Our Ongoing Work
Part of our job is to be patient.
2011-02-06
by Richard White
A transcript from an exchange in my office last week, when a colleague came in for some technical assistance:
“Rich, can you help me with something? I have a list of email addresses and I want to send an email to all of them.”
My colleague sits down and plops his laptop in front of me.
“Sure. Where’s the list?”
“It’s here. I’ve selected all the emails, and I’ve copied them.” He shows me the highlighted names.
“Okay,” I say, “let’s paste them into your email address field.” I press two keys and the addresses are pasted.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa…! What happened there? How did you do that?”
“I pasted them in there. That’s what you wanted right?”
“Yeah, but how did you do it so fast? What did you press on the keyboard?”
“I pressed control-v.”
“Control-v, huh? Cool. I’m going to gave to remember that.”
Indeed, the battle for progress is to be waged on all levels. In fact, inspiring somebody in this situation might be more important than pushing the boundaries with Twitter or other web tools.