An evening of spoken words and other non-work items

Last week I attended Word Jazz at Boxley's in North Bend. Boxley's is a new restraurant / jazz club in North Bend. NEXTCOMP.NET was a sponsor for the event. I wanted to support writing and literature in the Snoqualmie Valley, especially when it involves an evening out with family and friends!



Several members of the local SnoValleyWrites! organization read from works that they had written. Many of the authors are published and the stories were very well written.

We all played a game similar to MadLibs where we filled in words on the colored sticky notes and the evening's MC's put them together into a funny story.

In addition to sponsoring the event, I also submitted a story for the community writing challenge. The prompt was "A reporter shows up at your door and starts asking strange questions about your neighbor." I've been working editing my NaNoWriMo story which is a ghost story, so my mind immediately went to something slightly scary and spooky. You can read the story here, shared through Google Docs new File Share feature. I didn't win, which was totally fine, because the winning stories were very good. My favorite of the evening was written by an 11 year old. It was fun, well paced, and very enjoyable. She did a great job of reading it aloud in front of a room full of adults (with some kids interspersed in the crowd).

In other community related news, we ate dinner at McDonald's last week to support my daughter's middle school. Every few months teachers from the school work at the counter taking orders and getting the customers revved up to support the school. A portion of the evenings proceeds go to the school. It's always a well attended and lively evening. And my kids love eating at McDonald's, so they don't complain too much about being there either!



If you haven't visited my Flickr stream in awhile, you should check it out, as I've been busy posting there again. Some of my favorites relate to the wildlife here in the Snoqualmie Valley. For instance, check out what my kids and I saw on the way to school the other morning.



That about wraps up this post. I hope you have a great week. Spring is here (in the northern hemisphere anyway)!

Up next, Part 2 of the how-to design a new compensation structure series.

User Group Thank You And WorldatWork Booth in Seattle

I've been told that Spring is officially here, but I think Nature is playing an April Fool's joke on me, because I woke up and it was snowing (again) at my house. I have seen some hints of Spring around the neighborhood, the cherry trees have some blossoms, but Winter is keeping a toehold at least for now.

User Group Meeting Wrap Up

Thank you to those subscribers that attended the 2009 Northwest Area User's Group meeting held on Monday, March 30th at the Port of Seattle's offices on the waterfront. A huge thank you to Tammy Woodard, Ann McClellan and Hugh Hastings for hosting the meeting, helping setup, and take down and for the help with getting all the food and beverages moved from my car, to the room and back. Also, thank you to Tracey for bringing lunch and to Bob for stopping by at lunch to say "Hi" to the group. It was an excellent meeting and we discussed and generated some really good ideas for Version 3. Everyone, including me, is eagerly anticipating the full release of version three starting in April.

Version 3 Upgrades

A quick note to existing subscribers: we are upgrading each subscriber on a one-by-one basis on a time line to meet your needs. We will contact you when we are ready to proceed with the upgrade OR you can contact us and let us know you are ready. We will not be automatically moving everyone over, primarily because we know some of you are in the middle or just starting your annual analysis. We don't want to interrupt the annual process. We want to be sensitive to your time line and needs.


2009 WorldatWork Exhibit Booth

It's only the first of April, but my mind is already moving to the end of May and the WorldatWork conference and exposition being held in Seattle this year. Yay, it's in Seattle this year! This makes the logistics of setting up a booth and attending the conference much easier for me since I live in the area. The last time the conference was in Seattle was in 2000. I remember that we had an incredibly warm and beautiful week of weather during the conference. I hope that holds true for this year as well.

Here's a link to a "free pass" to the exhibit hall. If you are not attending the full conference, but you want to wander the aisles of the exhibit hall, just print these passes, fill them out, and you can wander to your heart's content.

http://www.worldatwork.org/pub/Expopass_09.pdf

So if you're in the area, or if you coming from out of town, I hope you have a chance to stop by booth 1330 and say "Hi".