DevOpsDays NYC 2020: Sheanika Crawford - Why Events & People Matter: How the new girl used ...

Why Events & People Matter: How the new girl used devopsdays to bring the fun to her workplace. What do you do when you’re the newest, last girl standing, and the future of an event series depends on you? At the top of 2019, I was a 6 month old contractor at Verizon with no idea what I was in for. I was content to do commendable work in the background - using my voice to write for our engineer-facing website. I’d get to know our engineers in interviews as they returned from industry conferences. I thought this was as close as I’d get to events, but before I knew it, there was a retiree & Tech Day (Verizon’s adaptation of devopsday) knocking on my door. The rest was history & the adventure ahead was more than had bargained for in the best way. In this talk, I will share how I sought ways to deliver on the culture change that Verizon GTS had been asking for by keeping calm & sprinkling enthusiasm around like glitter. How - over the course of 3 historical events in 1 year, with an awesome planning team, & a few risks, Verizon Tech Day pulled an exceptional NPS score & drew an SRO audience at our last event in 2019 - a 255% increase in attendance (and excitement)! Last, even better for me, right smack in the middle of this journey, I was hired :)