Letter from the President - January 2016
MENTORING MATTERS
Recently two of your board members each lost a grandfather. In both cases, the grandfather had a great impact on the life of the board member. The experience, wisdom, and support that these men passed on to their grandchildren can never be fully calculated or measured. We only know that the world is a bit less wonderful without them in it.
As with many things that I observe, this sort of experience can be applied to other things in life.
Let’s talk about mentoring. Many of us would agree that mentoring is an important thing to do. All too often we see people hoarding knowledge. There can be all sorts of excuses why they do so. Yet this is not the experienced, wise, or supportive thing to do. This is also one of the reasons why many of us love AUGI. The sheer amount of knowledge that is shared by the members of AUGI is staggering. Even if you have the misfortune of working for someone who is not good at mentoring you are not left in a void as a member of AUGI. Reach out to your fellow members and seek their experience, wisdom, and support. You may be pleasantly surprised by the depth of the sharing you get from AUGI.
There is also the flip side of the coin. If you have experience, wisdom, or knowledge, then share it! Even if you feel that you have only a small area of expertise, what you know may thrill another AUGI member.
I was reminded of this recently within my own office. I was discussing dual monitor layouts with an experienced Revit support technician who was assisting a user. As part of the discussion I mentioned that the user should drag not only the project browser to the second monitor, but also the properties palette. Not earth-shattering, but the tech hadn’t yet suggested it to the user. My next two comments blew the tech’s mind: 1) drag some of the ribbon panels to the second monitor; and 2) hold the control key down and drag the Systems tab in front of the Architecture tab (hey, I work in an MEP office!).
The point here is that I offered a few simple tips for rearranging the interface that an experienced user did not know. I didn’t consider these tiny nuggets of wisdom all that great, but when I passed on the knowledge to someone else they loved it.
You can do the same. You have all sorts of ways to share, thanks to AUGI. Share it on the forums. Write an article for AUGIWORLD. Become active as a volunteer or manage one of AUGI programs. Mentor the next generation.
In closing, thank you, Woody and Grover, for the mentoring you did for your grandkids.
R. Robert Bell
AUGI President
