RTP, Email, and Plaxo's Update Contacts Wizard

I am up for review again. Well I am up for review in the fall. This is The Big One - tenure. I have a little while to get the first batch of things together and then most of the summer to complete the rest complete. The first step is an updated CV, position description, and a personal statement. After that comes a list of reviewers, and then a packet of supporting materials. Packet doesn't really cover it though. Last time the thing was three 3" binders when I finished. Actually I am thinking that maybe I would like to cull it down some for this pass.

I have no idea what to write as a personal statement. I never have any idea what to write for a personal statement. Once Mrs. TANBI wrote me a wonderful personal statement entitled "Fuck." But I still don't think the time is right for that to be a submission. I am sure I will think of something eventually.

The most difficult part of doing the binders this time is going to be reprinting like every single page. Last time I did a header that said "David Boevers - Assistant Professor of Drama." After that review, I got promoted to Associate; so now every header is wrong. Maybe that will make a nice precollege job - reprint David's book. Or maybe I will just pay someone out of pocket to do it.
------------------------------

I did send out a gazillion emails today looking for referrers. I need something like 20 "peers" and 20 alumni/students. Things went pretty well I think. There's only one person who wrote for me on my last review who is now deceased.

If you are someone that thinks I should have sent you a request but you didn't get one, shoot me an email. I probably just spaced you, or didn't see your name on my list, or - most likely - I don't have a good email for you (yes, I mean you Sara Huddleston).

If you're motivated I would love the help. So let me know.
------------------------------

Oh, and why doesn't David have a good email for you? This really sucks. So for years now I have been using this online service to handle my address book - Plaxo. It's been great. The service syncs with Outlook and with Thunderbird and somewhere along the way learned to talk with AOL, AIM, Gmail, and Yahoo. They even managed to sync it with LinkedIn. Anytime I changed my address book anywhere it would sync with the service and when I logged in at another computer it would sync and it all worked great.

The service also does birthday reminders and eCards, and it also has task functionality but I have never been enough of a geek to use it. Another plus, is that if someone else is a Plaxo member and they update their information it automatically updates in my account and then syncs to my address books. Fabulous.

The best part though was the Update Contacts Wizard. This little web app let me send an email to every single address in my address book simultaneously and ask for a contact update, and then when someone updated it also synced and migrated to all my address books. Fucking Brilliant! On the last day of school each year I would enter the graduating students' addresses in my address book and then run the wizard. I did a sort of year in review note and asked people to update. It was probably the thing I liked most about the service.

So of course they discontinued it.

They said that people felt like the emails were spam. That's probably true from when the service started and you got this blizzard of requests. But I hadn't seen one in a very long time, so I wonder how much that mattered.

The real problem I think was that it was all so Web 1.5 - in that you had to send an email and then the person had to answer. What with Facebook and LinkedIn and the rest Plaxo really wanted to be a Web 2.0 service. Why? I don't know. As far as I was concerned it was perfect the way it was, but I guess they need to keep moving or be passed by. Their substitute is the Plaxo Pulse. Yet another Web 2.0 network. I already have too many of these and now they want me to join another. The Pulse comes with micro-blogging and a sort of Facebookish "status" thingy - mine currently says "David is really missing the Plaxo Update Contacts Wizard" and it tethers to all your other stuff, so if you post a video on YouTube the other people in your Pulse stream can see it. The ultimate downsidw of this is that to play with the service people have to join. One of the best parts of the old way was that you could answer without joining. The Plaxo people said people are more comfortable with joining the service than not. What people? I'm still regretting Myspace and Ringo, and fighting a backfire action against Facebook, and I already have Blogger, Yahoo, YouTube, LiveJournal, GoodTheatre, and LinkedIn. Why would anyone want to join another network when they don't have to? Shenanigans, I call it.

All of which has nothing to do with syncing address books which is why I signed up.

Oh, and if a deteriorating service suite wasn't enough to encourage me to drop my account, the company was just bought out by Comcast. So now the demon spawn of cable has my address book. There's an iron clad privacy agreement, and the terms of the sale leave Plaxo an independent unit, but it still gives me the heebie jeebies.

So now I have to find a way to update my address book without 700+ individual emails. Got any ideas?