How do geese know when to fly to the sun? Who tells them the seasons? How do we, humans know when it is time to move on? As with migrant birds, so surely with us, there is a voice within if only we would listen to it, that tells us certainly when to go forth into the unknown.
– Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
Leave them all behind! Not just the title to my favourite song of all time, but an apt title to my last ever blog post for Public-i.
After fifteen and a half years of loyal service I have decided to take the next step in my career, move my skills elsewhere, learn new and interesting things, and gain experience in new ways of working.
With fifteen years in the bank I have built up some extremely fond memories that will stay with me forever. I’ve made life long friends, had some amazing experiences and learnt an awful lot about work and life from the people around me.
Starting my career as an install and events technician, running trial webcast events for forward thinking local authorities, trying to stream over bonded ISDN2 lines – I managed to move through the business managing the support desk, project team and technicians to finally implementing a new way of develop our ground breaking software, ‘Connect‘. It’s certainly been a journey and something I will always remember.
In my second week I had to travel to Blackpool to webcast the Conservative conference, what an experience that was, having never driven anywhere north of the Watford gap before, and certainly never ventured anywhere near an AV events team, I needed to ask for video and audio feeds for the webcast. Another great memory was driving through Slovakia in the middle of the night, getting pulled over by Slovakian police who then tried to bribe me out of some money in exchange for my passport. All my adventures have made me who I am today and thats thanks to Public-i. I’m not going to mention any Xmas parties at this point, too many tales and many I’d like to forget 😉
I can’t write a farewell blog post without mentioning the hours I’ve spent in a car with Mathew Jellings singing along to Simon and Garfunkel or with Dave discussing football and 90’s indie music. My time here will be sadly missed. I will miss the Product Development team especially, we have formed a great unit and the guys are extremely talented in what they do, personally I feel that Public-i has produced some of the best work over the past year or so, Connect has never been in better shape and I will miss our development sprint planning sessions a great deal (honestly).
Moving away from video and AV in general will be difficult, it’s a subject that I’m very fond of and believe in. The power of video as a communication medium will be with us for some time, being able to harness that power, simply, affectively allows you to be more open, transparent and communicative, which is essential in all walks of life. Working at Public-i has allowed me to learn so much about the industry and technology over the years that it will be strange to move into another field of business. However, Public-i is full to the brim with brilliant people and I can see things going from strength to strength.
Of course all these memories just made the decision even harder to make, Public-i has come a long way over the past few years, with varying iterations and pivots in strategy, however, I firmly believe Public-i is now on the right track, having helped lay the foundation of vision and clear proposition of who we are, with understandable and achievable strategic goals, I foresee a bright and successful future.
Public-i at its core is about better meetings, whether thats improving the physical meeting space by designing and installing the latest in audio visual technology to facilitating your meeting to an online audience. Public-i is the one-stop-shop for your needs.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that has inspired me over the years, to Public-i in general for offering me a platform to learn and build a career.
See you all on the other side. And if anyone wants to keep in touch you can find me tweeting about #prodmgmt and #UX over @lewieashman
I will always remember your first visit to a Danish council – and the epic tale of winning a ferry trip from England to Denmark and back again in one go. This ferry no longer travels but luckily we do so have a great journey. All the best.
Thanks Louise, and good luck with gaining more customers in Denmark.