My Status Update

Alright, I've been a little busy lately.

Okay, a lot busy.

Since it's new product time, I'd finished up my work for Ellen on the 2009 AutoCAD and LT Bible, then started on a couple of articles for AUGI HotNews TipNique's column (April and May 2008).

I returned to college as a student of St. Louis University's School of Professional Studies to resume my Bachelor's degree.

Then my husband and I found out that we were expecting offspring #2... so I've been having to spend an awful lot of time napping because I'm EXHAUSTED.

Also, the Gateway AUG had their Spring Quarterly meeting. I presented on AutoCAD 2009 and Haden Smith presented on workflow with BIM. It was a pretty good meeting with a lot of great commentary by the members in attendance. We do apologize for going out of character and gathering on a Friday night rather than during the middle of the week, but, we had multiple scheduling conflicts that necessitated our departure from that norm.

During the meeting, I announced to the group that because of my schooling and impending bundle of joy, I would be resigning as President and would be replaced by Nicholas Iyadurai.
I'll still be serving on the board as a Member at Large, promoting and attending the meetings, probably presenting on occasion as needed. But, I'll no longer perform emailing or treasurer duties, as I have since the group's inception.
So, since then, past-President Brian Myers and I have been meeting with Nicholas and Chris VonFeldt about procedures, history and the new website revisions (Chris has been working hard to tidy up our site, lots more to come!). Also thanks to members Elle and Rich for their review of the site and additional ideas and to Rudy for helping to arrange our meeting space.
Our members are why we can do what we do.

As for why I asked Nicholas to step into my shoes... well, his company does a lot of work for mine, and I've always been pleased with his professionalism, enthusiasm and skills, and he was ready and willing. So, many thanks to him for agreeing to take on this laborious yet rewarding task!

Last week I had my final for my first college course in over five years. Whew! That's a lot of pressure. But, I read and studied the book and lecture notes and paid attention to the comments my classmates made in our online arena (which was hard in a night class considering I've given up almost all caffeine)... and surprisingly did really well and feel a lot better now than I did at the beginning of the class. So, I'm off for a couple of weeks before my next class starts.

I was a bit disappointed that the Industry Advisory Board for Vatterott's CAD program was scheduled for the same time as my final, as I do normally enjoy those quite a bit. I did ask my husband to go in my stead and he really thought it was a pleasant and productive evening as well.

AS IF THAT WASN'T ENOUGH! Last week I also had a BIG presentation to give at work. As I've mentioned, I've been piloting the FMDesktop CAFM suite over about the past year. I've been trying to get enough support for a CAFM implementation campus-wide for almost as long as I've been here. FMD was finally cheap enough for me to push through a test, thanks to the support of my Manager and Director.

Every year we (the Engineering group) host an Education and Planning conference for our hospital, but, we also invite the pertinent corporate overlords, as well as FM leaders from some of the health system's smaller hospitals. We all present on various projects we've completed or would like to tackle, and it's a great time to get feedback, garner support and share our opinions with one another.

Well, since I'm the only nerd left in the department, I had the distinct pleasure of arranging the setup of the presentations and the A/V needs. I don't know just how many ways there are to break or choke up a Powerpoint file, but, I'll bet that I saw at least a half a dozen different methods early last week (although the deadline for submissions was the previous week).

So, everything ran smoothly technically as the two day conference went along, and last Friday I had made my presentation to the group (next to last, THAT really helped my nerves).

It was really very well received. I think we're getting to the point where we're willing to embrace technologies out of our traditional MEP engineering realm. There were some GREAT questions from the other Managers and the Supervisors. My boss and the director told me that it came off really well and they thought I'd done great.

I only hope that I did the possibilities the justice that they deserve. There's so much we could do better. We're already good at what we do, but, we can always improve things.
Wish me luck.

I'll be starting my next class soon, and I'm in the process of making my annual revisions to the AUGI CAD/Design Salary Survey. YES! You heard that right, ALREADY! We're going to run it in the summer so that we can publish it in the fall in time for year-end reviews. I don't know why we didn't think of this sooner.

Whew. Now I remember why I'm so tired.

Oh, and my office move that was scheduled for the 8th of May has been pushed back until the end of the month. Boy, oh boy. I can't wait. (rolling eyes)