Sep 07 2007
The Next Great Challenge
Well, the jig is up. The folks at Omniture found out that I have spoken French at certain points in the past. So, on Wednesday or Thursday of next week, I will be presenting the SiteCatalyst Implementation strategies to a client from France…in French. When they approached me with this opportunity (and I say opportunity because they didn’t force it on me–they are very good about making you feel comfortable here), I had a fleeting glimpse of possibilities for the near future.
There are few French speakers here, and the need is growing. I might be a guinea pig for this program–I don’t know. I have been assigned to the Media vertical in the Implementation department, but this client is a Retail client. What that means is that (if this goes well) I may be called upon to handle Francophone clients in all verticals. Will that make me more valuable to Omniture? I hope so. I really want this experience to be one of the great successes of my life.
You know, I had a very strange experience during the second week of training here. I dreamed I was at a family reunion in Idaho. One of my cousins approached me with a young boy, whom he introduced. The boy spoke nothing but French. From the point of my introduction to the boy, the entire dream was in French.
Now, here are the funny parts.
- Working at Omniture is like a family reunion. There are three co-workers from 10x Marketing here, my two brothers work here, and two of the IC’s in this department remember working with me on the 10x account.
- My boss is the spitting image of my cousin David. They seriously could be twins. David was the one who introduced me to the young boy in the dream.
- This client is new to Omniture; young, if you will.
- It has been nearly 20 years since I had a dream in French. In fact, I had the dream in August, 20 years to the month since I left the MTC for the mission field in Montreal, Canada.
Did I see what was coming three weeks ago? I can’t really say for certain, but the similarities are striking.