I've been thinking lately about what I contribute to my co-workers and what I ask of them. I definitely ask my co-workers for a lot of things: audio-visual stuff from the audio-visual guy, tablet pc admin from the tablet pc admin expert, tons of technical requests from from t-staff (our general sysadmins)... and it ocurred to me to ask myself, how much do I help them? My responsibilities are fairly fluid; the areas in which I'm the go-to person are consumer & professional graphics applications, anything mac-related, online communties, and web stuff. People don't need to go-to me much, though.

I just saw my cel ringing with a call from the Brown exchange. It was one of my co-workers, asking for help with iChat, so that one of the Brown professors could sit in on a thesis defense in Utah tomorrow. I didn't want to answer the phone at first, but then I remembered that it's part of my job to answer my goddamn phone, especially during working hours on a travel day when I'm just sitting here waiting for a shuttle. When I realized that a) my co-worker was uncomfortable with using the new-to-him technology, and b) I would be back in town for the defense, I said, "I'll take care of it. I'll be there, I'll make sure that it happens. It's my problem." That was being a good co-worker. I'm glad I was asked to help, and it's an easy solution: iChat is incredibly easy to use, and incredibly reliable. It's kind of funny that it intimidates my co-worker, who has a masters degree and regularly works in virtual reality, but I can understand being nervous about using a new operating system to make sure that a professor can attend one of his student's PhD defenses. Call it a win-win situation.

Now, I need to keep looking for other ways to be helpful to my co-workers, and remember to keep doing so, all the time. s