26 January 2016, 11 am
Well, I take it back. There are rather a lot of us after all. The table, which is actually not round but oblong with a big hole in the middle, is absolutely packed. Some people have to sit at the corners. When I write notes on my agenda I smudge the notes Mr Davies has been writing on his. Actually, they are not notes. They are just silly pictures. Actually… is that one me?? There are, in fact, so many of us at CIPA Hall today, getting communally excited about Diversity in IP, that the coat rack cannot take the weight of all our outer garments and deposits them in a sudden and unceremonious heap on the floor. It is a great leveller, I find, making everyone collect their outer garments from the same untidy heap, regardless of the cut of the cloth. It helps tackle unconscious bias. And there is a real sense of inclusivity as everyone works together to stow the dangling half-bits of coat rack safely in the corner of the hall, to prevent anyone being skewered under CIPA’s insurance. The meeting goes well. I think. We have decided what our objectives are for the next twelve months, and they all fit onto a single sheet of A4, even allowing for Mr Davies’s cartoon of me tripping on a banana skin. We have decided to be a little more focused in 2016 than we were in 2015. In 2015 our objectives were to make every single IP-related profession fantastically diverse by showering them with training materials and exciting networking events and providing support groups and mentoring schemes and awareness-raising resources and charter accreditation. For 2016 our main objective is still to have something to talk about when we reconvene in January 2017, preferably without any of us having work-related breakdowns. Also to mend the coat rack, obviously, although in line with standard CIPA procedures that can wait till 2Q 2016. I attempt to put a positive spin on these new “lite” objectives by talking about focusing and prioritising and consolidating. But actually I just mean being exhausted after last year. Another positive thing, I tell everyone, is that I can still lead the diversity task force (da-da-da-DA!!), even though I will soon not be CIPA President any more (da-da-da-hip-hip-HOORAY!!). Isn’t that great?? I say. The rest of the task force look suitably relieved that they are not being asked to do anything or pay anything. Not yet, anyway. We are just about ready to finish when someone asks the time-honoured question about how we will measure our success. Patent attorneys do like to measure things. And they do like their comparative data, without which there is of course a risk that the whole diversity initiative will have to be dismissed for lack of inventive step. Well, we could see if people turn up with a more diverse range of outer garments this time next year, I say. But traditionally if you ask patent attorneys for diversity data, they either tell you to mind your own business, or they provide witty, sarcastic but ultimately bogus data on for example religion, race, sexuality, gender and regional accent. These are people who will happily fill their blogs and LinkedIn® discussion forums and Letters to the Editor with their personal views on anything under the sun, especially the outrageous and the preposterous bits, but do not wish people to know they are white middle-class males in case they are discriminated against. In the end, the Chairman of the Patent Examination Board helps out – at least in the context of the patent attorney profession – by reminding us that all sorts of useful data are captured when trainees apply to sit the qualifying exams. So we may soon be able to find out whether more girlies are trying to become patent attorneyettes, and also whether they are succeeding or just giving up and falling in love instead.
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25 January 2016, 7 pm
I am sitting in the flat being sad and lonely, trying to remember not to make a gin and tonic because then I will also forget not to make another one. I need to prepare for tomorrow’s diversity round-table. It is exactly a year since the first diversity round-table, and we are all getting back together to talk about what we’ve done so far and what we’re going to do next. During the day, a steady stream of apologetic emails has suggested that there will only be about ten of us at the meeting after all, with another two or three joining later so long as they can get some important things done first. So I possibly do not need to worry too much about the crowd control aspects of the meeting. And this time, I am going to take only a very tiny piece of notepaper into the meeting, to prevent my list of things-we’re-going-to-do-next from getting too long. 25 January 2016, 2 pm
Spreadsheet Spurgeon and I have set aside a happy hour or two to go through the accounts for the 2015 Congress. This turns into a mystifying exercise, even for Spurgeon who understands money. It appears that at the heart of the Congress Hotel’s invoicing system there sits a massive random number generator, and a bloke with a creative writing degree who didn’t quite make it in creative writing. Between them they have concocted a string of made-up things that the hotel might have wanted to charge us for, multiplied by delegate numbers they sort-of felt looked appropriate, on dates they seem to remember having been open for business. What is this “dinner bev” figure? I ask Spreadsheet Spurgeon. He says perhaps that is the alcohol we consumed at the Congress dinner. I say if we drank that much alcohol we would still be sobering up now. He looks at me a little strangely, but lets the moment pass. Perhaps what I should have asked is: how many of the hotel staff were legless under the dinner tables after we left? |
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