Last night Girl Geek Dinner was certainly exciting : not only they were celebrating their 3rd year anniversary but they were celebrating it a Google ! Well, in reality the only part of the Google Tower I saw was the Google Restaurant, but still, pretty exciting !!!
Unfortunately for me (I blame TFL), I arrived so late I missed out on all the networking part. Nevermind... I arrived just in time for a really good presentation on User Centric Design at Google and a panel on work-life balance, from a woman's perspective.
The presentation on User Centric Design was very interesting : the Google speaker explained how they used "persona" to design products (it reminded me of my "past" life in marketing). A "persona" is a character they create, they name and put a face on, to illustrate the potential user of a say product. The objective being in the end to deliver a product which does what the persona need. Interestingly enough, what that persona need is not for example to save a document, but rather to write a cv/a love letter. It's the end goal that matters, not the task to achieve it. Interesting.
The panel on work-life balance from a woman's perspective was equally interesting. Found out (scary) that the UK and Ireland have the longest hours worked each week in Europe... The example of work-life balance from a Google's perspective was amazing. We've all heard about the Google "way of life" but still... lots of company should use it as a benchmark to get the most productivity out of their staff. For them, work and their own life is mixed. They can turn up whenever in the office, and leave whenever, as long as the work is done, that's what matter. The Google employee mentioned she was planning a 10 days trip in NY, not as a holiday, but just so she could work from her parents' place and see them. Again, as long as the job is done, that's cool for Google. I'm pretty sure not all is perfect, as with any other companies there must be some drawbacks but still, a pretty inspiring way of managing its staff...
More reading about the Girl Geek Diner:
Awesome!
Posted by: porfineslunes | August 30, 2008 at 08:49 PM