At the beginning of this most recent global pandemic, I was a guest on an episode of the PIE Crowdcast, a Q/A sort-of AMA , where I talked about “Building a sustainable and resilient company for the 21st Century”. Host Rick Turoczy and I have known each other many many years, so our conversation was really comfortable, fun, and engaging with the live audience that asked questions and joined in on the convo.
As the fallout of the pandemic continued to reveal more disrupted layers to businesses month after month, I also got to chat with storyteller aficionado Amina Moreau on The Floatcast, a video series that is a resource for small businesses surviving Covid-19. I put operations planning and (re)organizational design into a handy four step framework. as well as sharing some not-so-unusual client conversations:
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to folks who, again, it’s like a secret they want to tell me – so, someone who’s a CEO [says], “I don’t like being a CEO, but I have to be the CEO.” I’m like, “why do you have to be the CEO?” And they’re like, “well, this was my vision. This is my company. I founded it.” That doesn’t mean you need to be the CEO. You can hire somebody else to be the CEO and you can still be the face of the company.”
I’m a Past President of Rotary Club of Portland, and while in that role I focused on the sustainability of a 110yr old service club that includes five generations in its membership – and spoke in front of a couple hundred members each week of my presidential term.
My obsession with theoretical math and organizational analysis that centers on DEI best practices came together with my “Chaos Theory + Civil Rights = 21st Century Corporate Practices” presentations at both DevOpsDays London and Open Source Summit North America 2017
I expanded upon those presentations and got more indepth when I spoke on the topic in April 2018 at ACT-W National Conference — I was really given the opportunity to not only give more mathematical theory to support the 21st Century work patterns, but was also able to do a Q/A with the audience on specific questions within my presentation. The vast majority of the audience identified as women, as well as being a part of the (usually not associated with great people skills) tech world.
Back in February of 2018 I spoke at the inaugural Human.School on “The (Very Vocal) Human Side of Operations” — where I backed out my typical usage of a lot of math related theory in my work, and instead offered up fiscal reasoning — looking at the bottom line – for what hereto is usually considered a Human-Resources-Only focus on the importance of the people on your teams as it directly relates to profit.
I was invited to speak at CUSP Conference in Chicago, a ‘conference about the design of everything’. It turned out to be a fantastic event that is held yearly, and illustrator Julia Kuo was in the audience and I was honored that she not only sketched during my presentation…
but that she also made some of my points into a more formal illustration.
It’s fantastic to get feedback like this!
In early February 2015, I got to spend a few days at Champlain College and I spoke to students and faculty on topics ranging from Women in Gaming to Ethnographic Animation to the Real-World Leadership of Creatives.
I spoke at FEI (Front End of Innovation), where there were over 100 speakers, about Leading Multigenerational Teams and Julie Kurd listed my presentation in her “#FEI14 Roundup: 10 Innovators and Companies Disturbing the Continuum“
I spoke on a panel at the 3% Conference (which is now a 24/365 organization, 3% Movement) in San Francisco and that following November, I had the great pleasure of being invited to Lithuania (where my maternal grandfather grew up and escaped from at 20yrs old in 1913 “to escape from the Czar”) for the Silicon Valley Comes to the Baltics conference. Here’s video speaking on “Small is the New Big“.
In those last handful of years that I owned my animation company, I spoke at a ton of conferences – usually about ethnographic animation. Alas, URLs from 10+ years ago rarely work, but for the record those conferences included:
- IxDA
- TMRE
- IDSA
- PDMA
- CHIFOO
- MNFW
- NXNE
- Digital Marketing Conference at Portland State University
- The Women’s Center for Leadership
- Global Connect Women Entrepreneurs Expo and Summit
- TechfestNW
- WIAD14PDX
- CASRO’S Technology and Innovation
- Sustainability in Packaging Event
- The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing
- Webvisions
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