Debrief

Well, life on the beach in Mexico was great even with swine flu, earthquakes in Acapulco and the sunburn on my backside.  But, now it’s back to reality and the 420 emails I still have in my inbox (even though I’ve been slogging through them for two days).

Speaking of slogging through, we just finished an Avnet Tech Game (ATG) debrief meeting.  It’s one of three debriefs we have planned.  This is probably everyone’s least favorite aspect of your CR project, but the most necessary.

No matter how great your event, there is always room for improvement.  Getting the right people to the debrief is the trick, though.  Your event organizers and project managers are great resources for feedback but they can’t always see the entire forest.

In today’s meeting we had our game owners, the Avnet people who ran the nine different competitive events that comprise the ATG, plus the faculty who brought the student participants to the games.  They all agreed that this year’s Tech Games were the best ever and yet we still managed to glean a bunch of good info out of them for how to make it better.

We also took the time to discuss what went well so we can replicate it.

Remember, The Debrief isn’t always about what went wrong.  Sometimes you just have to celebrate the victories.  Like my trip to Mexico … the sunburn only affected me briefly.  Most of my body is still intact and the proper color, something other than Lobster Red.

The rest of the trip … no room for improvement, whatsoever!  Debrief concluded.