For the past few weeks I’ve been increasingly engulfed in preparations for the Oasis conference here in Skövde. I’m heading up the computer group which is a rather small part of it, but it’s the first time I’ve been the leader of such a project. It is interesting, but also rather a lot of work.

It’s the first time we hold this conference in town. Because of that, the organization isn’t entirely together – there’s an awful lot of coordination going on, and questions raised back and forth, and a lot of people are working hard. While I’ve studied organizations in theory, it’s sure a different thing to see everything like this, hands on. For instance, there’s the question of materials – do we have everything? what’s on the inventory list? where are my things, they’re not here – who did you say has them again? he’s on vacation??

Running the projectors is a small part, but a lot of people will notice if it goes wrong. Kind of like my day job. Not too many understand what I do; but if things ever went really wrong, I guess they’d hear about it.

Today was the first time I got my group together. Actually it’s only half my group – the other half is away on vacation. That’s another lesson to learn: It’s very difficult to drag people together, especially if it’s a volunteer project and in the middle of summer. But I think it went well. I wasn’t as prepared as I’d hoped to be; but at least we went over the details and it seemed to go over well.

On the whole, it’s a lot of work I haven’t done before. It’s all about emailing, calling people, coordinating – and it takes a lot of time, and it’s a lot of new people to deal with. I have traditionally been rather bad at doing those things, but I find that I’m being pushed here into doing better. And you know what? Once you push past that barrier of not really wanting to talk to people, it’s pretty cool. Putting in a lot of hours and all of that stuff is growing on me. It’s fun, actually – I’d be calling people already if the time wasn’t a quarter to eleven at night.

In military boot camp, people are pushed beyond what they think they can do. Their legs want to give up, but their mind tells them to keep going. So they push through walls – physical and mental. I guess, in a way, that’s what’s happening over here.

I think Dan would be proud of me. ;-)