I am job hunting at the moment, and I just got asked what I do in between jobs. And so I explained - I maintain the DAMA-I website, I do DAMA UK committee things, I write presentations about data management for conferences... And then I paid attention to what I was saying, and started talking about photography and archaology (which are the things I like doing and reading about when I have to move away from a keyboard).
I didn't mention that I take photographs to use in presentations, nor that I have been toying with the idea of writing something about the history of data storage (which goes back about 5000 years to the clay tablets that the Babylonians used to record grain and beer going into and out of their warehouses.) One thing that data geeks learn early on is that many things are connected (or can be, with a little thought). Another is that most people don't really care all that much!
But next time you go into a bookshop, pick up a newspaper, or read a web page, spare a thought for the first person who worked out how to record that 3 bushels of grain were delivered, and 1 bushel taken out, and by whom. Because those pictures on clay tablets gradually developed into writing - and that might just make data management a much older discipline than we currently think it is?
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