The conference was surprisingly… nice! My primary aim during that weekend was to mix and mingle with others from the different respective business units, and to some extent, it was fulfilled. The games sessions gave me that opportunity and I have to say, they’re not as bad as I thought they would be! Though I didn’t get to meet as many as I would have wanted to, I felt satistied. At least now I know some faces in the company!
But the highlight of the whole event was not so much the game. It was definitely not about the food (Food was below average…wasn’t all that impressed with the hotel food..and to add to my distate, the place was plagued with flies!). It wasn’t even the environment or the free flowing booze that made my weekend. The highlight for me personally was the breakout session we had when we broke out into our respective unit entities. Within the consulting workforce there are 3 distincitve consulting practices – Management Consulting, Systems Intergration, and Technical Consulting. And under Management consulting, its further broken down into other sub-consulting specialities, such as CRM, Supply Chain and Human Performance. I am under the Human Performance unit (Heck its for this particular reason I jumped jobs!).
Anyway our breakout session had all the HP consultants coming in to share their views, and wow, what an eye opener that session was! To hear my senior colleagues share their experiences, their struggles and challenges was a real rare opportunitiy for me! As they went about sharing their work-life stories (most of them were just venting out their frustration at the company and their client…but of course in a professional, decent way!) I was just soaking it all like a sponge; taking every word in, dissecting them, analyzing their frustrations, and formulating some “naive-unproven workarounds” in my head. By the end of the session, I had a taste of what to expect; even though I was still (and currently still) on the bench waiting for my first project, I kinda knew to some degree the challenges I am going to be up against. Not to say it discouraged me from anything, if anything it gave me a good heads up on possible things to come.
As for the rest of the event, it was alright. Between activities, I spent most of my time actually sleeping! Yeah I was actually reluctant to attend the conference in the first place. Why? Well how about losing one “precious” weekend? But at the end of it all, I’m really glad I went for it.
Meeting new people, having fun with your new colleagues, gaining valuable experience and tips from your senior colleagues, and not paying a single dime for it? – PRICELESS
