Chapter 9
New Tracks
A lot of work was waiting for us in the first days of the new millennium. The preparation of the second CEM conference was in full swing and beside it T. had again a few new ideas. The participants at the conference were much more numerous than the mini one last February. A large hall on the premises of the football stadium was rented – this word is not completely fitting here as in this case just as in the instances of other events the contract cleaning company for and the property owner of the appropriate place agreed in the symbolic fee to be paid, the greatest cost of putting it in order afterwards was the concern of all participating cleaning firms – for the meeting with a conference program as well as for the accompanying exhibition. This event was again a large success.
T’s new ideas covered a variety of topics. The first thing was brought forward in one of the MATISZ programs and it was the replacement of Futttar Ltd. by a share company. It would do the same as the predecessor did with some new tasks, and the whole sector would be owner by purchased shares. Preliminary polls showed that almost everyone was interested in buying shares. An organizing group of people was created, a lawyer hired and it started to become reality. T. was to be general manager of the company with two other directors. T. wanted me to be one of them responsible for production and for the other he wanted to draw in a highly skilled person outside the company, but he wouldn’t leave his job. Thus Maria became the other director responsible for financial questions.
Another one of T’s ideas was the creation of a system of pictograms used in topics of cleaning. T. had already something similar, but it contained only a few. T. wanted several hundred of them. He made sketches and Leslie drew them in CorelDraw. They were very simplified and understandable, and soon they were classified in fifteen general folders. We would go on them later, their creation and handling falling on me after L. would leave the company.
Perhaps the most important of the genial ideas of T. was the examination software. There were excellent helpmates for it, first of all S.M., our systems integrator, and another IT professional from the country. A large number of questions was stored in fifteen groups each one had three answers, of witch one was right and two were wrong. It was my job to fill the program and at the same time to translate all questions and answers into English and German. A person to be examined had to be registered and logged in. After that fifteen questions were given in random from the fifteen groups and one of the answers had to be chosen. The program did all including scoring. The software would be sold on CD-ROMs and for every owner a password would be generated. With it he could use it.
As spring passed the share company was established. Its name was CED Rt. (Rt. means share company in our language and the abbreviation was for Central European Development). The original target of the share capital was too high, at last only one fifth of it could be collected. With the information I have now I can state that the only mistake its organizers and people responsible for managing its business made was to start too wide. Had it been launched with a greater care it were one of the most successful companies of the country even today. Its capital wouldn’t go out as it did because of bad luck and malicious people, instead it could have grown. Any way, that company did a very great service for the sector and together with it for the country.
With the establishment of the share company some changes became necessary. Futttar that was in S’s ownership became turned into shares for him, CED took its former responsibilities except one: one of the employees, Sue – the other girl with name Susan left and a young woman finishing her time of maternity leave, Ildiko, took her place – founded a small private company and took on the publishing of the magazine TTT. Another thing was intellectual property rights for the enormous quantity of educational material partly in the codex, but also beside it. It had been patented on CED and was counted as share value.
Also T’s wife, K., was altering her course. That far she was a non-paid employee in the predecessor company and was doing – at least in my opinion – more work as any other person except T. There were two hobbies of hers, one was pottery and the other adult education – she called it with the fashionable ancient Greek expression andragogy. She started a school on correspondence course. The other hobby she left for later times.
All the tasks I wrote about above were completed one-by-one. I also had to learn again a lot of new things. First of all the format of the codex had to be changed from Word to a more acceptable software for the printing press. It was CorelDraw. I started with it and at first it was hard, but soon I could become acquainted with it and used it easily. With it I could also edit pictures and for the codex it was necessary. The examination software was put into use and at the basic courses exams were made by it. Every month one or two new courses started, cleaning companies in the country were reluctant to hire cleaners without certificate from us. The cleaning industry’s actors in Europe learned it soon that in Hungary something was boiling and there were a lot of enquiries from different countries about our business. The most friendly countries were from this aspect Italy and Britain. There was a constant correspondence with both.