I recently attended the UC-AMP conference in Riverside, a meeting for administrative management professionals in the University of California. I had been to the same conference last year in Berkeley, and for my own professional development it was an eye opener, and I came away with lots of new ideas and energy for my day to day job. It was around the same time as the Urban Sketching Symposium in New Zealand which I was missing (because it was in New Zealand), so I was feeling extra itch to sketch everything, but I have that anyway. In the end, I actually won the conference’s picture contest for a drawing I did on the Berkeley campus, so I won free registration for this year’s conference in Riverside. I’d never been to Riverside (my wife was born there, but based on her description it was never high on my must-visit list, which is a very long list), but the conference hotel was the Mission Inn, which I had always wanted to visit, and when I looked at it online it shot right up that list. See my previous post for the sketches. The opening reception for the conference was held in this courtyard and hall next to the big chapel there, a beautiful setting, though because I had not arrived right when it started the food was already gone, so I had some ice cream and a glass of wine. People were mingling about; I am not and never have been an ‘enter the room and start making friends’ type of person, I’m more of an ‘enter the room and start hiding’ person. Our name tags revealed our campuses, and when I heard someone from Davis going up to people from Davis and loudly squealing something like “OMG! DAVIS!” to gather them together I made more of an effort to be a bit more invisible. I didn’t see anybody I knew, though there were faces I think I recognized from last year. I really wanted to sketch the courtyard, it was beautiful, but I knew all I’d manage was a quick sketch, so I did the pencil sketch above in my little Fabriano book. The sun was setting, and my tummy was rumbling so I went and found the restaurant for dinner.

Naturally I could not help but sketch at the conference. Most of the reason is that I like to take notes at these things, since I’m here to learn ideas, but it becomes a fun kind of documentation. I used to fret about these things, because you can’t write everything down (boy do I try sometimes, I’m an avid note taker at meetings, it’s how I remember), and you want to be sure that you catch the important bits that at least illustrate the gist of their talk, but I’m better at listening out for those things now. I was drawing mostly with my Lamy fountain pen with the brown De Atramentis ink.

The talks were pretty good, although I didn’t come away from day one with a great deal of enthusiasm or particularly new ideas, unlike the previous year. It was more generic work conference stuff in many ways, and even the breakout I attended didn’t really get me going. Partly though that was because it was using a TV show that I’ve never seen as reference, Gilligan’s Island, though I understood the gist of what was presented I didn’t necessarily agree with the categorizations. Also, I came away not feeling particularly happy, because after dividing us into groups based on characters from the show, I ended up being in a group based on someone called ‘Ginger’, and the presenter made some comment that there were no redheads in our group, to which I said that I respectfully disagreed. While he acknowledged, oh right, other members of my group, people I did not know, decided to take it upon themselves to say I wasn’t, or that “no, he used to be!” and event “he said he used to be redhead but isn’t now”, which I did not say, but now a loudmouthed person has declared to the group that I had. “What? I didn’t say that.” I said, before another woman in our group said “No you used to be, but the stress of working for the UC changed that”. I mean, how fucking rude? This was in front of people. I was ready to argue, but that wouldn’t have been very administrative management professional of me would it, but I was not happy. My hair, which I keep really short anyway (shaved to #1 on the sides), is much lighter than it used to be even a few years ago, but I’m not all faded yet, and still obviously a redhead, just not the idea that someone else has we should look (which is basically how I looked at 11), but either way, that having been an important aspect of my self for my whole life, especially growing up when it is simply put the main aspect and all anyone ever comments on (and I get the idea that’s definitely more true for growing up in Britain than over here), and it’s not just another hair colour, there’s a very real skin identity in there (cf, my own higher risk of skin cancer). It’s not something I particularly wanted a debate on, but frankly I felt that for a group of people who have been patting themselves on the back during this conference on how great they are with people, it was a bit shitty to then make comments about someone’s hair colour in front of a large excited group. It reminded me of Edgware School, but instead of a gobby rabble making the class laugh at the fact I have ginger hair*, now a more grown-up and professionally dressed group of no less gobby people were doing the same in reverse. (*I actually actively avoided the word ‘ginger’ in my life because it had always been used to insult me, until I found the David Devant song ‘Ginger’ which was all about us and very much on our side). Anyway, after that I wasn’t feeling particularly in a mind to socialize so I ditched the afternoon and evening social activities and went and did some really good drawing instead. I enjoyed the second day’s talks quite a bit though, in fact the first presenter Steve Yu gave a talk about body language and public speaking that I definitely took things away from, plus a few interesting phrases. “How you do anything is how you do everything” was a good one. I don’t know what it was, but I came away from it with a “yes, I can do that” feeling. I went to one other talk about Influencing which was really interesting, by Crystal Petrini, though I ended up just writing down all the points but it did make me think about my own place on our campus and how I navigate the various relationships to try to get things done; not easy, often quite a challenge. 

There were other talks I didn’t have time to attend, and the big group parts where they presented during lunch about the conference organizing committee and other stuff, plus a huge presentation on Oracle which I only caught the last fifteen minutes of, but by this point I was done and had to fly back home. They told me the 2025 one will be at the Hyatt Embarcadero in San Francisco, a place I’ve stayed at a few times, so I might go to that one. I have some more Riverside sketches to show you in the next post.