Grill Update

The other day I was hosting a speaker, Prof. Steve George from U. of Colorado, as part of the C-Division Postdoc Seminar Series (which I must point out, no postdocs showed up for) so I took him to lunch at the Central Avenue Gril (next to Starbucks). I realized at that point that I may have confused people in a previous post where I called it the Canyon Street Grill (which is a very different place next to Pizza Hut) and said we should have a postdoc night there.

So I have made the correction and think we could/should have a postdoc night at the Central Avenue Grill.

While my guest and I were at lunch, I met the owner of the Grill, Min (sp?), and he said he would be very excited to work with us in setting up postdoc social nights at the Central Avenue Grill and that we need to "revitalize this scientific community!"

So, now I ask you, what are your thoughts about it? What nights should we do it...for example, the third Wednesday of the month...? Do you think people would come? Is it worth it? Should we do it now, or in a little while from now?

Once we start to get a plan together we can talk to Min and set it up so share your thoughts on the subject.

Accepting the Offer Letters???

I know there has been a lot of back and forth about this whenever we have gotten together, but does someone out there have a clear idea of what the best deal is for postdocs?

TCP1 or TCP2????

Post-doc night at the Grill???

In talking to Mary Anne at the end of the social at Fuller Lodge, I asked her about the possibility of having a social where we "take over" a place like the TBC or Central Avenue Grill (next to Starbucks). She told me that the person that owns the Grill is a scientist who has had post-docs in the past and is very willing to work with us. Actually, he has already told Mary Anne that he would be willing to do something where, for example, every 3rd Wednesday of the month could be "Post-Doc Night" with discounts on Wine and Beer.

I thought that something like this would start to bring post-docs together in a social situation that would help us get to know each other and create relationships that could help in the formation of a PDA. And it could be fun as well.

Let me know what you think about this idea and we could start talking to Mary Anne about it. Along with the "conversion seminars" that Mike thought of (described in the post below) this would be something that we could do in order to get the ball rolling.

If anyone else has any ideas of things that we could start now to make the post-doc experience at LANL better, you can post it here by emailing me so that I can send you the link to enable you to post your ideas here on this site (in addition to commenting on other people's posts).

I thought this could be useful

Since meeting other post-docs at LANL my experience has been that much more interesting. Upon meeting other post-docs, it seemed to be a general consensus that it would be helpful to have a stronger central organization where post-docs could find information, meet others, network, be better represented at the lab during this time of transition and make their post-doc experience at LANL an overall greater experience.

A post-doctoral associtation would fill the role of this central organization and enable us as a group to do more than would be possible as individuals.

I had the idea of starting this web-site to help us share ideas for this effort. It may or may not work for such a project. It may or may not turn into something useful and only time will tell. However, the way I figured it would work is this:

If you are a post-doc at LANL and would like to be able to post your thoughts on this site concerning the formation of a Post-Doctoral Association, email me with your name and a working email address so that I can send you an invitation to join this page. Once you have accepted the invitation and signed up (for free) at www.blogger.com, you will be able to post on this site. In addition to posting, it is possible for others to give feedback by reading your post and making a comment. Presently, anyone (including anonymous) can comment on this page. We will see how that works. If people abuse it, then I will change it so that you must first sign up at blogger.com and therefore have your name attached to the comment.

In addition to being able to post and comment on the site, there are other features such as profiles that can be filled out and linked to on the site so that people can get to know each other better, as well as email alerts that you can sign up for so that whenever a post or comment is made on this page, it will be sent to your email inbox of you choice. However, to get started, let's just begin with the posting and commenting and see where it goes from there.

So again, if you would like to be enabled to post your thoughts and/or ideas on this site, email me letting me know where to send your invitation and we will see where it goes from there.

To start, comment to this post and let me know if you think this will be helpful or not and let me know if you have any other ideas of how to make this site better serve our needs.