Melissa Transcript Part 2?
00:00:00,000 So you can the event designer and they will work with the event brief
and they’ll be like, okay, so We know this is a sales kickoff. Well a sales
kickoff We know that they need to have a big party. We know there
needs to be ton of networking activities
00:00:12,420 We don’t need a full-buttisession content because that’s really not why
these leaders are here You know and they start structuring that and
then they will bring in the tech people They will bring in the tech people
and the tech people will be like, okay, so this is again this is the event
brief
00:00:27,540 These are the event objectives. Okay, so now we need to build out the
tech stack So it is going to facilitate a solid registration system to get
the right to tent fields in the registration system So people can
effectively network
00:00:39,780 But what are the fields? What are the things you’re gonna search for
people on so that they can find the people that they want to meet with
at the event What kind of networking opportunities do we need to
provide? We just need a bunch of tables. Do we need meeting
scheduling?
00:00:53,020 Do we need to have like a zoom or a team’s integration? What are
those integration points? You know and that’s where we get involved is
really like let’s facilitate the tech to make that happen You know, do we
need location services in the forms of beacons because we’re gonna do
like a who’s near me
00:01:08,540 You know, there’s all sorts of ways that that can take shape to help
achieve the event objectives And that’s where I come into the play once
we know what we’re trying to do with the event I come in and help make
that happen [Music]
00:01:29,780 Well, I hope you enjoyed the first part of the interview Come back next
week for the second part in the meantime have fun. Cheers now. Bye
[Music]
00:01:49,100 So what’s been going on? I think the very observant ones of my
listeners here was spotted that I missed a episode I was off on holiday
and
00:02:01,740 Time just overtook me so I decided to skip a month week and publish
this one a little bit later I had a good break and actually during that time
I also managed to get my
00:02:14,340 Audio version of the book uploaded on to cobo so if you have some
cobo Users out there you’ll be able to get the AI narrated version of
Project manager productivity hacks on there and if you’re on the cobo
plus I think it looks like jeeper sir
00:02:33,340 Or you can still get a Google still get it at Pay him should be 499
wherever you go I think about it and I’ve included a
00:02:45,900 Exert again at the end of the show Other than that there’s a great time
good break a bit of downtime and chilling A couple of good interviews
and the past few weeks
00:02:56,940 Last night I spoke to a Melissa Romo About her book your results is
human Really interesting conversations for looking forward to bringing
that to you and I’ve got three full lined up for the next few weeks
00:03:10,780 so Yeah enjoy the interview with Jen Cheers now, bye
00:03:17,180 Hello, I’d like to welcome today to the show Jen Santos For more than a
decade Jen has been leading event technology has led event
technology at some of the world’s largest companies She brings the
technology and team building best practices from over 20 years as an
IT consultant and coach
00:03:39,060 Experience it to experience to event delivery teams So they can deliver
exception of events. She’s now teaching others through the same to the
smart event delivery Academy Delivering an event takes a small village
00:03:54,020 According to Jen and we all succeed or fail as a team She’s led event
technologies ensuring that the disparate Pieces of technology work
together to create a seamless attendee experience and while tech is
important
00:04:10,140 It’s ultimately a people of matter the attendees the client organization
and countless vendor teams that work together to deliver an
exceptional experience Jen welcome to the show I’ve fumbled most of
that in trope so apologies for that, but there we go
00:04:28,460 That’s it is powerful to course when doing really on this in this short
thing, but Tell us a little bit more about you Yeah, thanks for having me
now. I really thrilled to be here with you to kind of share
00:04:39,700 Kind of best practices in event technology chat with another Technology
project manager project manager and talk about best practices and
what you know like what the What the differences in the similarities are
between what you and I do it our day-to-day and what our team is doing
our day-to-day and so
00:04:56,420 As you so aptly said that I’ve been leading event tech at some of the
world’s largest companies You know Microsoft CES get hub or cool
some of these companies for more than a decade and but before that I
was actually an IT project manager. I came up to the programmer ranks
and I did the whole
00:05:10,380 Business analyst a project manager a program manager I did that for
another 20 years ahead of that and so I really my experience is really
kind of run the gamut All the way from like pharmaceuticals to banking
and now over to events and when I got into events
00:05:26,060 I discovered that I really really really love events because for me What
events does is it kind of takes the best what I find to be the best of like
running projects But I kind of operationalizes it so you get I’ve been
able to find a way to keep it both
00:05:42,220 Something that I understand and can be comfortable with but yet it
pushes me to be learning something new every single time And then
thing that really draws me to events is this idea that We really are
focused on the attendee experience
00:05:55,620 No, an event is a big deal for our attendees like they come they are
expecting to be wild and The date’s coming whether you’re ready or not
and so there’s always kind of this game for the event delivery team
Which is our date set moving and looking at like the standard project
management triple constraint like how are we going to deliver the best
00:06:13,900 possible quality event for our attendee in the time that we have Brilliant
it’s it is it’s a it’s funny. I’ve said a few times before now like and I’ve
said it before to other people that you get a lot of
00:06:28,980 Project management is a life skill in my opinion and and some of some
of our biggest things that happen in our personal lives require
00:06:41,780 project management Whether that’s buying a house maybe building a
house getting married actually if we project managed having kids It
would be not a bad idea, but I think it would be the first one that needs
to be had job
00:06:53,580 but Just that that whole and a lot of those planning a birthday party and
and I know I’m Bolittle in the scale of the things that you do on those,
but there’s a lot of those skills that are
00:07:08,940 I’m for an IT background. I know there’s people listen who are
construction backgrounds and And a lot of that flexibility that you get
Sometimes you do sometimes don’t when you get a legislative piece of
work that date has to be there
00:07:23,300 But then it’s kind of okay. What are we not going to deliver? I imagine
we’ll get onto some of that and and I’ve always been fascinated when I
go to a conference or if I and or a theater
00:07:39,180 Or a gig or something like that. I’m always fascinated the doors that
saying staff only To see what’s happening behind those doors and how
the how the whole thing actually Comes together and happens and I
think of I’d love to be in flying or want I saw a job for the Commonwealth
Games in
00:08:00,540 Birmingham there was a number of roles in there And quite a few out
there and I was looking at thinking that would be a really interesting role
and Bloody stressful I imagine but quite rewarding to see that event
even to just choreograph choreograph the opening ceremony for an
event like that would be
00:08:21,220 Astounding and as you say that that that absolute You’ve got to do it by
then how do you make it happen? And I suppose there’s that thing of
accepting that it’s gonna go wrong Somewhere along the line
something’s gonna go wrong
00:08:35,580 So absolutely to wind back a little bit to your your career before events
And kind of just that little chat about about that and what what you were
doing in those roles and And then maybe how you ended up segwaying
into the event side of it was it because of that was it a complete jump or
whatever
00:08:55,940 But yeah, well your icy consultancy. What were you doing that? What
kind of things were you doing then? Yeah, so you know, I started as a
programmer. I got like halfway through college actually a degree in
finance and business and a minor in German go figure I’m way too
young to live. Let’s just skip to
00:09:14,380 Brazil. Yeah, right so yeah, not helpful at all But I decided to have with
your college. I really was interested in computers and you know, this
was the early 90s and So computers and technology internet all that
stuff was still really really new
00:09:33,140 But I was like this is really interesting and really cool and I started kind
of teaching myself out of program I took my first comp side class the
senior college But decided this is what I want to do. I want to go into
consulting
00:09:44,500 I got myself hired by like one of the big consulting firms in the US and
then I went through there to one boot camp And I came out as a
programmer and I loved programming like my brain just it’s just how my
brain works like I can see a big picture and it’s a big puzzle and then my
job is to get all the puzzle pieces to like lock together and that is the
00:10:05,580 Really fun part for me is making that happen and Because I have this
ability to see the bigger picture and I see in systems like sometimes
Literally visually in systems. I can see how the different pieces will fit
together
00:10:19,460 And so I find it became a natural teen lead and I’d be like well, no, but if
you’re gonna Code this page and this page needs to interact with this
page of this way, but then this doesn’t make sense for the user So how
do we make the flow make sense to the user and those were like the
questions I started asking really early in my career
00:10:35,980 And then from there, you’re like oh well, you should just be a project
manager And so I went through the standard PMI project management
institute got my TMP certification Did that for a while? I transitioned out
of living in the Midwest to the US
00:10:49,580 I moved out to the West Coast in Seattle where I lived for 12 years And
there I did a lot of just very traditional IT Project management for a very
long time. I worked in banking
00:11:01,860 I worked in life sciences. I did a couple of short stints at Microsoft doing
various things I worked on the Windows Vista launch, which I very
rarely admit to in public Um, and then when this fits actually
00:11:16,060 When it came out I liked it And how I ended up in events was actually
through this same job I was working at the company that is now slow on
and they put me on a project at Microsoft to redo the marketing website
for one of the Microsoft’s big flagship events
00:11:34,700 And I started working on that and then they said hey Jen can you stay
on it? Can you actually work on the event? I’m like I’ve never done
events but that sounds fun And but I discovered is it wasn’t just fun like
I loved it like I finished up that first year
00:11:49,100 And I’m like this is what I want to be doing and I will never ever forget
the first time I walked into my first Microsoft event. This is 20,000
people, right? We’re down in Houston, Texas I remember coming up in
the taxi and I was alone in the taxi and we’re heading up to the Houston
Convention Center
00:12:05,020 And like there’s all these all the signage and everything like on the lamp
post or saying like Microsoft WPC, right? My partner conference and
then I walk into the convention center and there’s all like the exposed
sponsor signage Like all the escalators and the stairs and the sponsor
banners and I just like I was like a kid like a Christmas going
00:12:25,340 Literally like what is this? They’re remembering these goose bumps
Yeah, I was like this is cool like this is really cool and I You know that
event went well they asked kept asking me to come back and asking
me to come back
00:12:40,060 And I was like this is what I am supposed to be doing Brilliant brilliant it
is yeah, I Every conference I’ve been to I always find that kind of
00:12:51,260 and that feeling of Or on a lot of the things I remember the first time I
went to as when I used to work
00:13:00,220 for barclades and I went to an Oracle conference And there was all
these different streams and all this different stuff going on with um
00:13:09,900 It was I was quite useful at the time of staying over somewhere Which
you didn’t do a lot of and things like that and it was kind of it It’s just this
whole new world and the I’m I’m a sucker for a trade show as well
00:13:20,140 So it’s kind of free free a free bag of hat and a pen and I’m and you’ve
got me at that there really Yeah, let’s start running running collecting
those sort of things Um, but he I suppose it’s yeah
00:13:33,260 There are I kind of obvious differences and there’s probably lots of
commonality, but how do you how do you go about kind of going right
You’ve got an event to be run
00:13:49,020 Is it that your your customer will come to you and go right on the 14th of
July 2023 We’ve got 40,000 people we’ve booked this event center or is
it that they come there and say right We want to run an event. We need
you to to shape it
00:14:04,140 And do you get how does it how does it how often is it better both Um,
so that’s that I usually get involved in the process a little further down
the road So what will happen is we’re going to client come to an
organization and they’re like we’ve got in the event for 40,000 people
00:14:21,260 On this date at this venue Can you help with shape it and that’s really
where like the event planners and logistics planners the event
experience Designers come into play and they’re the ones that will work
with the event brief so the event brief
00:14:36,780 I was just talking to somebody about this today the event brief is like
this is what our objective of the event is who are we targeting for the
event You know, what is the budget? What is it going to be?
00:14:48,540 What are the goals? What is the features like what does the event need
to get out of it because when you look at the types of events I do
they’re generally marketing events
00:14:57,100 This is some way to make revenue most of the event organizations with
companies i work in they’re under marketing And they’re under
marketing for a reason because they are supposed to be driving sales
In some way shape or form they’re supposed to be driving scale sales
even if it’s a skilling or a training event is at the end of the day about
making sales right
00:15:14,780 and so um So you get the event designer and they will work with the
event brief and they’ll be like okay
00:15:23,100 So we know this is a sales kickoff Well a sales kickoff we know that
they need to have a big party We know there needs to be ton of
networking activities
00:15:31,740 We don’t need a full-time session content because that’s really not why
these leaders are here You know and they start structuring that and
then they will bring in the tech people I hit the microphone um they will
bring in the tech people and the tech people will be like okay
00:15:47,180 So this is again this is the event brief these are the event objectives
Okay, so now we need to build out the tax stack So it is going to
facilitate a solid registration system to get the right attempt fields in the
registration system
00:15:59,500 So people can effectively network Like what are the fields? What are
the things you’re going to search for people on
00:16:05,180 So that they can find the people that they want to meet with at the event
What kind of networking opportunities do we need to provide? We just
need a bunch of tables. Do we need meeting scheduling?
00:16:14,620 Do we need to have like a zoom or a team’s integration? What are
those integration points? You know and that’s where we can involve is
really like let’s facilitate the tech to make that happen
00:16:24,620 You know, do we need location services in the forms of beacons
because we’re going to do like a boost near me You know, there’s all
sorts of ways that that can take shape to help achieve the event
objectives and that’s where I come into the play
00:16:37,340 Once we know what we’re trying to do with the event I come in and help
make that happen Right so it’s that enabling side of it with not not not
so much the whole Kitten commutal is that technology to make it
happen
00:16:51,820 Exactly right So even you said you said yourself at the beginning is that
it takes the village to make an event happen right Yeah
00:16:59,180 Yes, but then there’s like the logistics team and somebody needs to
work on transportation Somebody else is doing food and beverage
because your food and beverage can be very different If you’re working
with CEOs versus bluntly you’re working with devs
00:17:11,820 Yeah You know and so a lot of those things are very very different The
decorations are going to be different the theme is going to be different
the type of venue you choose
00:17:20,620 all those things All that event brief informs all of this and so by event
tech is just a very small piece of Very big puzzle
00:17:30,700 Yeah that’s interesting because yeah because it’s Again, it’s that
straight away I think these big events and I say I go back to the to the
where they
00:17:43,260 I suppose the Commonwealth Games and the Games where not only is
there That getting a number of people there there’s there’s a building
project that happens beforehand There’s a
00:17:53,820 A network cabling event that so like The TV cabling events so I wonder
if you
00:18:01,020 Do you have you got involved in that sort of thing where you’ve got live
TV streaming and things like that with any of those Oh yeah Yeah,
yeah, I mean I
00:18:08,940 I imagine that that’s another dimension to the tech doesn’t it? I guess It
is right I mean you think about my part is really like the digital
experience so making sure session scheduling registration
00:18:22,300 You know managing managing kind of the speaker portals the similar
portals and then on these really big events Now I know not every big
event is every events a big event like this right but like
00:18:34,540 Um like the big events at the Microsoft events is stuff like that We bring
in an entire team and all they do is they run a parallel Wi-Fi system
That is stronger that can support more people right we have a whole
other team all they do is audiovisual
00:18:49,260 And so they spend all this time setting up the 40 breakout rooms and
they have to rent read the video cameras they have to read the sound
boards they have to run the cabling because that’s Separate cabling
from the Wi-Fi cabling right you have set up the green rooms all those
sorts of things
00:19:03,580 And so those are specialized audiovisual teams specialized networking
teams who bring in our own routers we have around knock all that sort
of stuff And it all integrates together and then at certain points you look
different things with a text up
00:19:16,060 I think in obviously with With the covid over the past few years that’s I’m
guessing changed
00:19:24,700 Actually from your perspective change your dynamic but but and then
maybe even change the number of events but I suppose that the use of
the virtual capabilities of that did you see that Rampup and did you see
that kind of increase that that kind of tech activity you had to do that
period also the opposite
00:19:42,620 We had to pivot on a dime because we had all these live events like
everybody else right We had to pivot on a dime we had all these live
events plan And suddenly we hit what march and we had our first big
event was like may fourth I think and so
00:19:59,420 We’re like okay registration I think was like on the verge of going live we
did pushing off registration waiting to see what was gonna happen And
so we’re like nope we’re going out virtual
00:20:09,580 How are we gonna do this you know and so suddenly we went from
having an event and Trying to think of a good way to explain this so
when you go to an in-person event Everything is in that time zone right
so everything in the
00:20:22,860 US East Coast time zone and suddenly you’re dealing with a global
events with a boatload of time zones far more than 24 right Both loaded
different time zones that you need to account for and so we had to
reach a girl session scheduling
00:20:37,420 We had to ramp up or read read jigger or all of our time zone mass so
we could handle global time zones So we could actually read the
browser devices to understand what time zone they were in do all those
math calculations You know figure out how to do the verbiage on the
site so people understood you’re not looking at
00:20:55,260 You know us west coast time you’re actually looking at your own local
time That was really confusing for people in the beginning and then also
You know when we’re used to having a five thousand person a five
thousand person in-person event
00:21:07,660 Suddenly you’re talking about tens of thousands and hundreds of
thousands of attendees And that requires a completely different text
scaling Yeah, and so all of that we just did round the clock
00:21:20,060 Yeah, I was gonna say because I imagine a lot a lot of these events I
am what I imagine in many of them wouldn’t
00:21:32,460 That there would be a little bit of the remote access to some of these
events a little bit of a Stream that on YouTube for some of the bigger
events or record and stream on YouTube but not the not the
00:21:46,300 in-person attendance kind of thing where you want to capture who’s
attending because Because I imagine a lot of them were right. I’ve got
Someone doing a speech doing it all out and we’ve got a fewer remote
they can watch it over YouTube
00:21:58,460 But actually they’re not part of the marketing for later because they’re a
small part of it They’re not the ones that you want to make know who’s
watching and know their demographics so that you can Target up
advertising after things like that was as soon as you go to those five
thousand that your focus was on plus the few hundred here
00:22:16,060 Suddenly you go there’s five thousand all that there you want more of
their data to be able to carry on the conversation or understand right All
the 40 year old white males went to this one Why was that do you
mean in what all for diversity things and that things that as well an
attendance and getting feedback and and
00:22:38,620 Yeah, I imagine all that completely changed as well and that dynamic as
well and obviously as you say that The physical logistics some guess in
a lot of this is cloud-based
00:22:49,420 For these events you’re using cloud technology rather than physical
technology You so you can scale up a den of it and at that point the
scaling must have been the most important and probably the biggest
new cost factor Yeah, yeah, definitely
00:23:05,900 Um, and you mentioned Trying to remember what it was that you said
Yeah, I do wear all the bed
00:23:13,580 Love to go yeah Questions come out like don’t get give you a chance to
answer the questions. No, it’s quite all right. Um, yeah Uh
00:23:25,980 I was just saying it was so yeah, so talk about the data point you were
talking about capturing data right and so that’s been interesting the
Conversation that’s been happening a lot I bet I you know Connected
with a bunch of
00:23:39,340 Officials on LinkedIn and that’s a lot of the conversation that we’re
having right now is like okay The really cool thing about these virtual
events is that because people have to log in we can track Everything
you’re doing right like when you’re in person
00:23:53,340 You we don’t necessarily unless we’re section scanning we don’t and
you can avoid that We don’t necessarily know what you’re up to and so
we’re actually starting to as an industry we’re starting to lose Data and
we’re starting to lose data quality because tracking physical people
around a venue is a lot harder than tracking virtual people around a
venue
00:24:13,260 Then of course we got GDPR and you know all the privacy laws too
that are You know starting to really particularly in the past few years
starting to take shape and You know those laws are continually evolving
and trying to figure out what we can do is an industry and as a people
want more and more personalized
00:24:31,420 Experiences you have to give over your data to make that happen, but
nobody wants to give over their data. So we’re seeing a push pull there
as well Yeah, I suppose that yeah, yeah There’s a there’s a point there
isn’t there because there’s obviously an aggregated level where
00:24:46,540 There’s some really useful data for behaviors at events and I imagine if
you’re You say you you have these flashing wristbands that they have in
certain events if you give someone a flashing wristband that’s got a
GPS in there You know identifying them as an individual, but you are
identifying their flow around the the building and then you can go
actually we’ve got a
00:25:05,580 a choke point here Right if if that’s an event you’re running regular right
move this from there to there Right, we haven’t got that choke point the
flow in the organiser is going to be there
00:25:15,980 That means we get people going to 15 different coffee shops instead of
just one that they keep seeing or whatever And I imagine that kind of
stuff is is something for repeat events is probably really useful
information I would have thought Yeah, absolutely that’s something
that’s actually a great use case like I’ve seen it’s used that information
00:25:31,900 It gets baited the badges a lot of times is that they will use that
information to trap traffic patterns and they’re like oh Everybody’s going
to this epithetian food and beverage station That’s why we run out of
stuff in five minutes
00:25:44,540 Yeah, we need to redirect the traffic flow and or we need to bring more
food here Right, and so that’s a very kind of a very practical thing to do
we can see escalator usage And so we can bring our wayfinders in and
get them
00:25:58,380 Directing people over to an alternate escalator we can get on these big
events you can get the shuttles to drop people off in a different
entrance Just to ease the traffic flow So if shuttles one two and three
you’re going to this entrance four five and six you’re going to this
entrance
00:26:12,780 Right and then like that so you talked about why didn’t you get
backstage like that’s the stuff that we’re doing right is we’re sitting there
We’re watching all the traffic clothes and everything and you know You
mostly see of us and you see at the food snack table with like the
skinholes and the cookies and the ice cream and all that stuff
00:26:28,620 And you just see us shoveling that normal is like all the time that’s all
that happens there with our computers That’s it. Yeah, is it is it not like
it’s not like mission control then where you’ve got this big darkened
room with massive screens and and 15 people sitting there going right
let’s do that there
00:26:45,900 It’s it’s all literally very much sat in sat in the off in there with a load of A
load of uh, uh, kind of tech. He’s just hacking away Yep, a whole bunch
of us so in some times depending on the event
00:26:59,980 You’ll be in a crew room that’s literally like a big warehouse And like the
more books are going by Well, all the Xbox stuff behind you. You’re like
I’m sorry I can’t hear you
00:27:07,660 Before looking back up right now, baby exactly So We have Lagan
center lap and we’re drinking coffee 24 by seven
00:27:18,620 Yeah, yeah, it sounds like Yeah, it’s it sounds like that whole thing I
know I know I know I’ll be interested to hear your thought on this is um
00:27:30,220 I suppose My experience of projects these days is changed or it used to
be like they used to be a lot of We had a much slower but bigger
release kind of cycle than we in projects
00:27:43,740 So you’d have this typical in the IT industry like this big release can
happen at some point And everyone’s all hands to the pump and you
get this damn thing over the line and you fix all the things over the
weekend That didn’t happen in tests that you didn’t know we’re gonna
happen and everyone’s there with pizza and the project managers job
00:28:00,540 The main thing is to keep people fed and uh and keep keep the
stakeholders informed that you’ve got things going forward I’ve done
that myself many times um, the only value I really had was making sure
the people who knew what they were doing were being fed and had
coffee
00:28:15,500 um Literally in that lesson Tune in up there at one day and I go, what
are you doing?
00:28:21,660 I’m saying I’m here to feed you and it says that’s it um and and stay out
your way and
00:28:28,940 You get that team effort and you make that success and you deliver that
project um and You have that Calm down afterwards
00:28:41,180 That Finish energy that that you’ve used all that time and not not just
purely for the the fact of length of hours You’re doing stuff, but that just
that um emotional energy so I how does that how do you affect you?
How does that affect your teams? What do you do about it?
00:28:56,220 Um It’s changed With the pandemic um what I found pre-pandemic is
that the events I was working on were a lot more spaced out after I first
event actually
00:29:11,900 I they’ve been finished up on a Thursday afternoon and went back to
my hotel room And I binge doctor who for six hours back to
00:29:22,060 Who’s your favorite doctor Oh nine actually
00:29:29,980 So nine is I can never remember which of that tenant is Christopher no
i’m Christopher Eccleson Christopher Eccleson yeah It’s only did the
one season
00:29:41,100 Ah yes For those listening that was that was a uh David tenant doctor A
little uh thing yeah, I like I enjoy Christopher Eccleson
00:29:54,220 I thought he brought a very nice darkness to it so I could as it as a bring
to the doctor So we were best notes out I’m not a completely obegieke
on doctor who but they do enjoy it a lot I do I do it’s just entertaining for
me
00:30:08,460 Like you know, I don’t spend a lot of time on it. That’s actually my little
10 there’s actually a present from a friend of mine But um yeah, I just I
enjoy watching it so I binge it for six hours and so What I find is that
usually honestly even now it kind of takes me a couple of days because
as you ramp up to the event
00:30:27,740 The hours kind of get to be more and more and it’s kind of like a
traditional IT project right the closer you get to the actual deployment
Like the more stuff you find that’s gone wrong Um and our brand day
can’t move like there’s no possibility slipping the date because you’ve
got people getting on an airplane
00:30:43,820 so You know like you’ve got this adrenaline rush And then it ends and
like it takes like three four days sometimes a week until you’re kind of
go oh
00:30:54,860 Okay, and now with the one virtual what I find is that I’m working on
more and more events just kind of constantly And so there might be
another event the following week And so like not getting the same kind
of downtime that I used to get pre-pandemic and that’s
00:31:10,860 Is honestly forced me to kind of dial it back, you know like Work-life
balance of well-being is a big thing to me after having burned out in the
past and so it’s it’s been having to learn to kind of like Say no and bring
in my team again
00:31:26,540 It takes a village to run an event and so it’s making sure that I have
enough of village people to To make my own happen Are they all
dressed as village people or not?
00:31:38,620 No, they’re really Okay, thank you But I’m pretty resisting
00:31:42,540 I would be insisting that they were with us me Um It’s interesting that
because I found and you mentioned during that and I saw on your
website that you’d been through that that thing and I’ve been through
that myself
00:31:54,300 In recent years during the pandemic actually was kind of one of those
things of the the the Um the piling on of a lot of stuff and the the blurring
of the work-life balance and things like that and I think actually the the
general um
00:32:10,140 Emotional energy going into worrying about this goddamn pandemic
Put a lot of us a lot of us in that position where potentially we wouldn’t
necessarily have gone into Um, and I saw something really interesting
today
00:32:24,780 And I can’t remember he was on LinkedIn. I can’t remember where it
was um, but it was talking about bang bang trees at work I think it was
a LinkedIn article about boundaries at work
00:32:35,740 And it was a book someone’s written and one of those the chapters was
about having boundaries at work And then there was somebody
followed up on that and said it’s not about saying no to people
boundaries It’s about saying yes slowly
00:32:49,900 And I thought as a fantastic way of doing it is you can kind of sit here
but I can help you But I can’t help you now I would help you
00:33:00,380 But I’ve got this first. I’ve got to do this Whereas I think we kind of in
that thing where someone pulls a lever and you do it ourselves where
we go Yeah, yeah, I can do that and then ten minutes later you sit there
and go
00:33:11,500 Oh crap Why did I just say yes to that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, and and I
think the other idea that
00:33:17,980 Go on, go, sorry, the other idea No, go Yeah, well, it’s just the other idea
on it was that um
00:33:25,020 Going back to Also being able to when you’ve said yes Having the
courage and the ability and the knowledge of how to go back and say
you know, I said yes
00:33:35,980 I was wrong I can’t do that at the moment but I can do it then And I
thought it was a really really interesting mindset, but I’d never heard of
before
00:33:46,860 Interesting Hi and welcome to the Sunday lunch project manager
podcast for Sunday the 23rd of April 2023 This is your host night’s
creesor and today we’ve got Jen Santos the events PM
00:34:07,100 So this is my final wrap-up every week you’re going to hear this you’re
going to get bored of it But you can always click next podcast if so If
you have enjoyed it if you’ve listened to this podcast at the end of this
00:34:31,740 Show and you think that was great. I’d love to be able to help nidej out
There are loads of ways you can do it Um the first and obvious way is
to um share the podcast send it out to people
00:34:46,540 If you if you know for colleagues or friends who’ve benefit from it, you
think they’d enjoy it Just send them the link Grab one of the links sent
or send them to www.nidejocreaser.com/podcasts
00:34:59,420 That’s nide www.nidejocreaser.com/podcasts And that’ll push them
over to a um a link tree link and it’s got all of the different ways they can
consume the the podcast
00:35:13,340 If you are feeling generous and have a big bag of cash You could grab a
copy of one of my books obviously
00:35:22,780 They’re available in all the usual places and print and and and digital
Again jump on the website www.nidejocreaser.com/shop
00:35:34,220 And that will give you a list of all the different ways that you can
contribute And grab copies of the book also got links to all my guests
books on there as well where I get a little bit of a kickback from them
Um if you are of a sporting mind
00:35:50,700 Um I have a number through doing some of my judo and running antics
I managed to secure a few um
00:36:02,700 Affiliate links and affiliates there as well So in there somewhere in the
sponsors page there’s links to those as well So clicking on to those and
grabbing your if you’re with it
00:36:12,300 If you’re looking to get super fit then that would be fabulous as well And
I get a little kickback from those Uh I have a Patreon account it’s
patreon.com/sundaylunchpm
00:36:25,660 Uh so again you can ping something in there by me a coffee or
whatever And finally obviously the most important is coming back
Coming back listen again um
00:36:37,180 Because uh the more of you than come back uh the more Visibility I get
because there’s more times that he’s downloaded and all the SEO
works and things like that So yeah that’s it so uh if you can help me out
I would be much appreciated
00:36:53,820 If you can’t don’t worry about it Thank you very much. Tisno. Bye Well
it’s goodbye from me Nigel Kreaser and it’s goodbye from him the
Sunday lunch pm
00:37:06,380 Goodbye Introduction, hi and welcome to project manager productivity
hacks Why write another book on productivity hacks?
00:37:21,340 Are there not enough of them already? The trigger was my interview
with Sarah M. Hobern for my podcast the Sunday lunch project
manager podcast Plug plug
00:37:32,380 We talked about improving productivity for project managers And during
the conversation I recalled that a while ago I started a blog post in
which I planned to share some ideas That I have used in my career to
improve my productivity
00:37:52,140 And get out of the office that little bit earlier Over the years I have
shared these with others And almost every time I received a positive
and enthusiastic response
00:38:01,580 Having rekindled the idea I sat down and noted 11 hacks, tips, short
cuts, whatever you want to call them That I have used over the years
Why 11? Well it’s one more than 10
00:38:13,900 This book goes up to 11, one for the spinal tap fans I see productivity is
remarkably similar to an exercise program We all start off with good
intentions
00:38:24,860 And some of the changes work great for us and others don’t Some
changes stick and become part of our daily life Whereas others are just
a real chore
00:38:33,180 Even the ones we found that work well for us and are straightforward to
implement Can, under certain circumstances, end up being dropped by
us Sometimes this happens consciously and sometimes little by little
over time
00:38:45,500 Whether building healthier habits or improving our productivity It’s not
just a case of making the changes and we are done It takes repeated
work
00:38:55,820 If you find them hard to implement Then they may not be for you in your
current situation If you start using them and end up letting them drift
00:39:03,980 Then start again Improving our productivity is something many of us
strive to achieve Aiming for some kind of efficiency Navanna
00:39:12,860 Let me tell you it ain’t gonna happen Perfection is a myth Give yourself
a break
00:39:18,300 It’s a bit like yoga You can’t win at yoga No matter how bendy you get
00:39:22,860 You can always be bendier That’s the same with personal productivity
You can’t win at productivity
00:39:28,860 You can always be productivity Ed Is that a word?
00:39:33,180 I have not always been able to apply these hacks successfully But that
is not a reflection of the hacks themselves It is more about my ability to
stick with them even though I know they work
00:39:44,220 One last point As with your fitness regime trying to make loads of
changes at once can spell disaster I recommend that once you have a
read of these hacks
00:39:52,780 Choose one that excites you Maybe not excites but seems to resonate
And have a go at it
00:39:58,460 Once it is second nature to you Move on to the next one that spoke to
you If you find that the first one was not for you then bin it
00:40:06,140 Choose another and try that one out then rinse and repeat So on with
the hac