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Company IT Summit

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by radtherapist

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My IT team has been requesting a departmental summit for the last few years - which we've finally been approved to have. We're a very small dept - less than 10 techs ranging from Help Desk to Sr. NA (supporting over 2000 users).

As Director, I've never hosted or attended an internal summit before and I'm looking for feedback from others who have. What worked and didn't work? Any suggestions on topics that wouldn't be too far above the novices, but also not bore my senior people?

Thanks for the information!

5 replies

by charliespencer

For years you've been requesting a summit, and only now that it's been approved are you trying to decide what to do at it? If you didn't know what you wanted to do, why were you asking for it? If you're trying to build team interaction, have you considered starting with something less ambitious?

How about weekly / monthly cross-training meetings? Have one team member speak on a subject the others don't know much about. Rotate the primary speaker for each meeting. Each person will learn more about what the others do, their individual strengths, and you can get an idea as to who is suited as a trainer.

Another option is the 'Lunch N Learn' format. Assign a team member to report on a new technology at a team meeting held over lunch. Ask for volunteers; you might be surprised. For a department the size of yours, you could get three pizzas or some take-out Chinese for under $30.

In both of these suggestions, remember to take your turn "in the barrel".

Save summits for laying out big project planning, or other times when you need to meet uninterrupted to discuss a subject in depth. Don't have one just to do 'team building' exercises; no one takes them seriously.

by radtherapist

We do have monthly calls - but my team is spread out across the US, even to HI. Obviously, getting together every month isn't an option (although the pizzas sound good).

We wanted an opportunity to gather everyone for a face-to-face, talk about they company's expectations for our dept, etc.

But I'd also like them to come away with new knowledge - for instance, I'm having a presentation on time management. This is something that benefits them all, and not just in their roles as IT techs.

by charliespencer

You didn't mention you were scattered, and I erroneously assumed everyone was in one location.

I don't have any concrete suggestions at this time, but I wanted to respond to keep your question alive on the Discussion board. In the meantime, try clicking 'Forums' at the top, then look for the 'Browse' tab. Scroll down to the 'Career' tab and see if any of the topics would be helpful.

How much time do you have before the summit? Have you polled your team members? Maybe there's something they'd like to have discussed.

by notsochiguy

For what it may be worth, here is a list of some of the things we did during the IT gatherings:

1). Discuss site specific/regional issues and how to address them.

2). Roadmap the major IT initiatives in store during the next year. Get as much honest feedback as possible; you never know from where a great idea will emerge. Also, if you can have a working demo or a sandbox/break&fix lab setup for major tech initiatives, it would be helpful.

3). Jeopardy style game between the techs for prizes (good way to stoke competitive fire as well as find out what people may know).

4). Conduct training (if training budget is tight, it may be a good opportunity to have a trainer address your entire group, as opposed to sending out techs 1 at a time; especially if you have a tech at a BuFuE location that would need to have travel and accommodations paid as part of training).

5).Get to know each other socially after hours (I've had arranged outings to Medieval Times, baseball games, or just people randomly choosing to go together to discover the local night life).

Hope this helps.

Best of luck!

by charliespencer

it took me several seconds to puzzle out 'BuFuE'. We usually spelled it out as 'BhumPhuque, Egypt', often modified by a compass direction.

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