The Expo

Despite other departments in our company arranging optional meetings to explain what they do, in a recent survey, colleagues had apparently said they don’t have visibility of the wider business. The directors decided to create what they called “The Expo”. This was a mandatory all-day event located about an hour away from our main office.

The Registration

We got told to sign up via an Events Company’s website and the instructions we were given didn’t match my experience at all. We were told by visiting the website via the link in the email, it would auto-populate with our names. Yet the first question on the page was to ask for my name and email, and only then did it display back to me. We were also told to ignore the displayed cost because it would be the company that would be charged and not us personally – yet it displayed as “free”. There was no information in the email about how we would travel, but then one of the questions on the survey was asking us how we would arrive at the venue. It was only when I tried the “coach” option did it then state it would pick us up from the office on the day, but didn’t state the time. I then expected that information in the confirmation email, but it was only a week before the event I was told the pickup was 7:50am which meant I would probably have to wake up at 6:30 to make sure I didn’t miss it.

Despite the usual reminders that travelling by personal car on company time would invalidate your insurance (since you need to be covered by business insurance), I suspect most people went by car because there were only around 20 of us on the coach.

The Arrival

As we headed towards the venue, some of the senior management handed out notebooks but no pen. The notepad did have the schedule printed on the front which was useful. Since they told us to dress smart, most of us didn’t bring bags, so we had to inconveniently carry a notebook around all day.

The Event

Most of the day was sat in a large meeting hall watching presentations from the heads of various departments and directors. They used the opportunity to present the Employee of the Year awards. The thing is, we periodically watch presentations like this remotely, so it seemed a waste to make people from across the country to travel to an event like this. Some people travelled hours, and stayed in a hotel on company expense, and I just didn’t see how it could possibly be worth it.

“can’t believe we have so many people turning up”

Event organiser

You invited the entire company and said it was mandatory, what did you expect?

The Call

As it approached lunchtime, during one of the presentations, I noticed a developer checking his phone and looking concerned and then he walked out. During lunch, I was talking to another developer in the team. He started looking at his phone, then handed me his plate and told me to hold it while he goes to take a call. Several minutes passed and he hadn’t come back, so I was there awkwardly holding 2 plates. There were no tables and the room was packed with people so there was nowhere to put it. Eventually, I just had to bin it. When I saw them later in the day, they said there was a Major Incident so were called to a room to investigate remotely. So a few developers and the directors were all gathered around 1 laptop, knowing there wasn’t much we could do.

That’s another disadvantage of one of these all-day events. No one is working, and urgent issues like this can’t be addressed and just adds extra stress.

The Stalls

Another part of the day was walking around some stalls. It was like a careers fair but you already work for the company that they are promoting. Also, since there were that many of us, we were split into 2 groups, and since I was in the second batch, all the free stuff was gone. I could have grabbed a free pen for the notepad.

I didn’t really get the motivation for actually approaching anyone on the stall to listen to them reel off a speech that they would have been saying on repeat hundreds of times throughout the few allocated hours. Wouldn’t it have been better if these were also presentations in the main hall, then they only have to do the presentation once, and everyone gets to hear it?

I suppose the more socially outgoing types might be in their element, but I was just walking in circles, pretending to look busy. Eventually, I got talking to some old team mates and we were commenting on how bizarre the entire thing was.

Software Development Stall

For Development, the manager who volunteered to run our stall said he planned on using a darts game but using “magnetic” darts so it wouldn’t violate Health and Safety. The “Fun Police” busted him though – Health and Safety deemed it unsafe since throwing something would involve swinging your arm back and that is dangerous.

I’m not sure if things have changed from a few years ago, but we have had office parties with a Bucking Bronco, Bouncy Castles and similar games. I think every year 1 person has had some kind of injury using those, but it never stops us organising things the following year.

The replacement game was a “guessing game”. It was a vague question like:

“Guess how many minutes were saved in a 2 month period during our “COVID” release?”

The manager was insistent that everyone should guess, and was demanding I submit a number. I didn’t understand how people were coming up with the numbers. I kept on asking questions but I got the impression even the figure they had was some exaggerated figure. I asked

1. what was the feature?
2. how was it measured?
3. Why are we measuring in minutes when the figure appeared to be large like 20 mill minutes.

After the event they announced that guesses ranged from 100 minutes to 2 billion minutes! The correct answer was 31.9 million minutes.

Evening Meal

Another part that wasn’t well thought out and a waste of money, is that they provided food at 4:30 but there was nothing scheduled afterwards. The coach was at 5:30 so I had to stay, but most people had no incentive to stay. So when food was served, there were probably only 20% of the people there, but they would have paid for food for everyone.

Feedback

I did wonder if people would give negative feedback for the event. It seemed rather pointless to me; a complete waste of money, and not really that feasible to try and bring the entire company in one building like that. I suppose the main COVID days are behind us, but it’s probably a bit of a health risk. I knew a few people that were ill after the event.

Loads of people actually stated positive feedback, but it was on Yammer, and people seem to use it to post overly positive statements. The only negatives were:

1. All I used the notebook for was the agenda on the back, which could have been printed on the back of the pass.
2. no pen
3. carrying around the notebook all day
4. restricted interactions, 
5. lack of space while eating
   

Yet the positivity was flowing:

It was great to put faces to names – especially when it’s a team that you work closely with. It was also really nice to see people that I’ve not seen in over 3 years. Overall, a great opportunity.

I was reminded of the value of face to face interactions with colleagues across the business. Will be looking forward to future opportunities to meet in person.

I learnt more in one day about our business/products and services than I have in the year that I’ve been at the company. What an amazing ‘sheep dip’ opportunity to immerse oneself in the ‘what we do’ and ‘why we do it’ for our end Customers – fantastic !

Seeing people, I have not seen in over 3 years since working from home was great, as was meeting people I have never met in person before. Getting to meet them in the flesh and build further bonds was a great experience.

Having the opportunity to network on such a mass scale and learn about other departments that we may not have regular touch points with was invaluable.

It helped me appreciate how each and every department is working towards the same goal, and that we have a lot of exciting tech-for-good products!

Being just 5 months into starting with The Company I found The Expo a real success. Not only did it serve to educate as to the breadth of offering across the wider business but also reinforced the value and absolute quality of our portfolio. The insights to the wider business has reinforced key messages around data quality relevant to my customers within their world and how our unique offering can support and accelerate the valuable research they provide. This event really encouraged me to reach out across the wider business and was indeed an excellent platform for building an internal network. The Expo gave a real feeling that top down and bottom up you would get support.

Sometimes, being bogged down in the day job, it’s common to be disheartened by the day-to-day challenges we face and getting mired in the weeds: a classic case of not being able to see the forest for the trees. The Expo was a great opportunity to get the big-picture view and see how, by succeeding in the daily challenges, we are improving healthcare for huge numbers of people.

I’d been fortunate to have attended two other great opportunities to meet up face to face and network already this year, and still found this another great one to see even more people and catch up on common themes across the whole business. I always learn something both personally and about our products, on this occasion improving my knowledge of Project X particularly. The overwhelming reminder at the beginning of why we do it, the impact it has and why we should feel proud of where we work, is a welcome prompt to look up from the day to day challenges more often.

I met many more people face-to-face for the first time than I’m able to remember now and got a real insight from generally chatting to others around what different teams actually do, how and why. With the number of acquisitions we’ve done over the years it also helped me learn what some of the products we’ve acquired are as well as how they add value to our customers. It was great to see some of our Chennai colleagues at the event and hear how the services I work on day-to-day are used in the real world.

Hang on, they flew people from India over to England just for the event!? What a waste.