We had a workshop at work the last couple of days. This is the 3rd workshop that Geomatics has had, but the first one that I've participated in. Coincidentally enough, it's also the first one since I was made manager and Geomatics as a whole went through an internal restructuring. Sales guys, solutions guys, program managers and the overall management all attended.
The theme of the workshop was 'Driving for Success'. I'm not sure who came up with the title, but it works for me. It was good to see all of the program managers get up and talk about their areas, even though some of them are pretty new to the specifics. I gave a presentation on how we will be implementing quality on the dev team in 2005. I also described my role (at least what I know of it) to the folks involved. It was my first real presentation in probably 7 years, but I felt it went OK. I definitely got the nervous knees but I managed to stumble through.
There were so many questions and debates that I ended up going for almost an hour when it was only supposed to be 20 minutes. The debates were good - they helped to clear up some of the fuzziness that had existed since the restructuring. I think that we all came out much clearer than when we went in!
There's plans to have another one in a few months. I think that would be a great idea. For me, it was such a fantastic introduction into a whole new area of the company. Sometimes I get caught up in the mundane day-to-day things of getting development work finished, so it's good to see the other side.
Bring on 2005!