The Last Manila Folder

You may not have seen me around recently. That’s because it’s September. Or at least it was at the time I wrote this. It may be October by the time you read this.

Doesn’t matter. Every year around this time, I start filing away manila folders. It generally begins in mid-September, with the last one archived by the first week of October.

What’s in these mysterious folders?

A very small slice of my life.

Small.

But intense.

For, though the time may seem short, the mileage isn’t. And, if there’s one thing you have to remember, it’s not about the time, it’s about the mileage.

Now, here’s the misleading thing: this collection of folded manila card stock doesn’t even tell the entire story. It doesn’t include the events that don’t require anything of me (other than to just show up).

At the very least, the folders represent one way I organize things. If you know anything about me, you know I enjoy living life by wearing many hats. This can result in very busy days, weeks, and months. It’s easy to forget things. So I write them down. And if they’re singular events (like a presentation or a conference), I accumulate the papers associated with these meetings and place them into a specially designated folder. A manila folder.

Why is this important? Because I can never remember if I made the hotel reservations. Or when I’m supposed to arrive. Or where I’m going.

So I write it all down and relax. No need to remember. I can focus on my other activities. My mind is free to roam about the cabin of life. I don’t have to look again at that manila folder until a few days before the event.And that’s very useful come the second week of September. Because I go through those folders rat-a-tat-tat. This year was not unlike past years. Four folders. Nine days. Close to a thousand miles.

But that’s not the only trick. They may be separate folders, but I’ve found a way to weave multiple hats into them. You know. “Kill two birds with one stone.” Except, with me, it’s usually more than two birds. Sometimes it’s the whole flock.

That might sound hard, but it’s easy when you write and speak about topics where my jobs overlap.

For example, when I was on the board of the New York Press Association (and even now), I’m often asked about investments and markets. When I talk about my writings concerning the history of Western New York, I almost always mention Preemption Line. That’s because no one knows how to define the region and Preemption Line identifies the initial eastern boundary (until changing county lines pushed that demarcation further east). It’s tough to mention this without retelling the story of that time the SEC required me to name the counties that constitute Greater Western New York.

If you haven’t guessed by now, the most recent manila folders addressed two annual conferences for public historians, one annual conference for publishers, and one historical presentation. The venues stretched from the Catskills to East Aurora to Utica, and places in between. Not in any order.

Like I said, a lot of miles.

But definitely worth it. Besides coming up with plenty of work-related items, I discovered several ideas the casual reader might find interesting.

Let’s see. After rummaging through my notes, this is what I’ve come up with.

“Networking isn’t an activity; it’s a strategy.” This nugget came from Walter Thorne, the former publisher of the Albany Business Review. Now, everyone knows about networking, but the way he framed the thought really stood out. Granted, the details associated with this comment were meant for larger firms, and small companies like ours really can’t deploy the strategy he outlined. Still, I liked the sentiment, and other readers may find it useful.

“Test Authority with ChatGPT.” Rebecca Capparelli offered this advice. She heads up Gannett’s companywide promotions strategy. This is an excellent idea and can be implemented with any business, any organization, or any civic association. She didn’t get into the specifics on how to do this, but I explored this on behalf of my businesses.

Here’s the key takeaway: have your preferred GenAI platform generate the prompt (or prompts) for this assessment. Use a different platform to run these prompts (because if you use the same platform it may bias the answers). Better yet, use multiple other platforms to run the prompts. This will give you a good cross-section of answers, and different platforms are better at doing certain things.

Speaking of AI, I had the chance to share my experience with other publishers (and help at least one of them).

But before I tell you that, I need to tell you that there was one publisher who was adamantly against using AI to help his operation. I’m not talking about using AI to write stories (a very risky thing), but for productivity-enhancing tasks. This is the same kind of thinking that led to people saying the calculator was cheating, the phonograph would be the death of musician jobs, and writing was unethical (as opposed to memorization).

Those people tend to fall behind in their jobs, their careers, and their businesses. If you allow your competitors to outperform you, don’t be surprised if you fail to meet your goals.

In any case, there was a debate over whether AI could quickly assemble a community calendar. Most believed, in theory, it was possible. But the consensus was that it would take a lot of work to do it.

I disagreed. The next time we had a 15-minute break, I went to my room and created an app to do exactly what that publisher wanted (and others said couldn’t be done quickly).

Despite the fact that I have some programming experience, I didn’t use it. I acted like a regular nontechnical person (which most journalists are). The publisher was amazed when I solved her problem so quickly.

I returned from that conference with a smile, knowing, by sharing my knowledge, I had helped someone. When I got home, I celebrated.

I archived the third of the four manila folders.

By the time you read this, the fourth conference will be over. And if it generates any news, we’ll be sure to share it.

Then I’ll file the last manila folder.