Sup poppy!
Thanks for that! I didn't realize that you are basically always in meetings. You're important! Mr. Father Sir Bishop Senior Vice President of FamilySearch International and Director of Records and Partners and Book Author Steve Valentine. You need an acronym. MFSBSVPFSIDRPBA Valentine. That works really well! You should ask people to try and say that. It's probably harder than just saying the actual thing, so I guess that's kind of redundant.
Haha for real though, that's awesome. Thanks! I feel like I know you a little better since that's what you do for give or take 70 hours a week!
Transfers - where do I start? Well I guess first I'll tell you that I'm still in the office. Transfer #5! And I'm pretty positive I'll stay here a 6th because I STILL don't have anyone to train. Now that Elder Yoder has finished his mission, the new Elder here is a greenie - his name is Elder Cannon and he's not really an office elder... it's only his second transfer and he's being trained by Elder Wait, but during the day he'll be helping out around here. It's because there have been, between this transfer and the last, 30 new missionaries who have come in!!! To put it in perspective, we have 67 areas in our mission, and since every missionary has 2 transfers of training, it means that almost half of the mission is in a training companionship. President Amorim was really short on trainers he felt he could trust to train so many missionaries, so he put one in the office and basically made the biggest transfer change of all time. We had 13 white washes this transfer - that means that 13 areas had the missionaries taken out and 2 brand new missionaries going in, which is SUPER complicated planning wise. I worked from 9 AM to 1 AM on Monday to make all of the plans for people to travel without a phone to get in contact with, with companions, with people waiting on the other end of a bus/train/whatever to pick them up, but since no one has phones while traveling it has to be super exact. And when people white wash, there isn't anyone at the other end! And then they need their new phones and the keys to apartments and since it's closerish to the end of the month, silly missionaries don't have money so that they can actually BUY TRIPS TO GET PLACES so we had to figure out how to do that... anyway it was just absolutely insane. But your weeks typically sound about as crazy as transfers are, so I feel worse for you than for me!
Thanks for the explanation! It was fun to read. I wrote that first part on Thursday and never got to finish because of transfer stuff so I'm finishing now, and now I don't know where my thoughts were... but basically this week has been crazy and things are still not calming down haha! It's fine though, I'll look back and have lots of fun stories to tell. Anyway, if I get more time at the end I'll write you a little more. Thanks dad! I love you!
Love, Elder Valentine!
Dear Elder Valentine,
In your email last week, you asked about my job. Thanks for asking! I’m going to try and describe it to you.
My title is: Senior Vice President of FamilySearch International and Director of Records and Partners.
What does that mean?
First, the “Records” part of that title.
The Records division is responsible for all aspects of getting searchable records published on our website. That means that we create the strategy for what records we digitally capture around the world. Records are censuses, vital records, land records, probate records, etc. We work with the teams around the world who negotiate with archives and churches to go into their facilities and digitize the records with our digital cameras. Then those images have to be sent to Salt Lake and ingested into our servers. We have to add descriptive “metadata” to those images so people can find them and we can later index them. We create “indexing projects” out of those images and post them on FamilySearch Indexing so volunteers can transcribe them. We recruit and train hundreds of thousands of volunteers around the world to index these records. Once the records are indexed we apply data “treatments” to make the records more searchable and clean up the records, and then publish them. In addition, my team is responsible for all of the software tools and infrastructure to make this huge process possible. Each year we average about 400 million records that we publish through this process.
Now, the “partners” side of that title.
That part of my team works with commercial and nonprofit partners who want to collaborate with FamilySearch. For example, all members of the church have free accounts to Ancestry, Findmypast, MyHeritage, American Ancestors, Geneanet, and more, because of the partnership deals we have with them. As another example, we partnered with Ancestry to digitize and publish the Mexico vital records. It would have taken FamilySearch 70 years to do this alone, but with Ancestry we are already done! I spend a lot of my time in meetings with these partners, negotiating the terms of new deals, resolving problems, looking for new partners, etc.
What do I do on a daily basis? Here’s a typical week:
- 1-1 with my managers (7 hours a week). I have seven direct reports (managers who report to me). They each lead large teams. I have about 180 employees in my division and 600 missionaries. Each week I meet with these seven managers in 1-1s to oversee their efforts.
- 5 hours a week in Sr. Staff meetings with our CEO and the other directors
- 6 hours a week in staff meetings with my various teams
- 2-3 hours a week meeting with the general authorities who are over department
- 10-15 hours in various partner meetings
- 10-15 hours in various records-related meetings
- 4-6 hours meeting with other directors outside my division, coordinating our work across their divisions
- 10 hours or so “outside of the office” going through all the email messages I get with questions, concerns, people asking for direction, etc.
- 10 hours or so “outside of the office” time creating presentations, proposals, goals, etc.
There is never enough time in the day to get all this done. I spend nearly all my work day in meetings, meaning that I have to do most of my email, presentations, proposals, giving direction, etc., at home or late at night. It’s a very busy job!
My typical week then is also combined with the bishop job. Every Tuesday and Wednesday I basically go right from work to the church and am there until 10 or 11 PM. Often there are meetings Thursday or visits, and then youth activities, like last week I was gone Friday night with the young men. Sunday is from 7 AM until about 5 at the church.
It’s all good! I love my job and I love being the bishop! I haven’t written my fiction books at all since becoming the bishop, but that’s okay, because I know this is the priority the Lord wants from me.
I know that was a LONG description, but you asked! I hope this gives a little more insight into “what Dad does at work all day”!
I hope your transfers are good and you’re happy with the result. I look forward to hearing all about it!
Love,
Dad
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