Diary of a Saasy Girl

I've been a user of GitHub for more than 2 years now. My team was firmly planted in this world and used it for day to day management, using Zenhub in addition to make pretty our tasks into an easy readable Kanban format. Another team member pushed her metadata changes into GitHub to save her work from the Provar testing tool, connected to Salesforce. We would also use the Wiki to add any 'ways of working' documents or project related items. It was our central hub and a really effective tool to oversee work. What I didn't know was that GitHub also has a community, a bit like Salesforce, all be it on a smaller scale, and I was invited to attend their recent Constellation day/evening. I couldn't make the day time sessions but booked in for the evening and decided to take a leap to expand on my community horizon. So here's some differences that I noticed about the event compared to the one's I'm used to... Firstly the location. It was held in a night cl...

Hot on the heels of International Women's Day yesterday, for which I celebrated with the fine ladies and gents associated with Women In Tech, I wanted to share another instalment of the workshop I attended recently, lead by Eve Poole.  http://evepoole.com/ Eve's talk was driven around key symbols that just happened to be in our goody bags. Today I'm going to talk about another two of those items, the box of rhubarb tea and the chocolate coin. Lets start with a good cup of tea and a chat. And this essentially is what the reference is about. The flavour of rhubarb for the tea in particular relates to when film extras are pretending to have a conversation with another in the background while the scene is being shot. The extras mouth 'rhubarb' at each other to form meaningful mouth movements.  Women find it much easier to sit with fellow ladies and talk through when situations seem troublesome or complex. Admit it, how many times have you sought female company to...

Last night I braced the 'beast of the east' snowy weather and attended a Harpers Bazaar at Work event. This was the second one I have gone to and I have to say I am impressed. The format is very appealing; they are held in swanky hotels and you are greeted with champagne and canapes in readiness for the keynote speaker.  I got talking with a couple of ladies (note, these events have a predominately female attendance although last night I did spot one man who was either lost or dragged along, but I'm sure men would, and are, very welcome to join). Anyway, these ladies were keen to learn from the speaker any tips on how to tackle younger men who were making them feel inferior and thus, impacting on their confidence to do their job. Its an all too common situation and as women we need to stand firm, grab the problem by the balls (I'll just let you ponder over that) and show the world our capabilities.  Last night's talk by the very brilliant Eve Poole helped to giv...

Saturday morning. My feet ache because I ran around in red kitten heel boots all day yesterday (but I love them). My eyes are blurry because I was so tired when I eventually got home that I forgot to take my contact lenses out and only realised this at 11:30am. My lounge is a disaster zone with bags, T-shirt and swag goodies that I just plonked down upon my arrival home. I'm a bit tired.  The UK community event we have all been looking forward to for so many months is officially over, although try telling that to my Twitter feed as my phone seems to be pinging on a regular basis as we relive the past few days, say thanks and wish safe travels to our new found friends.  This year, not only was I a speaker for the event (for the 3rd year running) but I offered the team my time to help with the organising. I've worked on conference events in the past but London's Calling is really a cut above when it comes to the finer details. Some conferences will attract a couple hundre...

New Year, new you. How many times have you heard that? You've done the diets, hit the gym and promised other resolutions. A few weeks later you're back on the cake, firmly sat on the sofa and inhaling box sets.  But maybe its time to be the better person and make some changes to your being that could end up with you having a positive career boost. Focus on your brain and train it to be stronger. Be in control of your consciousness and the changes you choose to make. The science of Neuroplasticity suggests that just making small tweaks in our day to day life could have long lasting positive effects. Its also about accepting that some traditional statements really are myths.  Let me give an example; they say that women are good at multi-tasking. Its just not true but the alternative of task switching is a skill that can be enhanced. Task switching is only truly affective when you have the ability to complete small tasks at a time and as soon as they are completed you move...

It’s still January so I'm going to start this post by saying Happy New Year! There, I said it. I’m back with a bang with all things Salesforce and the past few weeks have seen me attend no less than 3 User Groups and a product roadmap event.  A new User Group came into life, and it arrived with with arms open and with a touchy feely name. HUG. That’s right, the Hampshire User Group. Lead by the very lovely Sean Dukes, I offered to give a helping hand for the inaugural event in Winchester with a bit of organisational advice and a talk about the Community to kick off the night. Sean has been a long standing member of the London Admins Group so had a good idea on how these things go and even took some inspiration from us, although maybe not the timings. We at London Admins are more relaxed with our timings, allowing our very social bunch to mingle at every opportunity, in between the content. Running a User Group takes organisation and the occasional nerves of steel. It’s not fo...

Its the final day of the year so it only seems fit to take a look back across 2017. I'm also feeling a little nostalgic as I've just listened to Mike Gerholdt's last ever Admins podcast and in the final few minutes of the recording you can hear how much doing the podcast had meant to him. Fret not, Mike has lovingly handed it over to his sidekick Gillian Bruce so the show will go on.  Anyhoo, back to my 2017 memoirs. As a London Admins User Group Leader one of the highlights of the year started in January when we held our largest gathering. 127 members turned up for the first show and maybe it was a combination of new year resolutions or the draw of holding it at Salesforce Tower that encouraged the big crowd. Our happy average is 70 so it was a significant uplift for the night. February saw one of my favourite Community Events return; London's Calling. Having spoken at the inaugural event the previous year and been crowned their top speaker (aside from the Keyn...