It happened the other day, in the hallway near my office. A young executive trainee said hello and told me how excited she was about her new job in one of our practice groups. She mentioned that one of her initial tasks was to take charge of updating some important media lists and client lists and also incorporate new ones. She was saying how difficult this assignment was becoming because of the multitude of all the new media "journalists" who made up the hundreds of key bloggers online. Add those to the mainstay of traditional reporters and editors in general from business and vertical market publications and it was something she considered to be formidable -- she used the term "mind blowing." Even with all the new and varied media databases she could access, it was still a major undertaking. After a couple minutes of discussion on how to approach this and other parts of her assignment, she thanked me and returned to her computer workstation and began pondering lists and pounding away on her keyboard.

I smiled, walked into my office and looked around. I refl ected back on my first job. A lot had changed since my first days as an account person in PR. I turned and stared at my book shelf and perused the titles of some of my older collection of "essential" business organizational and management style books, many of which I had kept as well as added to over twenty-fi ve years in public relations. Th ere were the old familiar names from the past -- everything from world renowned Peter Drucker to Tom Peters and Bob Waterman and business folkhero of the '60s, Chrysler's Lee Iacocca.

Concepts and ideas within each book seemed brilliantly sharp and insightful in times past and present, but to many Gen-Xers, these men are not even recognized by name. Their thoughts and philosophies on managing business are totally ignored in today's topsyturvy financial crises.

My eyes scanned up and down the bookcase to fi nd other familiar objects that had taken up space for years. They were the typical executive book shelf objects: a few mini Plexiglas cubes containing miniaturized IPOs and Annual Reports documents; a sleek-looking modern black clock that never seemed to need batteries -- just kept ticking and ticking; PR industry awards, a couple of crystal-adorned plaques and the omnipresent executive accoutrement -- family photos of kids and wife (current one only!). And finally, across from the book shelf, there was my rock and shell collection sitting upon a glasstopped conference table.

I turned and started toward my desk when my glance fell upon a real relic. Two of them, actually! My Rolodexes. As I had just finished the conversation with our executive trainee on compiling and updating editors' names and client lists, I thought it very apropos. One Rolodex is vintage, I think probably circa 1981. It is one of those rectangular models that lay flat and always open to flip through; the other is a "new" Rolodex on an anodized metal spinning device that also has a retractable curved cover -- always a necessity in case of floods, earthquakes and the like! (For those of you who are younger then 25, a Rolodex is described in Wikipedia as a rotating fi le device used to store business contact information [the name is a portmanteau word of Rolling and Index] currently manufactured by Newell Rubbermaid. The Rolodex holds specially shaped index cards; the user writes the contact information for one person or company on each card. Many users avoid the eff ort of writing by taping or stapling the contact's business card directly to the Rolodex index card.)

I suddenly realized that I hadn't looked at these ancient items in maybe five years. I asked myself, "Who uses these antiquated index files anymore?" I wouldn't be caught dead looking through this obsolescent file container. I'd simply check my "contacts" list online. So much easier. In tune with the times. But it was as if they suddenly beckoned to me . . . almost like an old dog, a family pet who had been a part of my surroundings for years, looking for a few pats on the head and some attention and kind words from its longtime friend and master who'd just returned home after a long trip -- Ol' Rolo.

I couldn't resist. I started flicking the cards of the smaller Rolodex fi rst. Names. Companies. Telephone numbers. Some typed in perfectly by a past secretary (who I hadn't thought of in years). Others hastily handwritten by me, probably with a PaperMate Pen, or some such writing implement from the old days! Coff ee-stained, water-warped, frayed and some adhering to one another -- people and remembrances from my past. Some just business cards hastily stapled to the blank file card. (Just the physical act of rifling through the cards on the Rolodex was like an electronic or digital device prodding my memory to recall so many things and occurrences that had been a part of my earlier business life -- my career early on. And I was soon to find that some of the memories took me back about twenty-plus years!

The names began pulsing, staccato-like, past my fl icking fi ngers. Jeez, what ever happened to Kimi Nishita? Who was Kimi Nishita? And how about Freda Radich? Or Jim Sims? Or Jack Smith? Th e compendium of first and last names (some cards only contained a first name) was long, and images were darting in and out of my head. I must have stayed at the one Rolodex for about 50 minutes, jogging my memory, testing my mental acuity with names of people and companies and organizations and defunct magazines. An editor I knew (who has passed away) had left handwritten notes on his business card, which I had placed loose into the Rolodex. I just stared at it for a few minutes, recalling a visit to his office at Fairchild Publications, in a dingy, open space filled with metal desks and bad lighting. There was another business card from a business reporter who I recalled had interviewed one of my clients at a trade show. I couldn't let even one card go by without an image of a person, or a circumstance, or a location form in my mind's eye. Sometimes I'd linger on one card, whose name was totally unrecognizable to me, but the address or the specific town in which they were located brought back memories, some of them probably twenty years hence. Who in the heck was Bob Wunderlick? Do I dare call the number I had for him, in West Los Angeles, and ask him who he is and how I know him? Would he still be alive? Would he remember me?

My phone rang, and the reliving of my past business life halted for a few minutes as I spoke with someone from our Chicago office regarding a potential business opportunity with Newall Rubbermaid! The call ended and I returned to my two twentiethcentury makeshift time machines, my Old Rolos, and let myself fall back into reliving times past. Experiencing past memories, even feelings and emotions. "Past" is the key word here. It had to do with age certainly, but in a good way. I mentally reconnected with an amazing number of people and places that had been a part of my early days in the PR business. All of them contained in this antique treasure trove of names. And whether or not I remembered them all, or had an inkling of what role they played in my life or mine in theirs, we all shared something. We all took up some physical space together, and they all breathed from the same available air as I did. They all communicated with me and gave off energy through words and thought. They all shared some form of dialogue with me. Press contacts and business contacts abounded. Experiences in which I was a player, a decision-maker, an onlooker, a participant . . . it was all here in my two Rolodexes. All the things I learned about doing business and the personalities involved and how important they were to me, or not! Good times, bad times, insignifi cant times. They all had to do with connections -- contacts -- communicating. I probably even learnedsomething from Kimi Nishita that I use in managing people or issues today!

I decided to dust off those old Rolodexes and place them in a conspicuous place on my credenza. So the next time some young associate asks me about the importance of contact names and maintaining an editorial or client database, I can start out by showing these business offi ce "relics." Maybe share with them the concept that sometimes old technology like the Rolodex, with its cards -- hand-written or typed, coffee-stained, or dog-eared, faded or partially "whitedout" -- can trump the speed, effi ciency and effi cacy of modern databases with a special value-added quality: the ability to let the user relive experiences, learn from the past, and even visualize a situation, all by looking at a 2½ x 4-inch card -- something a list of editors' names on a computer screen could never match.

And yes, what about that physically tactile satisfaction of letting your "fingers do the flipping" through rigid card stock or, better yet, spinning the wheel and finding it miraculously landing on just the name you were looking for? Hey man, as they used to say in the old days, let the good times roll!