankful for refurbishing their historical downtown hot stop and he's made the words 'GENERAL STORE' trendy!

Intranet users --- Can I get a heck yeah?!

Tracy has come to my rescue as my go-to-gal for all things intranet! Since Ethan was such a great IBM guy, I thought I would stick with the IBM theme for this one...

As an employee at IBM, Tracy uses the intranet every day at her job. I was able to ask her some questions that came from our reading and class discussion on intranets. See below;

Good afternoon, Tracy. Thank you for agreeing to do this and expose your company’s intranet to this blog! I promise that your email inbox will not explode with a furry of intranet questions.

To begin, how big is your company and can you tell us a bit about what you do?
I work at IBM and there are approximately 400k-500k employees. I am currently a financial analyst.

OK, now that we know what you do, what intranet do you use at work?
Its called the IBM intranet to external people who don't work at IBM, but IBMers refer to it as "W3" we can access it directly while in the office or at home by dialing in through AT&T net client.

What is the main purpose of W3 for employees? The main purpose of W3 is to manage your own career (HR, benefits, etc), and to update employees on what is new. It is a great way to know what is happening at IBM.

By "manage your career," what do you mean? Not only do I manage my benefits on W3, I also set my yearly goals, and then have to provide feedback at the end of the year regarding whether or not I achieved what I set out to do -- this measures my bonus potential.

Wow, so does this showcase your growth to management? Yes. My manager is then able to see what I write and evaluate me in writing every 6 months. I am able to see her feedback via IBM's intranet. In addition, my boss does encourage me to use W3 for promotional growth.

How so? On our intranet they exemplify each characteristic you need to master before reaching the next level. You would go on the intranet to find out what internal IBM classes are being offered to help strengthen a certain skill set so that you can master it, and apply then be able to apply for promotional job opportunities which are also listed on our intranet.