6 January 2021 - Review of the Year 2020
I think it is safe to say that 2020 did not go to plan for any of us, myself included. At the back end of 2019 I had a plan in place for 2020. It involved my next job opportunity, plenty of travel to new destinations as well as the usual sprinkling of social and community delights.
2020 turned out very differently indeed. As a world, we are trying to manage our day to day with Covid, and as the UK goes into this season's lockdown, (or if like me you also live in London, then it feels like we are permanently on the Covid naughty step and confined to our homes), I reflect back on a most frightful year.
On the whole, the months of January and February were seemingly normal. I went to work, I went on holiday and we ran the London Admins events where we met as a large group while hosted in office venues.
Sadly, one of our members, Laura Walker, died on 1st February and is sorely missed. We keep her in our memory with an award called 'Laura's Champion'. The inaugural recipient, Chris Emmett, was given his trophy in October for his contribution efforts to the Community during 2020.
In March, and very late to the world party, the UK begrudgingly stepped into its first national lockdown. Suddenly we were asked to stay at home. The London Admins Group, who always met every month, were pushed into a new dynamic, a virtual world. As to not spoil our already 5.5 years of consecutive months run, we held our first virtual event and just in the nick of time on the 31st March.
And so began our new normal. Since March 2020 the London Admin Group continued to meet on a monthly basis, our smiling faces found via Zoom. It was the responsibility of each attendee to organise their own food and drink for the occasion. I have to confess, not having to source a venue, sponsors, food and drink does make the organisation of each event less complex. It only falls upon us leaders to think of a content theme and find speakers.
We have found that our attendee makeup has changed too. We now attract a wider audience, a global reach due to the virtual nature of the events but the same old traditions remain; we will be over subscribed for the event and have a 50% drop off on the night. I can appreciate that many people have good intentions to join but when the time comes feel Zoomed out from a hectic day of staring motionless into a screen.
We have made the most of our time during our meet ups. In addition to the usual presentations, we try to keep the fun, and the community chatter alive. That is what many of our members would normally join us for anyway - they are a social bunch and the learning opportunities are a bonus.
In a year that has seen so many of us struggle with just our daily flow then it is good to pick out the positives that can still occur. One such moment was on 10th March when I was awarded Salesforce MVP status. I was really touched to be recognised and it does mean a lot to me. Thank you to those who nominated me. I have tried to continue my Community work ever since, to show my gratitude and to pay it forward.
March was a busy month. Global events meant the world imploded, I returned back from my last holiday abroad (and for some time yet to come), I got Salesforce MVP status, I had to stay at home, and I helped to deliver Europe's largest Salesforce Community conference, London's Calling.
The event was tracking very smoothly. By February everything was looking good. New venue, sponsors and speakers in place, finessing the finishing touches - what could go wrong? But then some of our speakers and sponsors located in other countries were contacting us to say that they weren't allowed to travel, employers had deemed it not safe. With one week to go, as a team we took a hard decision to pivot our event to focus on the virtual offering. We asked our attendees to join the action online while inviting sponsors and speakers to attend the London's Calling TV studio in person for the day.
An utterly exhausting but a totally rewarding experience to deliver London's Calling to over 7000 viewers on the day. I loved the excitement and engagement from our audience whom dove into sessions to soak up knowledge, whom visited the sponsors at their booths to learn more and whom played along with impromptu activities for a chance to win swag via the App. Thank you.
Many thanks to our speakers who graciously recorded their talks in the week before the show or who turned up on the day to perform to a 'packed room' of a few socially distanced souls.
Thank you to our sponsors for going with us on our pivot to virtual and still making the most of the opportunity to highlight their wares.
And thank you to everyone else who helped us make the day happen, the tech team, the venue, the photographer, the photo booth guy and caricature artist. But most of all, thank you to my fellow team members, Francis, Kerry, Louise and Todd. You rock.
We are busy working on London's Calling TV 2021. We'll be back on 19 March, in a virtual capacity again as the world just isn't safe for us to be together just yet. Get involved, we'd love to see you.
London's Calling was the first Salesforce related event to go virtual, many others decided to either cancel or postpone, hoping that Covid would soon blow over and we could all get back to the swing of things. Salesforce themselves, seemed to keep a sharp eye on virtual events to see how people were reacting to these new formats. All in-person events were canceled for the rest of 2020. TrailheaDX was their first mass audience foray into the virtual world.
Salesforce put a call out for Community Members to send a 'hello' so they could add them in as content. I duly responded, as apparently they love a good English accent. I put on my best Radio 4 voice on and 'helloed' away. I got selected.
Dreamforce, after much rumouring, also went virtual. For the Keynote, we were treated to Marc and Brett taking turns to pop out from behind the bushes, much to our amusement, to tell us about the new features and the latest shopping trip of the purchase of Slack. This was followed by DreamTX, a multi-day, multi-timezone learning fest of mostly pre-recorded learning content. As an attendee there were a few live interactive opportunities across the days, namely on the last day when Gillian Bruce played MC to Skill up with Trailhead and we were tasked with cracking the code to create a virtual postcard. I played along and even managed to be one of the many who got a shout out. It's all about the small wins.
Away from events and back into the quieter pace of things I signed up to be an official Salesforce Mentor in addition to launching the 3rd year of London Admins Mentorship scheme. I joined over 20 pairings for the 2020 cohort and I do hope that each partnership works out. Personally, I find being a mentor very rewarding. It is an opportunity to give back, to share your knowledge and also be kept on your toes by the questions put forward by your mentee.
I was also asked to contribute my thoughts and experiences to written and spoken formats last year too. Businesses who are part of the wider Salesforce Ecosystem are wanting to show their connection and understanding of the platform by asking experts, dare I say, like myself to share knowledge in our given area of speciality, mine being in relation to the Community, Project Management and Delivery, Change Management and my own career journey. I therefore added my 2 pennies to the following articles and was invited to be a guest on 2 podcasts, one for Supermums - Mums on Cloud Nine and the other for SFDC Consultant.
Articles:
Mason Frank's Salary Survey 2020/21
Mason Frank's: Overcoming unprecedented business challenges with SalesforceMason Frank's: What makes a great Salesforce user group? We asked the experts
Mason Frank's: Exploring our last four independent Salesforce surveys: what have we learned?
Podcasts:
Lastly, I have kept my own personal learning journey going by adding 2 more Salesforce certifications to my hat, namely Platform App Builder and Advanced Administrator and also dabbled into Trailhead Superbadges, snaffling up 2 of those and hitting Triple Ranger too. I'm generally not good with exams, I do get rather anxious over them and feel that I have to over prepare before taking the plunge. Very delighted to say that I passed both first time. Oh the relief.
In my first job in the drinks industry, a million years ago, I was advised to keep a brag file. This file was a place to capture and keep all my achievements throughout the year so when it came to the dreaded appraisal time I could reflect back on it and show my highlights. I still do this in some form now. Often tracking by using photos, screen grabs, twitter and this blog to remind myself of all the things I have achieved.
I think it can be too easy to lump 2020 as an awful year. Yes, our lives changed dramatically. We were separated from, or lost, loved ones, our freedom to roam and socialise curtailed and our own health put at great risk.
But I am grateful that I can look back on 2020 and acknowledge some great achievements, had some fun times and opportunities to still be my true self. And it's these that I grab onto as we continue on this bumpy adventure into 2021, with the hope that we will get through this and things will be better and we can be together again soon. Happy New Year. Please don't let us down.
Comments
Post a Comment