meetings

<--- click to enlarge

This week I've had no less than two meetings every day, most days three. Yesterday we had a branch meeting in the video conference room. Our branch has just been restructured and the new executive manager (EM) wanted to introduce us to the Melbourne component of our branch. So we all introduce ourselves (the screen is too small for us to see anyone well enough to remember their names). Then the EM starts waffling on for 30min about the branch and our future directions and the challenges ahead, blah blah blah - all of which will be discussed again at our branch planning day in two weeks. I literally had to fight to stay awake.

Today we had a more casual meeting with the new Chair. This was semi-exciting, as we've had an acting Chair for months now, and been waiting to see who the Minister would pick as our fearless leader. But then the guy gave us his entire work history. Luckily there was celebratory nibbles at this one, so I lurked in the back with my snacks and just caught the occasional sentence or two.

I'm interested to meet the Melbourne people and work with them. I have a passing interest in who leads the organisation, though I'll rarely work with him directly. But those meetings were completely useless. To top it off, every unscheduled moment I've had this week has been filled with unexpected and urgent requests for website maintenance. We have a public consultation going at the moment and consequently nothing can go wrong with the website; otherwise we are sending people to our site only to have them not be able to access the information they need to participate. I've done more web work in the last week than I did in the six months preceeding.

My supervisor wants me to update her tomorrow on my progress with a discussion paper I'm writing, and all I've done all week is attend mostly pointless meetings and fiddle around with html. I know looking busy and achieving nothing is typical of the public service, but ARGH!!!!!