My job blows my mind -- sometimes

I work for a really, really large organization (Company X), as a contractor in a very, very small group. Most of the time I happily work here in this little space within huge corporate-warren doing my library work. Though we take care of everyone potentially; in practice we see very little of the big picture. Not seeing the big picture may be a good thing, as you can see from my meeting today.

Had a very confusing, jargon-filled meeting with someone from our IT group. Loads of new development projects and strategies were just kind of thrown in front of us along with names of champions (ie. people). My Library's project is to have a single access point or tool for accessing all the subscription products we purchase. It seems, among other things, it is recommended that we create a portal -- whatever that means to Company X.

All I know now is that, no kidding, we have lots and lots of groups within Company X who are part of "The Federation" and then a bunch of external people who are part of "The Alliance" and a couple of groups which are temporarily working outside that are 'secunded'. Somehow we are supposed to draw together a team, from the Alliance and the Federation, to do a portal. We should volunteer to beta, so our costs will be picked up by either the Federation or the Alliance (I forget who).

The IT person we met with is very excited about the possibilities. All I could say was, "Live Long and Prosper", or something like that. This place is not big or gigantic or humongous -- it's galactic.

Are you with "The Alliance", "The Federation" or have you been secunded? I don't know what I am. I think I'm Alliance… then again I could just call myself part of "The Association", since I work 'deeply outsourced' for another type of company entirely.

"To Infinity and beyond"…...