Yesterday, I sat in an interesting meeting that slowly fell to pieces: a continuation of the Analytics presentation. In fact, most Cvent meetings I attend fall apart in the same fashion. Meg was leading her team's analytics breakdown of Q3 web and business performances in North America. The team is good and their information is good. It falls apart in the delivery. Example: Jared produces data on a specific page or feature, like a navigation pane. People don't attack the data or science, which is good. They do question the decisions that created the product (like a website), which the data is highlighting. There are problems that come from the actions: Jared or Judd will make recommendations of what the content or features should do or say. And I think they should be making suggestions or considerations. Because the recommendations are taken as a Next Action, which causes fear in the room. The better questions, I think, are How did we get here and What should the futu...
Today a few of us attended a Booz Allen lunch, sponsored by AIGA and the DX team. Booz has soft launched a wonderful site: recreation.gov. This lunch was a chance for the younger team members to present their work and explain the project. The presenters were underwhelming. The director had a microphone and continued to whisper her explanations. The junior staff was non-enthusiastic. They talked a bit about the amount of work, but not about the target: the website visitor. They described four interesting topics: Carbon Design System Microservices Atomic web design 1-week sprints My Booz friends are gushing about it on LinkedIn. Perhaps the biggest accomplishment is scraping databases across NOAA, Smithsonian, National Park Service and Feds. Incredible undertaking. Another terrific site: usaspending.gov Takeaways If you're going to have your people lead a presentation: Wear a branded shirt Speak up Be exuberant Know more than just their stuff. Two young s...