The Big Meeting

So as you probably already know, the purpose of my trip to Denmark was work related.  I've been writing a document to help standardize all of the company's installation guides since the beginning of the year and this trip was my chance to present it to the rest of the Technical Communications (or TechCom) team.  Speaking of the team, let me introduce them:

Back row (L-R): Me, Brian, Dan (who is mostly hidden), and Steen.

Middle row (L-R): Henning, Joanna, Berit, and Marianne.

Front row (L-R): Irene, Ritt, Angela, and Mia.

Brian is from the UK and lives in Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare.  Dan (which is not short for anything) and Steen are in an organization that builds and sails viking replica ships.  I didn't learn much about Henning, but he offered more helpful feedback than anyone else.  Joanna is from Poland and lives there with her German husband.  Berit has traveled all over the world and loves to talk about her experiences.  Marianne smokes electronic cigarettes (she and I didn't interact a lot, but she seemed nice enough).  Irene likes Danish-style licorice candy, which she claims is stronger than any other kind of licorice -- based on what she shared with the group, she may be right.  Ritt likes to go for runs on the beach with her husband when the weather permits.  Angela is from Italy and had the poorest English skills of anyone in the group, but she was the only one to point out to me that a dessert we were eating contained alcohol, which I really appreciated.  Mia, the manager that coordinated the meeting, told me that when she and her family visited the US a couple of years ago, they enjoyed the National Parks and "all the nature" more than anything else.

In addition to different personalities, everyone has different roles within the company --  I believe I'm the only one with a background in writing.  So when we went over the Installation Guide Standard, there were a lot of opinions about what to keep, what to remove, and what to change.  In fact, I was genuinely surprised the first time everyone agreed with what I had written and had no comments to make.  The document that I presented is only twenty pages long, but it took us over four hours to finish reviewing it.  One thing I can say for this team is that they're thorough.  I took meticulous notes and I'm in the process of editing the Standard to send out for everyone's approval.  Ultimately, most of the Standard survived without any change: I'd estimate that only about a third of the text will be changed from the first draft.

This was my first important meeting with people that do the same kind of work for Danfoss as I do and I think it went well.  While we took a long time to review what I had written, the impression I had was that everyone respected what I had done and was taking it seriously.  I felt intimidated when I found out that I was going to Denmark, but it all worked out as well and I'm really glad I got to go.