October 2011 Event 7 at HP

CWThp oct 2011 2

Skills for success workshop

This is the 7th event in our Connecting Women in Technology series and the first time we’ve been to HP’s offices in Bracknell for an afternoon of meeting, mentoring and motivation.   

We started the day with a keynote from Liz Campbell from Wellbeing of Women. 

Liz talked about the need for every woman to be more aware of their health and to actually do something about it if they suspect that something is wrong.  Too often women don’t go and get health check ups because they believe that their symptoms are down to their age, their tiredness is down to their workload and their lack of energy is down to juggling home, work and family life.

There is help for us busy women, and the message is that we must do something about it before things get too much for us. 

 

CWT HP Oct 2010We also tried a different format for our event at HP this time. Feedback from previous events indicated that attendees would like to be able to engage more deeply with their peers in other companies, and to have deeper discussions with each other.

We decided to host table discussions where there would be a table host at each table and the host would discuss a particular topic with a small group of people. 

This new format, in smaller table groups,  would give everyone a chance to go to more than one session, and to build relationships with other people in the group. 

It also gave us, as a team, the opportunity to find out which topics were more popular than others, so we can craft the next event and target these topics again to further learning.

We chose some interesting topics to kick start this new format of round circle sharing:

  • Giving and receiving constructive feedback
  • Job Sharing
  • Negotiation
  • Virtual Working
  • Career Paths

This format really seems to work.  Judging by the full and open discussions on each of the tables, we think we’ve hit upon a winning formula.  Women in the smaller groups made connections with their peers in other companies: we face the same challenges in whatever company we work for. 

Our next event, and the 8th in the rotation will be at Avaya in the first quarter of 2012 and we hope to continue our goal of Connecting and Empowering our Women in Technology..

Leave a comment