Re: Looking for samples

[Matt Ion <soundy -at- SOUNDY -dot- ORG>]

On Mon, 22 Mar 1999 07:27:28 -0500, WesTracy wrote:

>My input for your thesis; restraint and human relations are a big part
>of our job.  We need to dig up the material before we can write it.

Agreed!  A friend of mine found this out recently, writing a proposal for
a gov't contract.  All the information he needed was help by people within
the organization; he could have retrieved everything he needed from three
or four department heads and organized it into his proposal in a few
hours.  But, since he was an "outsider", and since the departments were
ridiculously xenophobic to begin with, nobody would tell him what he
needed to know.  Alas, his propensity to get upset, go over those people's
heads, and fling it all into the fan did little to help matters, and he
spent two weeks wringing the information out of existing documents and
statistics, bit by bit.

Now me, I probably would have worked each department head personally -
take'em for a beer, bring'em a copy of Quake, promise them extra
concessions in the proposal, stroke their egos, or other things to get on
their collective good side and make them WANT to help me out.  Heck, one
of the best ways to get knowledge from someone is to play stupid - people
LOVE to show others how smart they are! :)



 Your friend and mine,
 Matt
 <All standard disclaimers apply>
 "Reality is in alpha test on protoype hardware."
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 It is impossible to rightly govern the world
 without God and the Bible.
                                - George Washington

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