A Look Back at Centric’s Summer Meeting in Indianapolis

August 21, 2019

This year, we held our annual Summer Meeting in Indianapolis, August 15 and 16. It was two days filled with fun, learning and company updates.

Summertime. It brings long, hot and sticky days, and sweet, breezy nights filled with cookouts, pool parties, concerts, and baseball. Cicadas sing. Children squeal as they run through sprinklers. And, Centric Consulting comes together for our annual Summer Meeting.

With a fully remote company, we need to take a couple of days twice a year to connect with colleagues and friends tangibly. Relationships usually confined to a Microsoft Teams video chat come to life in a new way every time we get together.

Thursday in Indianapolis

This year, we met in Indianapolis. While many business units came early to spend time together personally and professionally, the official Summer Meeting fun started Thursday night. After dinner, we took a look at our past year, the goals we met, and our plans for the future. The atmosphere buzzed with positivity and anticipation for things to come.

Thursday ended with a game night for a good cause. Centric partnered with the Boys and Girls Club of Indianapolis to raise money to cultivate hope and community for kids around the Indy area. Centric donated 20 games to each Indy location and collected money to donate to the Club as well.

Didn’t get a chance to donate? Text BGCI to 50155!

Avachino Reeves, Director of Development and Marketing, Boys and Girls Club of Indianapolis, shared his enthusiasm with us before game night got going. “We truly believe that corporations help build communities.”

Friday in Indianapolis

Friday started bright and early, with breakfast and breakout sessions. Here are the highlights from a few of our talks and breakouts.

Dare to Lead Breakout

Does the word “Vulnerability” make you break out in hives? As it turns out, there are so many people who hate the idea of personal and professional vulnerability that Brene Brown wrote not one, but two books about it.

Centric’s Jennifer Sturm, Operations Manager for Centric Indianapolis and Centric Seattle, broke down the main elements of Brown’s latest book, Dare to Lead, by sharing her struggles with being open and authentic and challenging attendees to do the same.

Sturm explained Brown’s ideas of taking this attitude and applying it to leadership. Here are a few main points:

Model and encourage healthy striving, empathy, and self-compassion over perfectionism
Practice gratitude and celebrate milestones
Set boundaries and find real comfort
Make contributions and take risks
Model clarity, kindness, and hope
Know your value and your team’s value
Model a balanced life
Take action and talk straight
Cultivate a culture of belonging

The breakout perfectly captured how we at Centric strive to lead and engage our clients and colleagues. Dare to Lead is an excellent introduction to better delivering an Unmatched Customer Experience. After all, Brown says, “Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center of meaningful human experience.”

Putting Together Your Personal Toolkit for Learning

Are you an avid learner who wakes up every morning anticipating the latest tech news? Or, do you struggle to make a conscious effort to stay up to date in your field? Either way, if you’re not learning, you’re falling behind.

Centric’s John Kackley, Senior Manager for the Centric Chicago, and Erynn Truex, Client Satisfaction and Delivery Analyst, share their pro tips for building your learning toolkit.

It all starts with understanding your learning style:

What kind of learner are you?
- Auditory?
- Visual?
- Hands-On?
Do you learn better in groups or flying solo?
When given a general directive, what is your default behavior?

Once you narrow down your preferred methods, it’s easier to stock up your toolkit with the best resources for you.

Kackley said, “Learning is a production line of knowledge.” It’s a series of learning, applying, unlearning, broadening horizons, bringing in the new, and repeat.

So, what are your tools to successfully run this production line? Here are a few Kackley and Truex suggested:

Newspapers
Websites
Podcasts
RSS feeds and aggregators
Books and magazines
Tech Resources

After pulling together your list of resources, develop a filing system that works for you. Centric loves to use Degreed, an organizational platform that helps you quickly and easily discover, share, and track all kinds of learning resources.

Once you have your system in place, it’s time to get learning!

SUmmer Meeting learning