by alexandra | November 8th, 2008
For the third year in a row I have the busiest week of the year when we are conducting what we call an “Experiment” at work. What it means is that we bring real people in to work according to the outlines in the concept we are developing. It is as interesting as it sometimes is tiresome. Since I am more or less the “mum” of the design of our information technology platform I struggle hard to make it work as much as I have previously “advertised” to my colleagues and participants. This year I think we have made a really interesting (and cool) integration of Documentum 6.5, a 4D-database tool called Beata (space+time), FAST ESP 5.2, IBM Lotus SameTime 8.0.1, Carmenta Server and the portal based on InfoGlue.
This week meant luckily that I could stay at a hotel in Enköping so I did not have to drive two hours back and forth each day. Since the traditional Viking-exercise was going on at the same time in Enköping there where a lot of military officers from other countries staying at the hotel. I wrote about my experiences at at a previous exercise before and this time it was nothing like that at all. I could wear my nice blue uniform with a skirt which makes me feel both pretty and comfortable. I was together with a colleague more or less in control of all that happened and the experiment participants have been really nice. However, at the hotel I had somewhat of a deja vu some mornings. Maybe it was my uniform or the sounds of my heels, I don’t know but with all these mostly male officers from all over the world I felt so stared at that it became uncomfortable at times. During the evenings when we usually had some food in the bar it felt much better, maybe because I was sitting with somebody all the time. I told a friend of mine about it and he just told me that they were only looking because I was so good-looking. Hmm…I like to believe that but there is that something in people’s eyes that says something. Maybe it is because I am a female officer – I know other women in the Armed Forces have told me similar stories.
