Tough Laboratory Informatics Customers – They Make You Dance!

Do you think YOU have a tough customer? Do you think you ARE a tough customer? Well, you’ve got nothing on my current customer!

Customers ask for a variety of aptitudes, from good programming skills, to excellent people skills, to the ability to write coherent documentation. Once on-site, I am often required to attend any number of training courses, from safety training to security and confidentiality training. If I were to list the requirements made by all my customers over my career, it would be quite a long list. But this customer has taken this all one level beyond all the others – they not just wanted competent professionals — but competent professionals that could sing and dance – and in costumes, as well!! Wow! Imagine a lot of IT folks in costumes, singing and dancing to make a music video. Wait, don’t have a nightmare, yet! It’s really quite good. “I Gotta Feeling” you might like it, so take a look:           

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkc87eLG0WY

If you read the description of this video in YouTube, you’ll see there were 260 participants. The department took over the building in secret and made this video. Yes, they kept it a secret for weeks! Unbelievable, I know. But they’re now busted and you just saw the evidence!!

Anyway, this department, called BioIT (if you can’t guess what they do by that name, then you’re on your own…), decided to create a surprise and show their team spirit and doing a Lipdub* of a popular song by the Black-Eyed Peas that promotes IT (all through the song, they sing, “Do IT” because the Black-Eyed Peas must just LOVE the IT folks!!). So, for anyone that thinks LIMS and Laboratory Informatics people can’t have fun, this video just proves them all wrong.

Also, for those of you that want to know what I look like, I’m in here. You’ll see my name in the credits at the end, too. Look closely. 

We sometimes say that tough customers really “make us dance,” but this customer takes that saying quite literally.

Pass it On

By the way, if you liked this video, especially if you’re an IT/Laboratory Informatics person that wants to show that IT/Laboratory Informatics people are not universally left-footed nerds, please share this video with EVERYONE you know!!! And, making comments on the YouTube site about it will be much appreciated, as well. Doing all this will help us create a buzz for it, because the team is quite excited about it and wants to share it with the world.

Gloria Metrick
GeoMetrick Enterprises
http://www.GeoMetrick.com/

* Lipdub is like lip-synching, but you make your own video to the pre-recorded lyrics and music.