Tech Summit Recap
Tech Summit Recap
A few weeks ago, XO hosted its bi-annual Tech Summit. Historically, it’s been a chance for senior level tech members & stakeholders to gather in one of our offices, and discuss the future of the tech organization. This time, management opened attendance up to all NY tech teams, and organized an ‘Open Space’ format for the second day of the summit.
Open Space sessions have also been coined ‘un-conferences.’ The traditional conference requires a lot of material preparation, and the audience participation is limiting to solely asking questions. Open Space tries to break down this wall by encouraging an ongoing open forum, ensuring that anyone who wants to actually contribute to the conversation is allowed and encouraged to.
We started the day with each person writing out a topic they were interested in having a discussion about. No one was tasked with preparing for these presentations, but we were encouraged to bring curiosity and commitment to explore our proposed topic with a group. We posted the topics to a wall, and everyone signed up for what they were most interested in, creating the format and content of the day. The topics with the most votes got put on a calendar for hour-long open discussions. We were encouraged to attend what we were most interested in, to contribute our unique voice to the conversations, and to abide by the ‘rule of two feet’; to feel free to respectfully move to a different talk if we felt we’d gotten all we could out of the current one.
Topics ranged from current technical initiatives such as infrastructure/security, page performance, and data quality for venue recommendations, to more cultural discussions like interviewing, employee onboarding, and how we can better contribute to the open-source community. I felt energized by the ability to partake in conversation with people from all levels of our tech organization. The day had a very ‘flat’ organizational feel to it, ensuring that from intern to CTO, we all had valid and important points to make.
Several awesome initiatives have already come out of these discussions. Page performance of our applications has become more important for all squads, and we have a dedicated guild of people committed to discussing and dispersing the decisions that come out of these meetings. We heavily discussed the importance of this load time for our users, and want to keep them top of mind.
As a top tech organization, we want to always strive to be better at hiring. Collaborative discussions are in motion to ensure that our core values align with who we are and who we want to be as a team. This has a lot to do with culture, but also relates to the caliber of technical work & collaboration that we’re proud to do here.
Equally important is the onboarding process. We’re working to standardize an onboarding experience for all tech teams, ensuring that as a new hire on Day 1, you can seamlessly hit the ground running.
We’ve launched ‘Engineering School,’ a series of hands-on workshops that are offered to everyone in the tech organization, and topics have already ranged from architecture to iOS development. Our engineers get a chance to lead these workshops & share their expertise, and participants get to try out some other technology they don’t typically work with or sharpen current skills.
A collaborative design/engineering initiative called ‘Project Union,’ that was already in the works, gained more exposure and momentum. Its goals are to enhance our Patterns Library performance, usability, and the user experience of our members across all of The Knot.
Everyone I spoke with about the summit had different perspectives and takeaways, but one thing was constantly repeated and made clear — the Open Space format energized and inspired us all to be creative, open, and collaborative when it comes to challenges we’re facing as a company. Seeing these projects already in motion really solidified how productive and unique the Open Space day was, and I look forward to having more in the future.
About the Author
Jackie Feminella
Jackie is an Associate Software Engineer on the Content Squad at XO Group.Originally published at blog.eng.xogrp.com.