While I had a mostly dull day, I did spend an interesting hour at a demonstration by three lawyers and a law clerk of how they use my company's product. What was most interesting was their thought process before they used the product. Not only did they consider what the most efficient search terms and connectors would be, they also planned how to do the search in the cheapest way possible. (A lot of customers pay by the transaction, so every search costs them a certain amount of money, following links cost money, printing costs money, etc.) The online research cost is passed on to their customers and the customers don't like to get big bills.

One of the lawyers was asked to show how he used our competition's product to do the same search and then was asked what he liked about their product. They were all asked what they would do to improve the product.

The auditorium was full--I saw all sorts of people including programmers, testers, and librarians. I saw a lot of people taking notes.

In the morning I decided to study up on my next project so I got my usual at the coffee shop and then found a somewhat comfortable chair in the library and read. That was a peaceful half hour.

I haven't said much about my first project manager brown bag a few days ago. Project management is a craft/discipline/profession that brings order to the world and these brown bags discuss how this can be done. This particular session was about creating a communication plan and there was a wonderful example that everyone praised and asked not-too-penetrating questions about. In the midst of the discussion I asked my coworker, who is involved with the project the communication plan was for, how well this plan worked. She said, "I've never seen this before." No one had communicated the communication plan. ;)