The "nostalgia file"

In the great movie "Glengarry Glenross", one of the characters, a hard-edged salesman, was given a stack of 3X5 cards with customer names. The names and contact info were years old. The salesman looked at the stack and threw them out, calling them the "nostalgia file." He was right, the old names and contacts were of little-to-no value.

Today, there should never be a nostalgia file. Not with LinkedIn, Facebook and all the other technology that connect us.

I spoke with someone recently who told me he had a database of hundreds of contacts from a convention he went to a few years ago. I asked him if he had kept in touch with those contacts, and he said, "no." "Ahh, the nostalgia file," I thought.

I can understand why decades ago there were nostalgia files. Communication was tougher, there were no emails or LinkedIn, people often had no voicemail, even. Few people had cell phones.

But today, all we need to do is sit in front of a computer and tap on the keyboard and we've communicated something to someone. No excuse. No nostalgia files.

Barry LaBov
LaBov and Beyond
www.labov.com