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15 November 2023 - In memory of Gemma Blezard

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I first met Gemma in November 2017 when Bluewolf hosted the London Admins Community Group at their office. Gemma was our contact point. She sat in the audience and heckled us the whole evening. I immediately liked her.  After that moment Gemma became a regular of the London Admins and also volunteered to speak at our meetings, one memorable talk was about her certification journey and how she had her eye set on becoming a Certified Technical Architect.  It was also late 2017 when Gemma was working on her Architect certifications that she realised that there wasn't the support or content to help her achieve them. So, she created it herself and decided to share it with the world, under the monica, Ladies Be Architects. Only 10% of the Salesforce Certified Architects were women, and few people came from a non technical background; Gemma wanted to change that. The LBA grew traction as more content was added and promoted. The group grew as there was a real thirst for this knowledge. Wit
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27 September 2023 - My Highlights from Dreamforce 2023

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I know, its been a long while since I last wrote on my blog, so I thought I would break the silence with my thoughts on this year's Dreamforce.  For those not in the know, Dreamforce is Salesforce's flagship yearly conference in San Francisco where thousands of Ohana friends and family gather and talk all things blue cloud. This and last year's events have had a more intimate turnout of around 40,000 attendees, a far cry from the 170,000 heady days of the pre-Covid and cost of living crisis that we now live in. There were also remarks that the city of San Francisco was not looking its best and had been struggling with increased homelessness, crime and grime. There was even a suggestion from Benioff that he would move Dreamforce away from his home town due to these issues in an attempt to kick the city into action. It seemed to work for the 3 days of Dreamforce. Now they need to extend that for all times and bring the city back to former glory.  Putting these issues aside, i
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24. Cancer Diaries - Project Closure

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A project is a defined allotment of time in which to deliver change. At some point a project will come to a close, whether it be at the end of a phase of work, or when the money runs out. Whatever the reason, there are tasks to complete to help wrap up the project and to move onto other things; project closure.  It's the same for me and my breast cancer journey. I gave myself a milestone of completing all the big, impactful treatments - the chemo, 2 surgeries and radiotherapy and then drawing a line under them when they were all finished as a way to say my journey was done.  Often in projects, when a phase is completed the team celebrates. It is used as a mental note to acknowledge the end. It's also very useful to highlight this to clients too, but thats for another blog.  I decided I wanted to do the same and so we devised a project closure road trip. We decided to return to the place we fled to last year on the day of my official cancer diagnosis, to a hotel right on the bea
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23. Cancer Diaries - Business As Usual (BAU)

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Last time I wrote I mentioned that I had completed the first 5 radiotherapy treatments. Apart from fatigue I was coping well. The medical team were excellent and always so chirpy as they looked after me each day. I also had catch ups with my Clinical Oncologist to check on progress and also chats with another member of the team to check on my general wellbeing and if there was any further support that I needed.  When you go through a cancer journey you spend months inside a bubble of continuous medical care and attention. When these large treatment stages finish the patient can suddenly feel a bit isolated, now released back into the wild to manage their drug therapy, mostly alone, as frequent touch points aren't needed. Good news, there are many associations and charities out there, who understand what the patient has gone through and can offer emotional support and practical tips to move forward with their lives. I've been given a booklet called 'Moving Forward' with
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22. Cancer Diaries - The final phase of delivery

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I'm back commuting again after nearly 3 years of working the majority of my time at home. This time my commute is not for work though, it's for the final phase of this cancer project, it's to go to Radiotherapy sessions. I'm having to renew my old morning routine, in addition to the alarm going off, getting up and showering, dressing and eating breakfast. I now remember to check the weather and the train times to plan my journey. Every working day for 3 weeks I shall be doing this commute. I've completed my first week so I thought I'd share what I've been up to. Radiotherapy, I've known many people say they've had it, mainly for cancer reasons, but I've never really understood the actual process, until now. Back in December I had my planning session where I was put onto a special bed and into a scanner to plot where the radiotherapy beams would target on my body. At the end of the session I was given tattoos as additional markers. When someone de
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21. Cancer Diaries - A Year in Review 2022

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The title of this blog alone gives you a clue that this year did not go to plan. It's usually around this time of the year that I reflect on what I have achieved. I'm going to do the same for this year as, believe it or not, there were some silver linings. Let's dive in. I made a strong start to the year by scooping the User Experience Designer certification in early January and later, attained the Business Analyst one in July. I put on my best Radio 4 voice (and accompanying face?) with a few Podcasts; Admin to Architect and MVPerian Talks, discussing what makes a successful project delivery and user adoption.  In February I embraced the continued virtual Salesforce Community meetings by joining the Newcastle Women in Tech to deliver a presentation on my career journey and then over to the Cotswolds group to present how to create a Centre of Excellence - a new talk I had curated and had plans to extend further.  My content writing also took a spin out in the early months w
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20. Cancer Diaries - Planning phase

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Hey folks, I'm back and thought I would share what's been happening with me since my last fabulous update.  First up, having been told of my cancer free status, the next day I took myself off to a conference and came away with some socks swag and a dose of Covid. It was my first time with Covid, I've been so lucky to avoid it until now. After a weekend of 40 degrees temperature I managed to shake it off quickly and get back on form again.  If you've been reading along then you will have remembered that at the end of November I had a drain removed that was collecting lymphatic fluid following from my second surgery. Well, my body hadn't quite figured out what to do with this fluid, that would normally reside in my lymph nodes, now removed. My body kept generating the fluid and then parking it in it's usual spot under my armpit, but it had nowhere to go, so instead just pooled in situ. I ended up with a lump on my side which was uncomfortable and I felt like I had
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