Carl Smith
We’re coming to you live from Asheville, North Carolina, all aglow from this week’s Women’s Leadership Camp and Digital PM Camp. First off, thank you. Whether you’re an alumni or haven’t yet attended your first Bureau event, thank you. You’re listening, you’re giving us feedback, you’re supporting the community.
So where are we headed in 2019? A simple truth: we need more diversity in the tech industry. Diversity of gender, ethnicities, beliefs, abilities—all of it. This will be a focus for us going into 2019. We’re already planning the next Women’s Leadership Camp and kicking off a new event, Digital Diversity Days at Seer.
We’re also making it easier for you to join us. We’re partnering with companies to host events in their spaces, passing the venue savings on to you. Also look for super early birds and early birds—get in there early and save. And we’ve got smaller pop-up workshops, plus an opportunity to “bundle” multiple events for the year. Tune in to find out about Design Leadership Days and other details for our 2019 schedule of events.
Carl Smith:
Hey, welcome to The Bureau Briefing. It is Carl coming to you live from Asheville, North Carolina. Now, we've had two great events this week. Women's Leadership Camp and Digital PM Camp and I just want to say, thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you ... If you're an alumni who's attended events, even if it was years ago, or if you haven't come to an event yet, you're listening, you're part of the community, you're paying attention and I just want to thank you for that.
I am super high, not on drugs. I'm just on the way things have gone this year. And Women's Leadership Camp was an event that we wanted to put on for several reasons. One, we need more women in the Bureau community. We need more female leaders. We need women in management, women who are entrepreneurs. And we put on this event and 30 amazing women came together. I didn't get to know them as well as I would like to. But from what I've heard, the event was amazing. And this is a focus for us going forward into 2019.
We know that we have been working to create inclusive environments. Places for digital professionals to get together where they feel comfortable, where they can share, where they can be vulnerable, where they can make each other better. And we've done a good job of that in 2018. We've really improved from 2017 and that's the thing. It's like you're fighting to improve every day. And a good friend told me earlier this week. She was like, "It's work. You can't sit back and see what happens. You have to create what it is you want to see." And that is so true with the Bureau.
And it's so true for me and for you listening, right? And going into 2019, we've got to increase the diversity, not just in terms of gender, but in terms of ethnicity. And in terms of beliefs, in terms of everything. We've got to really work to make this community even better. And it's pretty damn good right now. I'm not going to kid you in that. This community really helps itself. But we can work harder and we can create just better diversity within the community and the events.
And then also we've heard from the community that they want, you want to come to more stuff, but it's a little pricey. And it's not always the easiest because of the amount of time that it takes. And so we're working on that. We get different ways that you can save money on events and we're also looking to lower the price on events. We're partnering with some great Bureau community members in Viget and in Sear. We've also got some partners like Harvest. We're talking with other partners right now about bringing events to their locations. They've got these great venues.
If we do that, we get to lower the cost because we don't have all this other costs stuff going on. So keep an eye out for that. Look for early birds and super early birds. Because if you can buy stuff earlier, we can give you a break, because it helps us understand the interest in the event. Because I'm not going to kid you, it can get a little nerve wracking when you've committed to something and you're on the hook and so you're trying to figure it out. But get in there early.
We've also got a lot of smaller events, like workshops and we're calling them Pop-Up Workshops where we're just going to hear something that the community's talking about. Earlier it was forecasting. I know that there's all types of different topics that come up. Sometimes its culture. Whatever it is, when we hear these conversations getting louder, we're going to find somebody in the community who really understands how to make improvements on whatever the topic is, and we're going to pop up a workshop, right? And we're going to make it in an easy to get to place and we're going to put it in a venue that hopefully will be cost effective so that there's not a ton of costs. So anyway, look for that.
And I'm also going to be reaching out to a lot of you who've attended. If your companies have attended a lot events, then we can bundle some pricing. Like if you know in 2019, you're going to come back to three or four Bureau events or even more. Some people came to almost all of them I think. We can look at what that means overall and bundle it up. Give you a better deal. So that's really exciting.
But when I look to 2019, and this is coming off the heels of Women's Leadership Camp, which taught us a tremendous amount and moving forward into 2019, we're already planning for the next Women's Leadership Camp, but we're also planning for a new event called Digital Diversity Days. And this is going to be at Sear. And the whole purpose of this event is to help Bureau companies that need to get smarter about diversity actually put together a plan and be able to act on it and put together accountability groups. So we're not just going somewhere and hearing something and going, "That's really smart. Diverse teams are better at everything. I need a diverse team." And then you go back and the phone rings and you get sucked back in your day to day and you get worried about financials and blah, blah, blah and you don't act on it.
This is an event where we're working to bring together some of the smartest people around diversity, equity and inclusion. And they are going to teach us both from the stage and also in a workshop environment and just open communications and conversations, and we're going to get better, right? This is going to happen. So Digital Diversity Days at Sear. I'm super excited about. We're also going to have an event for design leaders. Our design Leadership Camp is super popular, but it's hard for everybody to get in. And there are a lot of people who it's just not possible because those events take place in really nice resorts, it's not the cheapest ticket. So now we're going to do an event called Design Leadership Days.
And this is going to be an event where more people can come in. It's about building more design leadership community. There's some great design leadership events coming out. This can be an opportunity to really connect with the people in the community, both through open conversations, through facilitated conversations, and also through more workshop oriented environments. If there're skills that you want to improve on, we're going to make that happen too. So the entire schedule is out. Well, that's not true. The schedule is out, but we're looking to add even more stuff to it as we hear from you.
And again, I just want to thank everybody who came out this year. There's still two more events in December. We got Creative Director Camp and Operations Camp. So we're not done just yet. There's still more stuff. We've got some more exciting announcements coming up between now and the end of the year. I am seriously just riding a wave of optimism, which is what I do. But I'm just so lucky to be able to have this community and have this place of responsibility to make things better for the community and for the industry.
And the ability to have your ear and know that you are going to give me the input that we need. And if you have anything you want to share, I really truly welcome it. You can just reach me at smith@bureauofdigital.com or help@bureauofdigital.com and share with us what you're thinking about. What do you think would be an amazing thing for the Bureau to do in 2019. Because we're amped up and we're ready to go. So thank you for listening. We'll be taking off next week for Thanksgiving. But then we'll be back with a regular Bureau Briefing episode and I look forward to connecting with you then. All the best.