Mementos

What mementos do you keep on your desk at work? After 30+ years of work, I’ve collected things that remind me of past jobs and interesting projects. Some things I’ve put away after so many years, and some are pushed to the back of a shelf. But I can’t bring myself to throw them away, silly as that may seem. In a way, they are a visual "brag folder". A reminder of my accomplishments, and some good memories.

ISES

My first major engineering project in my career.

In my first job out of college, the largest and longest program I worked on was called ISES (Improved System Environment Simulator). I know, an unfortunate acronym now, but 35 years ago it was fine. As a young engineer, I worked with a senior engineer writing the proposal for the project. When we won the contract, I worked on digital design, RF design, systems engineering, and wrote software in FORTRAN. I did wire wrapping on the digital hardware, and helped assemble the racks of equipment in the system. It was a large and complex project, and I was proud of our successful development. Eventually I was promoted to Project Manager. Someone on the project, who was a talented artist, made this painting of the system. I still have it hanging on my wall to remind me of that achievement.

(The can is empty now, lest you worry I keep 30-year-old party mix on my desk.)

A few years later, we wrote an Engineering Change Proposal (ECP) to upgrade the equipment with new capabilities. This was a multi-million dollar effort, under a competitive bid, and we were anxious to win it. For some reason, my company had a tradition of labeling a can of nuts with the proposal name on it, not to be opened until and unless we won the contract. When we won, we ate the “ISES ECP-nuts”, and I kept the can. By then I was Engineering Department Manager as well as Program Manager on this large project. The nearly 10 years I spent working on ISES helped me develop as an engineer and manager, and I am proud of what we accomplished.

ORBCOMM ’93 US Tour

My next job was working for ORBCOMM, in the early days before we launched the first two satellites. We were small then – about 35 people. Mostly I worked on test plans (yawn) for the satellites and ground stations. But in the fall of ’93, I was part of a team responsible for testing the ability for the satellites to communicate with the ground stations and handsets we were designing. This required us to drive a van fully outfitted with equipment all over the country to test the ambient noise conditions. Kind of a “can you hear me now?” test back in the days when a cell phone was the size of a brick.

I was excited to be a part of two different one-week legs of the tour/test. On the first leg, my driving partner and I went from the DC area up to Buffalo, NY where one of our ground stations was being built. (We took a side trip to Niagara Falls, where we walked to the Canadian side since we weren’t sure they’d let us cross with the van full of equipment.) We then drove across New York, stopping in Syracuse to fix the RF, all the way to Boston. We then drove across PA and up to Chicago, where we met the next team at the airport and handed over the keys. At each overnight stop, we would package and mail back a tape with our data on it, so they could process it at HQ. (Yep, this was pre-internet for all you young whippersnappers out there.)

I rejoined the tour in Dallas a few weeks later, driving with a new partner through the Midwest and south and meeting the next team in Atlanta. I loved seeing so much of the country, and making little touristy stops at Graceland and New Orleans.

One thing I learned in the weeks between my tours was that they were able to use the GPS readings on the tapes we sent back to track our location (and speed). So they saw when we got lost and went in circles in Boston, and when we might have gone a little bit fast. Oops!

When the tour was done, we received these really cool frosted mugs with the map of the route we took and the names of all the drivers and support team. It was an amazing experience, and a great memory.

Marketing and Sales

In my next job I made the switch from engineering to Marketing and Sales for a new hardware product line at a small company. Part of my job was directing the creation of marketing materials – brochures, catalogs, trade show booths, etc. This was completely different from anything I had done before. I tripled sales in the first year, and continued to grow the business rapidly for two more years. My mementos from that job, in addition to the obligatory coffee cup, are the brochures and catalogs I helped create.

Trade show giveaways

Useful: calculator, hand sanitizer, battery, thumb drive, keyboard/screen cleaner, sharpie. Formerly useful: USB adapter, letter opener. Less so: shoe polisher, and no idea what the mouse-looking thing does…

When I first started going to trade shows, I was interested in the cool giveaways at the different booths. My office became cluttered with logo-covered squishy balls, coffee cups, pens, highlighters, calculators, etc. Now I am over it. I go to so many trade shows I’m not interested in bringing home more tchotchkes. Unless it’s functional – like a cell phone charger cord or battery.

Sales

Once I moved into Sales, I started getting plaques and glass awards for quota achievement and 100% club, etc. I used to hang the wooden plaques on the wall and set the glass trophies on my desk in my home office (where I work). When I left my last job, I boxed them up and put them in the basement as I painted and redecorated my office in preparation for my current job. And now I have space for new memories.

What mementos do you keep from current and past jobs? Do you even notice them any more? Do you collect giveaways at trade shows? What do you find useful?