Reflecting on this year, it’s hard to get past how challenging the last quarter was for me. In addition to managing the business and all of my client work, I had committed to several major personal endeavors all at once, including training for and running my first 50-mile ultra marathon, attending Master Gardener classes two evenings per week, and serving as the chair for Centric’s Day of Innovation conference. To say that I ended the year a little off kilter from the weight of it all is a pretty massive understatement. While I am ready for a holiday break, before the year slips away from me, I wanted to take a few moments to revisit a few highlights from 2019.
Q1
The beginning of the year is always so full of promise. New goals, new ideas, feeling fresh from holiday break. In late 2018, I had just started working with United Way of Central Indiana, and we kicked things into high gear in the new year. I embedded in their team, meeting with them weekly for most of the year and tackling all kinds of projects. Early in the year, the focus was on supporting their first ever ELEVATE event and their important work with the Indiana Forward initiative.
At the same time, my work with Lilly Endowment moved into a new phase. Having helped behind the scenes with some process design and project management for the Strengthening Indianapolis Through Arts and Cultural Innovation initiative in 2018, I turned my focus to follow-up research. I interviewed grant recipients to get feedback on the process, and this took me all over the city. It was like a passport to many of the interesting movers and shakers in Indy’s arts, culture, and nonprofit sectors, which for me was a total dream. Picture below is a mural at Arts for Learning, one of the recipients I interviewed.
I also had the opportunity to collaborate with my former colleague, Lydia Lodovisi a few times in 2019, including speaking together about collaboration at a conference at Franklin College and putting on a Centric panel talk at Salesforce. My favorite of our collaborations this year was an experiment, where we tried an analog method for pattern making. I count this as one of my creativity highlights of the year. We are already plotting for some creative collaborations in 2020.
Q2
Spring season began with an exciting new project—planning and facilitating a strategic retreat for the City of Bloomington. It was a real joy to work with the mayor and department heads across the city. I did not mind those drives to Bloomington one bit. I always ate well in Bloomington, and also was able to tack on some runs with good hill training to prep for my ultra. It is a pretty special community.
Work with United Way continued, and my focus shifted to telling the story of their new Impact Funds. I worked most extensively on the Social Innovation pillar, since that overlaps with my areas of expertise with my consulting work.
I also got to hang out with my friends at Butler University Executive Education. I led some web Q&As for the first cohort to go through the design thinking certificate. I wrote the curriculum, created process graphics, and finished up with videos and lesson recording the year before. It was rewarding to see the course actually come to life and to interact with some of the students going through it. Getting to visit the new business school wasn’t bad either. Such a lovely space.
During Q2, planning for Centric’s Day of Innovation began in earnest. Teresa Tatum, another former colleague, was my partner in crime for this project. We holed up in my office or her space at Well Done many times leading up to October.
Q3
In the thick of summer time, I got back together with OurHealth, who I have worked with every year since YAY’s inception on some kind of innovation or design thinking training. This year they had moved to a fancy new building with great views. It never hurts to have natural light streaming in during a training session! This year, I taught a group of emerging company leaders various design research methods.
In late summer, YAY began a partnership with Child Advocates, focused primarily on graphic design needs. What started as an end of year campaign turned into some brand work and a wide range of advertising pieces that continued for the rest of the year.
Q4
The end of the year, as previously mentioned, was a flurry of activity.
Centric Day of Innovation went off mostly without a hitch after months and months of planning. While I could devote a whole full post to this, I’ll just share two highlights. First, going into the event, I felt really strongly that we should focus on the theme of diversity and inclusion. Once we announced the theme, the speakers we attracted kind of blew my mind, and I’m really grateful to everyone who applied and showed up with such stellar content. Second, I had the idea to try a new format where we offered micro-lessons, or innovation methods and ideas that could be taught in ten minutes or less, trade show style. It went over really well for a first effort and I’m proud that we took some risks.
My final project for the year with United Way was to facilitate a retreat for their marketing and community relations team. They gave me such a sense of team this year, so ending all together in a fun, creative session was really meaningful for me.
At the end of the year, I made the tough decision to let go of my office at Industrious. I wasn’t using it quite enough and felt ready for a change. I’m still on the hunt for a new space. Cleaning out the office has been its own walk down memory lane while sorting through old project artifacts.
Now, I’m looking forward to a break and a breather. But also, I’m ready for new projects and ideas in 2020. I’m kicking off with OneAmerica for an exciting project the first week of the year, finalizing some fun brand work for ChildAdvocates Interrupting Racism for Children workshop, and looking ahead to launching a new data analysis offering some time in 2020.
Happy New Year, all!