Remember the days when we attended an AYF meeting and the secretary actually took minutes by hand before typing them on another sheet of paper?
Not any more. Thanks to laptop computers and Blackberries, correspondence is only the touch of a button away.
Today’s AYFer couldn’t possibly digest anything being done longhand, or shorthand. The fingers do all the walking and talking these days.
I attended my first AYF meeting in eons, honoring a request by the chapter advisor to give an educational. The North Andover community has a combined Junior-Senior chapter. Most all the members are below the age of 16 and have their parents waiting upstairs in the church hall.
Computers in their AYF day were also a remote intervention.
I sat at the back of the room as business was being transacted, waiting for my turn. I had my notes in a manila folder. I dug them out of a file cabinet in my study, which shares space with documents and other paraphernalia I’ve collected over the past 50 years.
No, this was not a PowerPoint presentation as some might have anticipated. On this day, I was addressing the subject of Armenian’s contributions to world civilization. It came from the gut.
As I observed, what a revelation! The president sat next to the secretary and both of them had their laptops humming. Cell phones were ringing. Someone had a question that needed an immediate answer. No problem. The Central Executive representative fished out a Blackberry from his pocket, punched in a quick message, and within minutes—not hours—had the answer available.
Throughout the course of the afternoon, one or two were observed texting one another and carrying on a silent conversation, hopefully the business at hand.
But the one that really took the cake came after. I had mentioned to the children that there were only three survivors left in Merrimack Valley. A 13-year-old approached me after the meeting and said, “Mr. V. I have something I want to share with you.”
He pulled out a cell phone and flashed a dramatic photo he had taken of his great-grandmother Nellie, who happened to be one of the three elite survivors. It showed her bedridden with the boy’s father by her side. I was aghast!
How many adolescents do you know are carrying a photo of their great-grandparent around on a cell phone and sharing it with others? Years ago, we carried wallets with photos of our girlfriends. Pictures of grandparents and parents just weren’t “cool.”
Maybe I should take a closer look at reality. I’ve seen signs of the electronic era over the past decade at church meetings and Gomideh gatherings. At this year’s general meeting, the call went out for a recording secretary.
Quicker than I could say “Yahoo!” a hand shot up with the nomination. A woman quickly stepped forward with baggage. Out of her carrying case—just like that—was a laptop like it was all predestined.
Anything you ever wanted to know about our church history the past 5 or 10 years was there for the asking. Last year’s minutes were read and accepted—from a screen. And if you wanted the lyrics to “God Bless America,” all you had to do was hook up a modem to our state-of-the-art audio-visual system, and presto!
I remember being a Junior scribe for our AYF chapter. When it came time to submit a report, I would have my dictionary and “white-out” by my old Royal manual. Well, one day I had a deadline to meet and had to get the article to the editor pronto.
There was no other recourse but to hand-carry it to Boston. I hopped a trolley, connected to a train, then another, before arriving to my destination. The joyride was just beginning.
Up three flights of stairs to the old Hairenik building before finding a note on the door: “Back in 10 minutes.” So I sat and waited with my story in hand.
He arrived in 15 minutes and we made corrections together with a red pen, just the way my journalism professor did in college.
The Armenian Youth Federation has come a long way these 79 years—morally, spiritually, politically, and yes, electronically. I hate to venture a guess as to what the next 50 years will resemble in this organization.
Will members even meet inside a hall like we’ve done or simply let cyberspace handle all the protocol?
I’m glad I won’t be around to see it. There’s no substitute for the human condition, no matter how advanced technology becomes.
Tom Vartabedian
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