FileSlinger™ Favorites

Oh, frabjous day. Lee Hopkins tapped me for the Four Things meme, which is a blog version of those “getting to know you” e-mails. It is, at least, a meme appropriate for a Favorites Blog.

I don’t mind answering the questions, but you have to figure that by the time something gets to me, it’s probably jumped the shark, and there may not be four more bloggers left to pass this on to.

Four Jobs I’ve Had

• Sales clerk at a children’s clothing store
• Proofreader for the Duke Digital Papyrus project
• University lecturer
• Caregiver for the elderly and disabled

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over
I probably see four new movies in a year, so it’s not a particularly large pool I have to draw from.

• The Princess Bride (”Inconceivable!”)
• Anything by Miyazaki
• Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
• The first “Star Wars” trilogy (the second trilogy combined doesn’t add up to one good movie)

Four TV Shows I Love to Watch
Yeah, right. I stopped watching TV in my early teens.

Four Favorite Cities
Apart from San Francisco, where I live:

• Siena
• London
• Barcelona
• Boston

Four Favorite Dishes

• Bacon scallops (ask for the recipe)
• Butternut squash chips
• A good cut of rare steak
• Eggplant in garlic sauce

Four Websites I Visit Daily
Daily? Are you kidding? With 200+ unread items in Outlook/Newsgator? Besides, isn’t the point of RSS that you don’t have to visit the site? Sites visited most frequently are:

• Google
• MapQuest
• Wikipedia
• Local public library catalogs

Four Places I’d Rather Be

• Enjoying the ministrations of Sven at the Podcast Institute
• In perfect health
• Caught up with everthing
• New England in Autumn

Four Bloggers I Am Tagging
And I hope this is less laborious for you than it was for me!

• Christopher Richards
• Laura Bergells
• Dawn Rivers Baker
• Denise Wakeman

There are lots of good reasons for not wanting to meet clients, especially new ones, in your home office. (This goes double if your office is your bedroom, as mine is.) There may also be good reasons not to meet at the client’s office. So where is the best place to meet a client?

I wanted a place that was (in order of preference):

1. Easy for someone not familiar with the neighborhood to find
2. Close to my office (within about a 10-minute drive)
3. Quiet enough to have a conversation without shouting
4. Had a comfortable, prosperous atmosphere
5. Provided wireless internet access and was otherwise laptop-friendly

Since I didn’t want to take the time to tour every cafe within a five-mile radius of my home, I asked for input from members of the Brain Exchange mailing list. This mailing list has about 800 subscribers, all of them very inventive women and many of them solo professionals, as I am. And, unlike members of most mailing lists I’m on, most of them live, or used to live, in the Bay Area.

The recommendations are all local to me, so if you don’t live in the East Bay, they may not be useful to you. But my own top choice (so far) is Starbuck’s in Barnes and Noble, and you can find those scattered in malls near freeways about every five miles throughout the country. The only downside is that they don’t accept the Starbuck’s cards which I seem to accumulate without buying them.

I think any bookstore coffee shop would work as well. I’ve used the wireless internet in Borders several times when traveling, and the coffee is better. Besides, I have a fond memory for the original Borders in Ann Arbor, Michigan, before K-mart bought it and turned it into a chain. Now there was a good bookstore!

Now, however, they’re pretty much identical in terms of books and atmosphere, and Barnes and Noble is closer, right over in El Cerrito Plaza next to the BART station and close to the Central Ave exit from 80/580. It’s easy to find, easy to get to, and there’s plenty of free parking.

Because the cafe is in a bookstore, it’s both quieter and less crowded than a cafe which is just a cafe. There’s a stand-alone Starbuck’s in the Plaza, but it’s usually packed and it’s usually playing music which is loud enough to be distracting, if not quite loud enough to be painful.

There’s also a psychological advantage for me in meeting a prospective writing client in a bookstore. We can walk down the aisles and find out where the client’s book should be shelved once it’s written, and do some preliminary research for the book proposal by checking out the competition.

So thanks very much to Lindy Sinclair for that recommendation.

I do want to mention some of the other suggestions, because they’re good ones.

Claudia L’Amoreaux of Learning Conversations Extreme Coaching recommended Teance’s Celadon Tea Room at 1111 Solano Avenue in Albany, CA, is an elegant location with a big table by the window that works well for meetings with clients.

D.G. tutors ESL students at Au Coquelet on the corner of University and Milvia in Berkeley. I’ve been to Au Coquelet many times, and while it’s location is convenient to the campus and to public transportation, all of the tables I’ve ever sat at have wobbled. The restrooms are also definitely declasse. The staff will, however, let you spend quite a while there undisturbed, and there is a full-service restaurant in the back.

Liz Rutter likes Caffe Trieste on San Pablo Avenue because of the absence of cell phones and laptops. Joan Bobkoff, who took my FileSlinger™ photos, uses it to hold office hours for her students. It tends to be on the crowded and noisy side for my tastes.

Mani Feniger recommended The Junket in El Cerrito Plaza, where her husband meets clients. I’ve been past the Junket a thousand times and have yet to go in, but it has always looked quiet. The Junket is not a coffee shop but a delicatessen specializing in European imports. It might be best to hold off on the German beer on tap when you’re having the first meeting with a new client, though.

Jill Nagle of Get Published prefers Espresso Roma at 1549 Hopkins, near the Monterey Market. (Not to be confused with the Espresso Roma on College Ave at Ashby, which offers wireless service.) This cafe has a large outdoor seating area for use in nice weather, but has a certain shortage of power outlets. That’s not necessarily a downside for me, because I don’t always bring my laptop when meeting clients. It’s just nice to have the option available.

Many thanks to the Brain Exchangers for their recommendations. I’m sorry it’s taken so long for me to put them online.

If you have a suggestion for a great place to meet clients either in the East Bay or elsewhere, click the comment button () at the top of this post or e-mail me.

I’m starting this blog as a repository for all the useful links, interesting products, helpful tips, enlightening events, brilliant books, and great groups that I encounter in my work as a consultant. (It’s also a chance to write about something besides backups.) Expect to see a few FileSlinger™ articles republished in text form and a good many quick reviews.