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- I'm going to the company kick-off meeting in mid-January. These things always have a theme, and everyone is encouraged to dress up for at least the first day. Last year's was sci-fi, which is why I created a Victorian-ish Ellen Ripley outfit at the last minute. (Everyone loved my tiara made of parts of Aliens figures.)
The theme for this one is music festivals/concerts. Which is super-vague as a theme goes, but it means that I can dress Extremely Goth. Corset belts worn with all the jingly belts in the world! Extra-floofy skirts! Black lipstick and swirly eyeliner! I briefly lamented the fact that the hotel/conference center, despite AC, would be too warm for my leather jacket, then had An Idea and hit Poshmark. 30 minutes later I hit the Buy Now on a black cotton motorcycle jacket, and I will spend the next few weeks decorating it appropriately. Which means that my outfits for the conference will involve sleeveless blouses, and I won't take the lightweight jacket off. I am looking forward to this.
- Related to the conference: many of you have read my rantings elsewhere (everywhere, really) about release notes and how my project managers are not great at 1) providing content about their feature updates that are being released, 2) providing enough information, and 3) actually hitting the cut-off deadline for that content. ("not great" is a huge fucking understatement.) Our customer-facing folks have upped the level and volume of their concerns with all of this AND relayed a lot of customer complaints. The Director of PMs has sat in on the past few release notes meetings, and there have been discussions about what sort of forcing functions can be put in place to make the PMs do this. I made a semi-serious suggestion to run a Release Notes and You seminar and have all the PMs be required to attend. The Director loved this idea, I messaged the conference organizers, and ... yeah, guess I'm running that seminar. Yay?
- I had my annual review. I got the rating of Top 25%, a raise, and my boss and I are already looking ahead at the work that needs to be done and documented so I can get a promotion at mid-year review time. Whoo!
The theme for this one is music festivals/concerts. Which is super-vague as a theme goes, but it means that I can dress Extremely Goth. Corset belts worn with all the jingly belts in the world! Extra-floofy skirts! Black lipstick and swirly eyeliner! I briefly lamented the fact that the hotel/conference center, despite AC, would be too warm for my leather jacket, then had An Idea and hit Poshmark. 30 minutes later I hit the Buy Now on a black cotton motorcycle jacket, and I will spend the next few weeks decorating it appropriately. Which means that my outfits for the conference will involve sleeveless blouses, and I won't take the lightweight jacket off. I am looking forward to this.
- Related to the conference: many of you have read my rantings elsewhere (everywhere, really) about release notes and how my project managers are not great at 1) providing content about their feature updates that are being released, 2) providing enough information, and 3) actually hitting the cut-off deadline for that content. ("not great" is a huge fucking understatement.) Our customer-facing folks have upped the level and volume of their concerns with all of this AND relayed a lot of customer complaints. The Director of PMs has sat in on the past few release notes meetings, and there have been discussions about what sort of forcing functions can be put in place to make the PMs do this. I made a semi-serious suggestion to run a Release Notes and You seminar and have all the PMs be required to attend. The Director loved this idea, I messaged the conference organizers, and ... yeah, guess I'm running that seminar. Yay?
- I had my annual review. I got the rating of Top 25%, a raise, and my boss and I are already looking ahead at the work that needs to be done and documented so I can get a promotion at mid-year review time. Whoo!