7 Minute Miles

A full year of stadium life


Today is my one year anniversary as IT director at that little building in downtown Minneapolis. This timing also corresponded to an all-staff task of writing individual reviews of what we’ve accomplished in the past year and I found the exercise a fun way to self-reflect. It’s really amazing how much progress has occurred, both physically with the building and professionally with our team.

There are still many things that need to be done, but I’m happy with where my group stands right now. We learn from every event and will get better and more efficient as we gain knowledge from what are some really unique and exciting experiences. It’s stressful and time-consuming, to be sure, but it’s also rewarding in ways that are unlike anything else I’ve seen during my career.

As I wrote in my review, this role is challenging on many levels: multiple partner organizations, political pressures, limited staffing resources, event-driven scheduling, a vast physical environment and multiple, complex systems. On the technology side of things, I get to work in familiar areas like networking, telephone systems, digital signage, mobile devices and workstations. But everything in the building is larger than life, so I’ve learned a lot about scaling and performance (especially with WiFi and cloud-based tools).

Technology is great, but I really feel that communication and customer service are just as important (if not more). With so many different groups in this project, it’s crucial that we manage those relationships properly to be successful. Everyone is important: the guests that pay to attend events, the state officials that entrust us to operate the building, the vendors that have provided the tools we use, the partner organizations that provide complimentary services, the team members on our own staff and, of course, the primary tenant that drives so many key decisions.

I’m very proud of the technology support team we’ve built so far. My one full-timer was a wonderful find (thanks Pash) and is rapidly developing into an all-star on par with the best I’ve had the pleasure of working with in the past. Our part-time event staff is vastly over-qualified for the tasks I ask them to perform, but it’s nice to know all that brain-power is there if we need it.

Lastly, I’m proud of the Skol Service pin I was awarded after a very long game day (see above). Staff recognition often gets overlooked, but even small tokens of appreciation like this can go a long ways in keeping people motivated and focused on providing excellent service. Excited to see what the next 365 days have in store…

Originally published by DK on November 2, 2016 at 7:34 pm in Football, Longform, Personal, Technology, Work


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