{"id":1375,"date":"2014-02-03T17:29:56","date_gmt":"2014-02-04T01:29:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/?p=1375"},"modified":"2014-02-03T17:29:56","modified_gmt":"2014-02-04T01:29:56","slug":"on-letting-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/03\/on-letting-go\/","title":{"rendered":"on letting go"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I first started at VMware, I noticed that there was my User Experience team (about 25 people at that time, working mostly on vSphere and related applications), and that there were several individual interaction designers sprinkled throughout the company. \u00a0I proposed that we all get together, and eventually, a two-day internal UX conference was born<\/a>. \u00a0I chaired it the first year<\/a> and the second year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Then I had to let it go. \u00a0I explicitly said this to my conference committee, as well as my management, as I was working on it for the second year. \u00a0This conference couldn’t just be my thing. \u00a0If it was to have any legs, it had to become a VMware thing. \u00a0So, vUE 2014 planning kicked off, and I am not part of its conference committee. \u00a0I provide whatever assistance they ask me for, but I’m explicitly not part of the conference committee.<\/p>\n

I did a lot to try to set up the future iterations of the conference for success. \u00a0The first year, I did pretty much everything, with assistance from a small conference committee. \u00a0The second year, I made some changes to the conference committee: I broke up the work into Conference Chair and Technical Chair (following the model used by many academic and industry conferences), and I made sure to choose my successor so that she could learn as much as possible from me. \u00a0I was also aware that I was setting precedents, so I was very careful about what I chose to do (or not do).<\/p>\n

Letting go is hard. \u00a0I have a big investment in this conference. \u00a0But it can’t be mine. \u00a0It has to become something that VMware’s UX community owns. \u00a0From the outside, they seem to be doing a fine job. \u00a0It’s a bit odd to see the announcements coming out about the theme and how to submit papers and not be the one who sent them. \u00a0I’m sure it will be even more strange to attend the conference as an attendee and not as its conference chair.<\/p>\n

I’m so glad to see it continuing forward without my involvement. \u00a0This tells me, more than anything, that it was truly something that VMware needed and continues to need. \u00a0It tells me that it’s something that the VMware UX community values. \u00a0It tells me that UX at VMware is vibrant and growing. \u00a0It tells me that it was the right thing to do. \u00a0I know some of the evolution that it has already undergone with new leadership (some that I anticipated and tried to make sure things were set up so that it could evolve in that direction, some that I never anticipated), and I’m sure that I’ll see more evolution when the event itself arrives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I first started at VMware, I noticed that there was my User Experience team (about 25 people at that time, working mostly on vSphere and related applications), and that there were several individual interaction designers sprinkled throughout the company. \u00a0I proposed that we all get together, and eventually, a two-day internal UX conference was … Continue reading on letting go<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nadyne","category-ux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1375"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1376,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375\/revisions\/1376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}