SKO Day 0: Staying Up too Late

Yesterday was the kickoff of our sales team's Sales Kick-Off (SKO). We traveled to Las Vegas from various places around the US and the world, got settled in to our hotel for the next few days, and met for an evening reception. I've remarked before that events like SKO are a marathon, not a sprint. Especially this one, where we technical folks on the sales team are here through Friday. We have to pace ourselves to last multiple days; multiple days of day-long presentations and seminars, followed by evenings of planned activities and unscripted socializing. The unscripted part is made dangerous because of all the distractions that are available in Las Vegas.

So how did I do pacing myself last night? I stayed out too late socializing with colleagues. After the reception ended around 9:30-10pm— that's the "planned activities" side of things— I joined colleagues socializing at the bar in the lobby— the "unscripted socializing" side of things. ...Which is actually important to building relationships with coworkers and processing what's going on at work, as otherwise we all live hundreds if not thousands of miles apart and often only see each other on camera in formal meetings. I stayed up until after last call, only returning to my room at 12:30am or so. And then I felt jazzed up still so I got involved in doing stuff on my personal computer and didn't lay down to sleep until 1:30am. And that's with a 6:00am alarm this morning. Ugh.

We'll see how the day goes today. I'm confident I'll be fine during the day but I might poop out by dinner.

SKO Day 1: Doing Okay

Day 1 of SKO (sales kick-off) is now in the books. I'm back at my room at 11:30pm after a marathon day. I had meetings 7am - 5:15pm (including working breakfast and lunch) followed by an evening reception 6:30 - 9pm followed by unscripted time hanging with colleagues from 9pm until a few minutes ago.

Today's main program was good and not at all Death By Powerpoint, as too many SKOs at smaller companies I've worked at have been. Our leaders kept it high level and motivational. (Death-by-Powerpoint drags through details may come tomorrow or later in the week.) We got upbeat news about new product innovations and go-to-market strategy... which is kind of bittersweet, actually, because it comes after way too many months of no apparent progress on so many important things. Are we getting our bearings again after a year lost in the wilderness? I like to say "Heck, yeah!" but I recall having this exact same hopeful feeling 12 months ago... after which we promptly spent another 12 months lost in the wilderness. 😖

In terms of getting to bed at a reasonable hour I expect to do better tonight than last night. Tonight I've gotten back to my room an hour earlier than last night. Tomorrow's an equally early morning... but maybe tonight I'll get 5.5 hours of sleep instead of 4.5.