Technology Shmechnology

I have this sort of love/hate relationship with technology.  On the one hand, it fascinates me.  There is something in my personality that enjoys the challenge of conquering a new skill, and nowhere is that more evident that in the realm of technology. 

A perfect example of this was the year I served as Registration Chair for the New England Vegetable and Fruit Conference.  (This conference, by the way is well worth attending and meets every other year, so keep an eye out for the 2017 edition!)  Prior to my (short!) tenure, a dear colleague had spent many years running an incredibly organized conference with very little technology.  Unless you count a good secretary as technology . . .

Not me.  I just knew there was some sweet program out there that would let people register and pay online without me touching one single check.  I'd be able to print badges in multiple colors and sort by state and run analytics forwards, backwards, and upside-down.  Forget registration; we could put the whole thing online from speaker information to room requests to what kind of mint they liked at their lecterns.  Oh yeah . . . I was on a mission. 

So I found the event-hosting company of a lifetime.  And it was great.  I attended the how-to webinars, put my personal guru on speed dial, and generally blundered my way through the design and functionality process.  And I enjoyed every second of it.

There were just a few problems.  For one, the speakers didn't want to put their stuff online.  Emailing it to their session moderator was easier and more familiar.  For another, many of our farmers are a little less tech-savvy even than I . . . they wanted to register by mail or, even better, by phone. 

The biggest problem, however, came when we went to run name badges.  Wouldn't you know, the silly program wouldn't let us print the information we wanted where we wanted on the badges!  Good grief.  All this and we're stuck in badge limbo!  (Unless you've run one of these conferences, by the way, you really have no idea just how important those badges are!) 

Fortunately, I had an Excel genius residing in the office adjoining mine.  She also loves technology . . . and she's way more proficient!  So she spent I don't know how many hours creating an Excel masterpiece: primary source spreadsheets that linked to secondary source spreadsheets that created data for the conditional formatting in the name badge spreadsheet.  It was a miracle!  The original data did come from "my" program--most of it--but her know-how made it happen. 

Again, I loved the process because I learned so much about Excel that I have become the world's most dangerous novice.  When a problem arises, I know there's a way to solve it using Excel--but I don't know how to do it--and I waste an inordinate amount of time trying! 

And this leads me to the "hate" side of my technology life.  I hate the fact that I am always about 5 years behind any innovation.  And I hate the learning curve that takes my oh-so-precious time in return for not so much.  AND I hate the fact that I usually botch something rather heinously on my path to . . . not mastery . . . competency? 

Current example, and impetus for this diatribe, is my new cell phone so recently discussed on this blog.  I love it.  Really.  I get Skype messages and text messages and email messages all within seconds.  I can become a "gold" person at Starbucks . . . as soon as I download the app. 

I can lose 2 years of contacts in one fell swoop. 

Oh yeah.  You read that right.  TWO YEARS!  How do you even DO that???  I have no idea.  But I did.  "How can you date the event so accurately," you ask.  Very easily . . . my tenant, who moved in two years ago . . . disappeared from my contacts.  As did my eye doctor.  (I'll let you know why I was looking him up another day.)  As did two women from church I'm supposed to be trying to get together with. 

Yikes. 

I think I've figured it out, though.  I put my old contacts in the cloud when I got my old phone . . . back before my son was born, I think.  However, I somewhere along the line stopped syncing it manually.  I don't know why, but I just assumed they kind of do that themselves these days.  (Yes, sweetie, the new ones do . . . the old flip phones from the time of Methuselah do NOT!)  I think. 

Bummer. 

Fortunately, however, I was able to use my phone to Google my eye doctor and touch base with my playdate pal via email and track down my dinner date pal on Facebook . . . and call my sister-in-law's house on my cool wireless headset to get her correct cell phone number.  What an amazing network of digital magic! 

I just love technology!