Finding Phil
Hurrah - we have tracked down Phil Nelson at last, and he is going to do his utmost to join us on 15th July. This is the story of our efforts that led us to him.
We last had contact with Phil in 1996. At the time he was just about to finish a contract working for a German publisher. Phil was one of the few graduates who had an e-mail address in the mid-1990s, as was I, so we had a few online conversations around the time that we were organising the ten year reunion.
Earlier this year, Birmingham University supplied us with an address in Germany for Phil. These details gave us the impression that he had returned to his old job at Linguarama in Stuttgart. First of all we tried to reach Phil using his 1996 e-mail address in the hope that he may still be using it. This bounced back. Then I sent an e-mail in English to Linguarama in Stuttgart. I sent this read-receipt from my work account in order to track whether or not it reached its destination. It did, but the recipient did not reply to me. The next attempt involved Chris Redman who "volunteered" to translate my request to Linguarama into German. We sent this off, but again to no avail. Determined to get Linguarama to at least speak to us, Rachel Wills, who lives and works in Germany, was then recruited to telephone the Linguarama office. Meanwhile I was working my way through Phil Nelsons on Google and had some interesting e-mail interactions with a friendly vexillologist who, unfortunately, was not our Phil. (If you are curious about vexillology, check out the other Phil's pages at: http://www.fotw.net/flags/index.html.) When Rachel discovered that Linguarama had no records of Phil, we thought we had exhausted all means of finding him, and so we declared him "lost" on this blog.
On Wednesday this week I received an e-mail message out of the blue from one of my 1995 graduates. (For those who don't know, in "real life" I am a university lecturer.) I have had no contact with Neil for 11 years. He had decided to take a Masters degree and needed a reference from his undergraduate tutor. Now, for someone who has seen hundreds of students graduate over the past 17 academic years it's quite an effort to remember the details of anyone who suddenly reappears to make such a request. However, I somehow managed to remember a slim, brown-haired boy with glasses, so I replied to his e-mail to ask if he could confirm that I had the right person. I also asked what he was up to these days. Neil replied with a photo - my memory of him was correct - and explained that he was a TEFL teacher in Germany. I agreed to write him a reference, and suggested that in return he might join the hunt for Phil Nelson.
On Thursday morning I received an e-mail from Phil! While I had been writing Neil's reference he had got on the phone to our former classmate. I was most impressed: someone who first learnt about information management from me had put his skills to very good use. The other happy ending is that Neil learnt on Thursday that he has been accepted on to the postgrad course for which I wrote his reference.
Hurrah - we have tracked down Phil Nelson at last, and he is going to do his utmost to join us on 15th July. This is the story of our efforts that led us to him.
We last had contact with Phil in 1996. At the time he was just about to finish a contract working for a German publisher. Phil was one of the few graduates who had an e-mail address in the mid-1990s, as was I, so we had a few online conversations around the time that we were organising the ten year reunion.
Earlier this year, Birmingham University supplied us with an address in Germany for Phil. These details gave us the impression that he had returned to his old job at Linguarama in Stuttgart. First of all we tried to reach Phil using his 1996 e-mail address in the hope that he may still be using it. This bounced back. Then I sent an e-mail in English to Linguarama in Stuttgart. I sent this read-receipt from my work account in order to track whether or not it reached its destination. It did, but the recipient did not reply to me. The next attempt involved Chris Redman who "volunteered" to translate my request to Linguarama into German. We sent this off, but again to no avail. Determined to get Linguarama to at least speak to us, Rachel Wills, who lives and works in Germany, was then recruited to telephone the Linguarama office. Meanwhile I was working my way through Phil Nelsons on Google and had some interesting e-mail interactions with a friendly vexillologist who, unfortunately, was not our Phil. (If you are curious about vexillology, check out the other Phil's pages at: http://www.fotw.net/flags/index.html.) When Rachel discovered that Linguarama had no records of Phil, we thought we had exhausted all means of finding him, and so we declared him "lost" on this blog.
On Wednesday this week I received an e-mail message out of the blue from one of my 1995 graduates. (For those who don't know, in "real life" I am a university lecturer.) I have had no contact with Neil for 11 years. He had decided to take a Masters degree and needed a reference from his undergraduate tutor. Now, for someone who has seen hundreds of students graduate over the past 17 academic years it's quite an effort to remember the details of anyone who suddenly reappears to make such a request. However, I somehow managed to remember a slim, brown-haired boy with glasses, so I replied to his e-mail to ask if he could confirm that I had the right person. I also asked what he was up to these days. Neil replied with a photo - my memory of him was correct - and explained that he was a TEFL teacher in Germany. I agreed to write him a reference, and suggested that in return he might join the hunt for Phil Nelson.
On Thursday morning I received an e-mail from Phil! While I had been writing Neil's reference he had got on the phone to our former classmate. I was most impressed: someone who first learnt about information management from me had put his skills to very good use. The other happy ending is that Neil learnt on Thursday that he has been accepted on to the postgrad course for which I wrote his reference.
posted by Hazel Hall at 9:36 am
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