My favorite pieces at the moment…
Here is a selection of pieces I have written, which for one reason or another, are my favorites right now. The first, What it feels like for a girl – part 1, tells my story as a young teenager and how I came to choose technology.
My second pick is about the misuse of the word improve. The tech industry is all about improvement. Unfortunately, tech companies have a tendency to get caught up in their own ingenuity and bang their marketing drums a little too hard. My advice is to tell the story about what you’ve done, describe what you’ve changed, and let your customers decide if you’ve made an improvement. If they think you have, they are more likely to listen to you.
My third pick is about my second career choice as a writer/editor. In 2015, I was working as a consultant for Ericsson and was assigned the task of storyteller for Ericsson at the 2015 FIS Nordic Ski World Championships in Falun, Sweden. Honestly, a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Choosing technology – what it feels like for a girl, part 1
How much influence do we have over our own destinies? How much does the world around us, and the people who surround us, our families, teachers, idols, and the media/YouTube play a role in the choices we take? If I was to give advice to my younger self about career choices, I would tell myself to ignore my inhibitions, and not to allow my perceived lack of anything get in the way of participating in things I believed to be amazing. This is my story, how I came to choose technology, some of the people who opened doors, and those that wanted to close them…
Photo: Maxime Bhm – https://unsplash.com/@maximebhm
This post was originally written in celebration of International Women’s Day 2017 for Snow Software AB, and published on LinkedIn
Improve — a word to the wise
In tech, we talk about improvement because the concept lies at the core of technological development. Tech companies constantly make improvements to their products, striving to make them faster, more widely accessible, reduce environmental impact, and so on. But improvement is subjective. In this post, I talk about the misuse of the word improve and how to overcome the problem by digging deep into the changes your tech brings to find the substance that will turn subjective opinions into objective statements that allow your customers to decide if your tech will make a difference to them — rather than you telling them it will.
Passion: an essential ingredient of good content
This final piece is the story of my involvement in the 2015 FIS Nordic Ski World Championships in Falun, Sweden. Ericsson brought me to Falun for two weeks in late February/early March 2015 as their storyteller for the technology they were testing at the time. This project, which I helped the agency I was working for at the time to pitch, was one of those opportunities that simply don’t come around twice in a lifetime.
Deirdre Doyle (left) and Jenny Ericsson (right) part of the Sitrus Agency team – photo Deirdre P. Doyle
On a clear late-winter morning in 2015, I eased into the driving seat of my car, looking forward to the solace of a three-hour drive. Having worked 12 days straight at the Nordic World Ski Championships (held from February 18 to March 1), I was looking forward to the simple purr of the engine and the low winter sun for company on the empty highway. As I pulled out of the parking lot, leaving behind Lugnet, Falun’s sports arena, the grit-covered piles of melting snow already started to fill me with a sense of nostalgia for the live action.
This piece was originally written for Sitrus Agency (now Nordic Morning) in celebration of its nomination to the European Excellence Awards, and published on the Nordic Morning blog, which is no longer available following a series of mergers and acquisitions.
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