Good times with good company at weAREhere unconference

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A big thanks to Pauline Sargent for organising the venue, Guinness Enterprise Centre hosting our unconference and providing food and beverages. And thanks to Christina Lynch, even though she couldn't make it due to her back, get well soon!

I want to shout out to our supporters:

AskatonCoderDojoGirls@DCUWITS Ireland

And to our partner:

ICStechweek.ie

I have such a great TIME at weAREhere Unconference, so many women from various industries, cultural backgrounds sharing their experiences on topics like "How to say 'NO'", "How to stop procrastinating (e.g. on Facebook)", Tools to help with time management, and more.

Silicon Republic has been great and had a competition to receive tickets to our unconference and we had a winner:

Here are a couple of tips:

We started the morning (after a quick intro and what happens at an unconference) rolling up our sleeves, grabbing markers, paper and post-it notes and jot/draw what we want to talk about and we start to group similar topics together.

As a volunteer not-for-profit tech events and workshops organiser looking into making better use of my time and making it sustainable so I can keep going, I was really interested in "What to charge?" and finding ways to stop procrastinating. I took many things away with me.

My first session was "Charging for time"

Some notes I jotted down, most are on the posters:

My second session was "Planning" or "Stop Procrastinating"

This is all about how to stop getting distracted going on social media like Facebook, or getting interrupted by work colleagues.

Sorcha said her trick was to have an open text file called "Things that make me want to procrastinate", and whenever there's a trigger (e.g. waiting for something for 30 seconds where one ends up on Facebook for 10 minutes), she just writes it down. Even just typing the word "waiting for something" is enough to stop the need to open the browser and check various social media sites. Another example is someone saying something that is unrelated and distracting and your flow is broken. She finds that this helps break the cycle.

Working from home has its distractions as well, as another mentioned that the best thing is turn off everything. Although if you are waiting for something, go get up and make a cup of tea, go for a walk, but nothing computer-related.

Nadja said that "Work expands to time allocated", so even if we give more time to a project, people will fill it even if they can finish earlier.

Laura said that work should be broken down into manageable tasks.

Another great thing to remember, "You are a manager for yourself, not just for your team."

Ana mentioned that one should write an agenda to plan out the day. She noticed that one does a lot of work with other people and not your own work.

A great idea (which does work) is have a "stop sign", so people know when not to approach you if you are busy doing something and don't want to be disturbed.

One has too many tasks and it would help to write them down, and mark

This leaves the mind more calm.

At various points of this session, we were veering towards asking about what time management apps and tools are recommended by other people, which is a separate session held at the same time in another room. Pauline will have details about this in her blog post. I will add the link to her post and other posts I fine in the comments below.

But here are some apps that were mentioned from that session:

And remember, stick to one!

Wrap-up

We ended up with Pauline and Fidelma giving everyone a short talk based on their poster.

It was followed by Q&A with everyone.

Storified

I've storified tweets I found on the day from people using the hash-tag, "TimeUnConf", and you can find it here: https://storify.com/whykay/wearehere-time-unconference

Couple of quotes I heard on the day

Other stuff

I was talking to folks about various other things like:-

Upcoming female-friendly events

HybridConf - FREE ticket offer on application

Ireland Girl Geek Dinners @ Science Gallery

PyLadies Dublin @ Bank of Ireland

Coding Grace Maths Café

Women Who Code Belfast Hackathon

INSPIREFEST 2015 & Fringe festival

About Author

Vicky Twomey-Lee

Pythonista, but normally found organising various tech events, and now heavily involved in diversity initiatives like Coding Grace, PyLadies Dublin, and Women in Technology and Science (WITS Ireland).
👉 http://about.me/whykay

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