I follow the International Committee of the Red Cross on Twitter
and they twitted this earlier today:
@ICRC: Our role as a “neutral intermediary” is at the heart of
#humanitarian action. Our director of operations explains:
[link]
Original Message:
The main part of their micro-post, “neutral
intermediary” is at the heart of #humanitarian action,
particularly resonated with me for several reasons, that I want to
attempt to articulate in this post of what I did at one point as a
hobby and how, in a way, some choices, people and events led me
back to it.
My years with the French Red Cross
In my late teenage years I enrolled at the French Red Cross and
during several years –until I started university– I participated in
social, medical, training, fund-raising and first aid actions. It
occupied my weekends, almost all my holiday time and several week
evenings. I was very committed. I came to the Red Cross spurred by
my twin brother who had recently became involved. It sounded useful
and fun.
It was indeed useful and fun. Even sorting clothes was fun. It
was daunting; several piles of garments and shoes, tall as dunes,
dumped in the vast depot next to the offices, that we had to plough
through during hours. But at the end of the day (that is, late at
night) we felt we had accomplished a useful action. Clothes and
shoes, categorised and packed, were ready to be picked and handed
off somewhere else. My friends and I would find a bar open till
late fir coffee and drinks, sometimes a game of cards, but mostly
bonding.
I met all kinds of people, from all walks of life, most of them
interesting, some of them inspiring –students like me, nurses,
police officers, business people, house wives, etc. I learned to
give first aid, to man the radio, to drive the ambulance (in
particular to park it), to lead a team of first-aid workers, to
cook for a crowd, to identify priorities, and to put things into
perspective. I saw, heard, and experienced things that made me
fully aware how lucky I was, and what a fine life mine was.
I don’t know if I was particularly gifted or actually good at it
(I felt I was good), but my satisfaction was such that I wanted to
make this my job. There even was a school I thought I might attend,
Bioforce,
which “specialises in ‘support functions’ (logistics, project
coordination, administration and finance, human resources…) and in
the field of water supply and sanitation.”
I didn’t go. I went to a local university instead, embarking on
a different path. A few years later I looked for a job. I was a
temp for a while. I worked as a clerk in a British law office,
although I tried very hard to wiggle out of this, as soon as I saw
the place and realised the work conditions were going to be
terrible. I passed the one interview I wanted to fail. Thankfully
it was a short mission.
Discovering the world of a Research Lab
I got my next job by luck. A friend of mine, whom I had met
while studying in Edinburgh, let me know she knew someone whose
mother worked with someone who needed a temp for a semester. Two
actually. And my friend was on the market too so it was perfect. We
both interviewed on the same day. We had been pre-assigned a
position but after interviewing they changed their mind and
swapped. She joined the administrative and legal department at
INRIA Sophia Antipolis, I joined a research project as
administrative aid.
My years of volunteering and charity work were far behind me.
The researchers I met were committed and inspiring people. Most
wore shoes but many didn’t. Most people appeared to not see the
people around them, absorbed as they were. All had pens in the
breast pocket of their shirt, when they wore them, or the pocket of
their shorts. Most carried laptops. There were whiteboards
everywhere and I had no idea what the colourful scribblings and
equations meant.
In that INRIA research project, I learned to type on a qwerty
keyboard, to use e-mail on exmh, to print from a unix terminal, to
get geek humour. I also learned LateX just for fun. When the end of
my mission was near I wrote a fictitious humorous report, in LateX,
featuring some of the people that crowded our floor. A thirty or so
page report that I gave to the two project managers and a
researcher I was particularly fond of, nice and kind as he was. In
exchange (not really), I was congratulated by the Director of the
institute, and the project managers each gave me the bestest
recommendation letters ever. I was on the dole for five months
afterwards. My great letters, for all the power that I thought they
wielded, didn’t get me my next job.
Joining the W3C
Lucky again, someone who knew me was asked to tell me that the
World Wide Web Consortium needed an administrative aid and that I
should apply. The W3C was hosted at INRIA Sophia Antipolis and
oddly enough people there seemed to remember me and speak highly of
me! I interviewed and was hired. That was 14 years ago.
What we do at W3C is basically
convening the people who make the Web and the people who consume
the Web, around a neutral table. The staff (there are between 60
and 70 of us, mostly technical, located throughout the world) is
involved to help the Web stakeholders converge. From that
collaboration, web standards are born, refined, and perfected.
At W3C, I met the most incredible colleagues and co-workers, the
most inspiring people, the most dedicated folks, bright, clever,
helpful, friendly, reliable and supportive. Working with them,
doing our job, doing *this* job, is fulfilling and gratifying.
It’s been a while so I have learned so much that it is difficult
to grasp and synthesise. The one easy thing that comes to mind is
NOT that I learned HTML or CSS (however, some of that I did learn),
it is that I learnt to pack lightly, pragmatically and efficiently
for trips abroad. We used to travel a lot. We still travel but not
as much. I visited a big city for the first time during a W3C trip
to a WWW conference. It was in Toronto. Then Boston, Tokyo, Hong
Kong, Hawaii, Western Europe, Montreal etc. I now pack in twenty
minutes and travel with my purse, one carry-on and a laptop bag.
For short trips, the carry-on is a small backpack.
I can say that I have learned various jobs within our
organisation. I started as administrative aid, I organised
meetings, I ordered stationary, managed hirings and interns, I
wrote internal policies,
then managed the local office. I joined the Communications team and
wear several hats. From secretary of the Board, translation
community monitor, blog master, to Community Manager. I gather the
press clippings, I send transition announcements to our Members
when a technology progresses from one state to the other,
ultimately reaching that of Standard. I write to our Web site,
which I occasionally break so I sweat a bit and eventually fix it.
I do other internal comm things too.
A couple years ago I had a skills assessment. I was at a point
in time I wanted to focus on what I was good at, and what it was
that I was skilled for. The exercise was interesting and useful. I
was told my area of interest revolves around humanitarian
activities and care giving. And that I have more than one string to
my bow. No surprise, really, but it was reinforcement that I was in
my field.
My job is a passion. It may not be the humanitarian field action
I dreamt of as a young woman, but many in our trade liken our job
to humanitarian work. And indeed, we are a “neutral intermediary”
at the heart of making free and open Web standards.
