IDG memo excerpt

Excerpt from an operations memo written by International Data Group president Patrick McGovern in 1965.

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To: Mike O'Neil, Vice-President of Operations

Dear Mike:

Please arrange to do the following things during the coming week:

1. Organize incoming questionnaires. . . .

2. Write a draft of an announcement letter for our new Punched Card Data File project.

3. Complete the mailing of subscription promotion letters. . . .

4. Find out the cost of a 16-millimeter projector with sound. . . .

5. Post a notice to all employees to keep their work area neat. . . .

6. Clean the windows in the front office room. . . .

7. Fix the drainpipe on the side of the house.

Best regards, Patrick McGovern, President

-- From a memo read by Patrick McGovern at a party celebrating the 30th anniversary of International Data Group (IDG), a $990-million publisher of information-technology magazines and newspapers. McGovern, IDG's founder and chairman, said he wrote the memo in 1965 to lay out a week of "crucial operational goals" for his start-up, then just a year old.