In Memoriam: Jackie Grubb of Plum Suite Solutions
Written by Gloria Metrick on . Published as written. It may not reflect how these systems work today.
While Jackie Grubb was not a laboratory informatics consultant, she was one of the many consultants out there who gladly become mentors and friends to the other consultants. Since many of us do know consultants from other walks of life, there will be some people in our industry who will know her. However, the real purpose of the posts I will make as a tribute to her will be to share with readers, especially the other consultants of the world.
Depending where you live, consultants get many opportunities to meet other consultants or few opportunities. In the Boston area, there are many opportunities. Jackie and I both belonged to ICCA (Independent Computer Consultants Association) and SPC (Society of Professional Consultants), for a start. We would also occasionally attend IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and IMC (Institute of Management Consultants) meetings other related events. There were a variety of groups each belonged to which the other person did not, and we would occasionally learn about the other groups around and what they offered. When you want to find out what’s going on in an area, it pays to meet with others in the area. Some groups to whose meetings she invited me, such as SMUDGE (Simply Mad Users of Digital Group Equipment) I would probably not have stumbled across on my own.
At the point, some readers are wondering what the point is of meeting all these people – it’s called “networking.” It’s the way we find out about the exact effect of the economy on our industry, a way we learn about new technologies and tools, and a way to continue our education without going back to school and signing up for classes.
Some years ago, I was starting to hear words such as “Agile” and “Scrum’ being thrown around quite a lot and couldn’t find anyone in laboratory informatics who knew what it all meant. I mentioned this to Jackie who, of course, conveniently knew of an event that would explain it all to me. As such, we ended up going together to a day-long event entitled “Give Thanks for Scrum” which was held the day before Thanksgiving, had a number of presentations to both explain it to new people such as myself and discuss advanced topics for the rest of the crowd. It included music, food and fun, as well, so it was truly an “event.”
Recently, I was reading a post by a competitor whose business is larger than mine and I seem to remember the person pointing-out that small businesses like mine aren’t really much of a business as there’s no-one else for us to get ideas from or get help from. That’s entirely untrue. If anything, many small businesses such as mine go out of our way to help each other out. Jackie Grubb was a true believer in doing this. If she learned her consulting practice via the school of hard knocks, she wasn’t one to make the rest of us do the same. She was one of the great proponents of networking and sharing. When Jackie was around, none of us were alone.
When she passed away on the 4th of July, the world got a whole lot less purple (her signature color and the major reason her company was called Plum Suite Solutions and she gave “Plum Jam sessions” instead of “presentations”). Consultants like Jackie inspire me and remind me that, no matter what the economy is like, no matter how your business is going, if you take a moment to help a colleague in need, you’re a bigger person for it and that’s the lasting legacy we can give each other as consultants.
Gloria Metrick
GeoMetrick Enterprises
http://www.GeoMetrick.com/