 Do we start? That's the same question. Okay, good. I think it's time. So good afternoon, everybody. We will talk about how we will connect the human dots into the digital world and we'll provide you some best practices for post-corona working. The session will take 20 minutes so I will propose to ask a question at the end of the session if that's okay with you. So before we start the presentation just a little introduction of who are we? We are with two speakers. So I'm Ina Zeklerk. I'm an account manager at Dropsolid. This is my second Drupal console last year. I did my session why UX testing is a must and how we can iterate it towards an editorial experience. So if you're also interested in that topic please do reach out to me at our Dropsolid boot. And we have Sarah. So I'm Sarah. I'm at Dropsolid. That means I manage projects I'm a project manager so I deal with clients and projects and on the other hand I'm a team leader for one of our solutions teams Team ROC. Okay, good. So you hear we're both from Dropsolid so really small in a nutshell who is Dropsolid. So we're also the diamond sponsor of this Drupal com. But we're a digital agency and we are with more or less 90 employees who are really passionate by contributing to the community and by providing workshops and trainings to actually get to know people Drupal because we believe that Drupal can be the basis for open digital experience platform that can be the basis to make a connection with marketing, automation with personalization but if you want to know more about our open digital experience platform please do reach out to our beloved colleague Milou Duhon our founder Dominique Dukoma who is always standing at our booth. Yes, so that was no offense the sales pitch and the numbers but for this presentation it's very important that you also know what Dropsolid as a company is about and what the people are about. I joined Dropsolid in March 2020 which was still a good time and at that time this was Dropsolid we had about 70 employees who were really very connected we have our bases in Belgium we have two locations there so about half of our developers are local people and the other half more or less is remote but the locals were really used to working from the office they really came to the office a lot there was a lot of fun there nice atmosphere we liked to celebrate things so whenever there was an event or something to celebrate our presentation an office presentation people came to the office we made sure that it was fun we had cakes we had drinks so a lot of life at the office Belgians that's what we are we like to drink and eat so whenever there was a birthday or after a happy hour we went out of the office as well and we rejoined each other and we joined people from other teams so that was 2020 before the pandemic hit of course we all remember that moment and as of then we suddenly all had to work from home couldn't leave our home couldn't see our colleagues so for everyone that was a very very big change so this is what we want to talk about in this speech due to COVID we had to limit our context indeed like Sarah said we had to work from home so as Dropsolid we had the feeling that we lost the connection with our customers but also with our employees and between the employees for example our customers we had to provide the training online via Google Meet or Teams Meetings but it is as you already know I think if you do a Teams Meeting it's always more easy to go to your emails and finish your tasks that has to be done by the end of the day so your attention span on the Google Meeting or the Teams Meeting is really short so we really had to make sure if we do a training of a workshop to make it very short to make it very interactive and make sure that we understood what is the human need that we need to pinpoint and to provide them the correct answers also with our customers staying at homes they have their own children that they have to take care of or other stuff that they had to deal with so behind the camera a lot of people also put up a wall to read the body language to read the emotions to find a connection but also with our employees like Sarah said she started in Covid so it was really hard to find a connection with your colleagues to know who are they what is their function but also to collect all the information that is inside the brain of a colleague because some people doesn't have the reflex to put all the information in their head into a content hub or via email so there was a little bit of miscommunication and there was no time to celebrate or to talk during lunch or having a coffee so it made sure that the connection was lost so that's why we did a lot of efforts to stay connected and we will give you some examples to show how we wanted to make the feeling go away and to make sure that we become closer to our customers and employees so one of the first things that management did was introduce something maybe small but very very high in value after I think a week they introduced the daily drop solid news short videos that they shared through our WhatsApp group and through email it could contain anything just news of the day maybe a sales deal that had come through or a website that went live or a project that was really going well but even some private news once in a while and that was really nice at first it was one of our founders Dominic who took that job who made a video every day always from a different location sometimes from his garden, sometimes from the city park sometimes when he was running or when he was on his bike but every day he took the time to make a video to really make sure that everyone was up to date with what was happening in the company then after a while the whole management took over so each and every one of the managers made a video they all took turns and after a few weeks or months actually the whole company started to participate so even developers service delivery managers anyone was recording a daily news with their news of the day so it could come from their own team or it could be something they picked up from other teams or indeed private news so during the pandemic we knew about all announcements of marriages that were coming up even pregnancies were announced through those daily news and even some babies were born and that news was spread during those videos as well we're not going to show you all of the videos there were like hundreds of episodes after the pandemic but we'll show you a quick compilation just to give you the idea this is the next episode of the baby update so good evening everyone today is my turn today is my turn today is my turn today is 44 so 80 episode 83 episode 85 I lost my bet of the last episode but in fact we stopped counting we are finishing the strategic track for a good and bold battle of the hill I'm going to have a sort of camping trip with my oldest daughter they even made plans for a marketing FAT hosted our very first prog solid ETD session today today is exactly 4 years tomorrow bye bye there you go so small impression but it was very valuable and then in our whatsapp channel we were really waiting for the daily news and there were tons of reactions each time with thank you messages with people sharing what they had done that day sharing pictures of how they were having a imperative or how they were spending their Friday evening before they were heading into the weekends so a lot of positive vibes which really made us feel we are not alone in this I don't know if you remember the pandemic it was a very lonely time and this was really a highlight in our lives and it really kept us connected with the company one other thing that they did was occasionally they surprised us with something in our mail for instance for Easter or when there was another holiday coming up we received Belgian chocolates or for instance this is a picture of when we had I think it was a quarterly review which is normally an office event they sent each and every one of us a box with some drinks and chips so that you could enjoy them during the online presentation what else we of course within the teams we also tried to keep up the spirits Adrian I think you're in the audience you're actually in the picture here we had some online team we tried to do some online gaming just tried to find some time some quality time apart from talking about work to make everything a little bit lighter but also for our customers we want to do something special so we made thank you cards by the end of the year so for Christmas we sent them a thank you card to actually say thank you for being our customers thank you for being you but also make sure like we're there for you it's okay to have a bad day we're there for you we can help you with everything you want private professional and from a distance yet close by but we're always there another way is also we investigated a lot of time in account management so our CEOs in collaboration with our sales team had contact with several customers each day so each day they actually made a phone call and checked in like how are you how you're dealing with your kids we can help so really human to human and not talking about projects or how is the business going but actually make it more personal and actually what energize the people of doing their job then another way was information sharing on social because as I told you earlier this meeting a lot of people had to focus on their kids to deal with other private stuff so there were different working hours and it was really important for us to gather all the information post it on a video post it on a blog that people can actually read it whenever they want whenever they are ready for it and that they can make it more interactive because there were a lot of webinars that moment so we really had to make a distinction and make sure that we can capture all the questions all the cases that they were dealing at the moment that we can show our expertise so indeed we have put a lot of time we have put a lot of effort to stay connected with our customers to stay connected with our employees we have shown several cases but we did so much more so indeed corona of Covid was a bitch but it does have a written a positive story so Covid had also create a huge opportunity for the digital agency so me as an account manager I can really see a digital shift for my customers that I have seen before Covid are now digital mature enough to actually make a jump into the digital world to actually be aware that website is not only a visiting card but also something that is an experience platform to share your knowledge, to share information or when your physical shop is blocked by Covid that you can actually promote your products and make an e-commerce due to the fact with corona that we did a lot of efforts to stay connected we are actually aware of the human needs, what they have been through to Covid, what was the one step that they needed to make the jump into the digital world and now we're ready to catch them but of course there's a lot of extra steps and extra efforts to actually guide them in the digital shifts so what is the guidance, the guidance stays important even though that video calls and video meetings are always less time consuming, more efficient personal contact always stays important so it's really important to go to the customers and ask what are you doing today, who is your colleagues, what is your desk how is the building and actually be interesting and get to know them, get to know their job, get to know their human needs to find a collection and to connect it with putting it on a website or into the digital world but also with your employees the personal contact stays important to be all together, to be one team within a project but also for your customers, like one team one happy team will also leads to a happy customer so here you can also see a team picture there are now more people on board so we have to retake the picture in a couple weeks yes so a lot of crappy things came from Corona a lot of positive things in our case as well now Dropsolid has always been a very value driven company so we have five values that were there from the start and we use these values in everything we do so in our strategy and mission and vision but also in our recruitment process for example so we will always try to find a fit with these values now with all the changes that we made because of the pandemic and all the positive outcomes that we saw we really wanted to make sure that also those positive things were not left to waste so we formed a working group, we thought about the future of working at Dropsolid we talked to experts, we did our research and actually the best outcome that we decided to do was to just add another value to our DNA so we added a sixth value which is simply the connect value so since half a year ago I think officially these are the six values of Dropsolid so that means everything that we do we also think about how does this fit in our value connect now of course to really incorporate this in your culture you have to do more than just name the value and put it on your website you have to also do some practical changes so one of the changes we did is also in evaluations so up until then we really did go over those values five ones and really check like how did you grow how did you challenge yourself how do you trust your fellow team members etc so we are adding the connect value so we will be looking in evaluations into like how are you feeling do you feel connected what have you done to really stay connected well how can you improve what can you do next year etc so this is an important one secondly within each team we've appointed an ambassador we always pinpoint opportunities for the team to connect it can be projects, it can be events it can be just chats between people but these ambassadors will really really try to make everyone do an effort and if they feel that their team is being too much on their island they will really take initiatives to improve this connection and then some digital small changes sometimes but they really have had their effect so all our events the office are live streamed it's not always ideal but it's a step so as we said we like to have celebrations we like to have parties so there's always a video screen open for people at home to be able to enjoy it as well meetings are recorded during meetings it might be something very small but I think I don't know how many remote people are in here but when you're in a meeting and there's like four people in the meeting room and one person remote that's horrible so what we did improve everyone has to log into the meeting online have to show their face the camera make sure that the audio is well so we did invest a little bit in our audio and video system so that has improved and everything that is business related all meetings are now also documented so we really invested in the hub to make sure that all knowledge is centralized so that even if you weren't in the meeting or if the audio wasn't that good that you're actually able to pick up that information so that was it okay so to conclude our presentation we have gathered three key takeaways so the first one is human connection remains remains essential for your employees but also for your customers second the small improvements like Sarah said it can has a huge impact even though it's really small like sending them a box it can make a huge difference and the third one is embody the value connects in the organizational culture so thanks for listening to us I see we have two minutes left so if you have some questions please ask them right away or come to the booth and we have all the time thank you very much