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The Christmas bash

12th Dec 2011
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December 12 – I was in discussion with John Stokdyk of AccountingWEB on Friday. He’s one of the few people who has to know my true identity. In the process we discussed time gone by – and the fact that this diary has now run for eight years.

During that conversation he asked me if we were having a Christmas function this year, half expecting, I think to find we had cancelled it. Far from it! This Friday evening those who can will be gathering near head office for our usual bash – the only change being a reduced willingness to pay for drinks by us. These are now all down to those attending.

He was amused at that point, recalling the fact that it was a lack of sobriety on the part of the shareholder who I call the ex-CEO at the Christmas party in 2003 that led to the extraordinary events that gave rise to his sacking from the company by me, as well as the departure of his then spouse from employment here, the stress between them, their subsequent divorce and my subsequent career progression to running this show.  He has assured me he may be able to find those tales of past events. If so it would be amusing to read them again.

They highlight all the risks of the enforced revelries of this time of the year. But, candidly, subsequent events have always suggested this team can have fun together and whilst it’s a fact that I somewhat dread some Christmas events I feel honour bound to go to because they are incredibly boring (eating and not drinking for the company I call it). Yet our parties have usually proved to be fun occasions in the years since 2003.

So I’m looking forward to it, I think.

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Replies (4)

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By anzanijohn
13th Dec 2011 12:30

Alternative history

Yes, where would you [and the company and most of the staff] be now if the then CEO had danced rather further away from the young member of staff that night*?  Would the then management have kept the company going?

* Although I think to some extent he was an accident waiting to happen - if not then it would have occurred later.

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By MarionMorrison
13th Dec 2011 14:46

Where are the oldies?

I'm not surprised to find that it's been 8 years of this blog and the only sadness is that the early days seem to no longer be accessible.  Looking back through links gets me to Dec 2005 and no further (although the page promises more).  

One upon a time about 4-5 years ago I did actually go back and read the blog from the beginning and it was (and remains) a tremendously worthwhile read.  To find that this is denied to the masses is a sadness - is this because AWeb can't manage the disc-space or is there a more poetic reason for leaving the older stuff out? 

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John Stokdyk, AccountingWEB head of insight
By John Stokdyk
13th Dec 2011 17:07

More indexing and migrations than disk space

I'm sorry Marion (and the CEO), since the Diary started Aweb has been through two major upgrades, one involving a change of databases (mySQL to PostgreSQL if I remember correctly) and the next one to a new content management system (Drupal 7).

At each of these stages, decisions were made to drop "redundant" content to reduce the load on our creaking servers. I'm a historian by training, so nothing is redundant to me, but those involved in the tax and legislative side of things argued that it was counter-productive to have out-of-date guidance lying around that might be misinterpreted.

Unfortunately, old blogs got swept up in the cull. I have a data dump that I can trawl through for old, forgotten episodes (just like Dr Who!), but I think there may be a gap in 2004-05.

I have managed to locate the dramatic episodes from Dec 2003 and if you keep an eye on the site in the next few days, you should get a pleasant surprise [first episode now live - the aftermath will follow shortly]. It would take a bit more detective work and a lot of expensive drudge work to reinstate everything we've got, and there probably still would be that gap.

The CEO and I have lightheartedly discussed producing an ebook version of his diaries - but we're both so busy thatit remains more of a pipedream than a genuine possibility. Thanks for your interest and enthusiasm though - if the clamour continues, we might have to bow to popular demand and dig out the rest of the archive.

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Universe
By SteveOH
13th Dec 2011 17:24

An e-diary

What a great idea. I have also been reading the FD/CEO blog from the beginning. I would certainly pay a (modest) price if it included everything from day 1.

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