23 June 2015, 12.30 pm
I chair a webinar on data protection. From this I learn that you should not leave all your client data on one laptop, unencrypted and un-backed-up, and then leave the laptop on the passenger seat of your car when you stop at some traffic lights with the windows down and the doors unlocked. In data protection terms, that is called Asking for Trouble. Or Working for the Civil Service. You should especially not do this if you have sensitive stuff on your unencrypted, un-backed-up laptop, for example your clients’ medical records, credit scores or dietary requirements. It seems to me that data protection is not so complicated after all. Even I know not to put everything on one laptop and then take it out for a spin with me. Indeed, no. I have backed up all my sensitive data to a place in the sky somewhere and nobody, not even me, knows the password. And it was not encrypted when it went up there but Windows® has since encrypted it in a sort of accidental-reconfiguring kind of way, so now it is absolutely safe. If anyone sends me a Freedom of Information request I will be able to tell them, with confidence, that I no longer have any of their data, or indeed any of anybody else’s data, or come to think of it my task list, my emails or the latest draft of the CIPA Council agenda. But I do have plenty of software updates.
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23 June 2015, 10 am
Mr Davies and I meet with a diversity trainer and talk about unconscious bias. I have strong unconscious biases in favour of cakes and chocolate. Sometimes they are not that unconscious either. Today, for example, I feel in need of a toasted teacake, which Mr Davies is instructed to bring to the table while the diversity trainer and I are nattering. Mr Davies himself had to eat an entire barbecue yesterday, for Father’s Day, so today he only has room for a cup of tea. Together we make plans for a grand diversity launch event, with some training on unconscious bias. And if people say there isn’t a diversity problem in the IP profession we will say here are some quotes from people who felt there was, and these are the things they were saying to themselves when they thought you weren’t listening and you thought they were fine and they were crying themselves to sleep at night. 18 June 2015
I am given a Very Important and Presidential job to do. I have to sign the exam certificates for the people who’ve passed the Patent Administration Course. There are over a hundred. It is conceivable that the other Officers have organised this specially. They must have thought: if she spends half a day signing certificates, then at least that’s half a day when she can’t be adding things to the ginormous email. And they are right: it is hard enough remembering how to write my name without a mouse and a keyboard, and I am certainly in no mood to be distracted by emails, even my own. 20 June 2015 We are approaching the second Council meeting with me in the chair. Writing the agenda, it occurs to me that I am already one-twelfth of the way into my presidency and that so far I have done nothing particularly exciting apart from a Pickled Parts Party and an afternoon tea. It is probably time I turned my attention to what I should do to improve CIPA this year. Of course, I have to be careful. If I improve CIPA too much, I will have nothing left to poke fun at in my not-so-secret diary. And then quite possibly CIPA members will stop reading the diary, which it turns out is indeed not so secret, and then they will no longer know nor care what is going on in their Institute. Apart from through the whizzy e-newsletter, that is, but Mr Lampert is not allowed to poke fun at things in the whizzy e-newsletter, and it is only when you poke fun at things that people really start paying attention, in case you are poking fun at them. In the end, I decide that we are some way off the day when there is nothing left to poke fun at. Instead I will do as advised, and concentrate on the short-term wins, like, er, maybe getting some new chairs for the Members’ Room. 17 June 2015, 6.30 pm
It is the New CIPA President’s Pickled Parts Party. Our venue is the Royal College of Surgeons’ Hunterian Museum. It is full of surgical exhibits in formaldehyde marinades, which is perhaps a little too much detail with your canapés. As it happens, though, it is me that puts people off their canapés by making a New President’s Pickled Speech. This evening’s metaphor is a bus journey. Mr Davies is the driver, and the bus is full of old codgers with picnic hampers, who are leaving their sleepy little village (ie old CIPA) for the bright lights of the IP world of the future (ie new CIPA). The guests clap politely but they were not actually listening, they were counting the number of brains in jars. At least I didn’t drop any straw this time. |
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