{"id":12347,"date":"2008-11-24T08:30:37","date_gmt":"2008-11-24T08:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wordswarm.net\/dictionary\/indaba.html"},"modified":"2008-11-24T08:30:37","modified_gmt":"2008-11-24T08:30:37","slug":"indaba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2008\/11\/24\/indaba.html","title":{"rendered":"Indaba"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"width\"><font face=\"arial,helvetica\">A council at which indigenous peoples of southern Africa            meet to discuss some important question<\/font><\/span>s.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Meetings were the great penalty of my corporate youth. Time I could have spent working instead passed in board rooms where I scored as much free coffee and sandwiches as one could reasonably procure without attracting stares.<\/p>\n<p>My attitude toward meetings may be all the proof I need that I did not belong in corporate. I did enjoy my time there for as long as situations were new to me. Inevitably patterns started to repeat and corporate constipation stirred nothing. <\/p>\n<p>I am, I say with no self-flattery whatsoever, a creative person. Creative thinkers do not belong in corporate, or in many other places in life. In most situations creative thinkers are a pain in the ass. <\/p>\n<p>I tend to agree (though not completely) with Frank Zappa when he said that creative people should look to government and public service for their careers, not the arts. &quot;Go where you&#8217;re needed&quot; was (paraphrased) Zappa&#8217;s philosophy.<\/p>\n<p>I remember the first meetings I ever attended, though, and I remember being impressed. For several months after college I was an admin who scheduled meetings for others, but I never attended the meetings (except to grab those fine sandwiches). <\/p>\n<p>The meetings brought together various disciplines, with someone from Inventory Control addressing people from Marketing to explain to them and to Advertising that a product campaign would fail because there was not enough of a certain type of promotional packaging available. I may be simplifying the discussions which I listened to, but it surprised me to see that these meetings I scheduled actually had value. Even before I attended meetings I guess I was skeptical of their merit.<\/p>\n<p>What was the first meeting I ever attended? Who can say? I guess school would qualify. In Kindergarten, as at the Indaba, we met to discuss some important matters, commencing a pattern that has repeated throughout life. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A council at which indigenous peoples of southern Africa meet to discuss some important questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whats-the-word","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/saumAn-indaba","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}