Week 68: ICANN GDS All-Hands Meeting

Week 68: April 14th-20th, 2024

After a long, intense work week, I am happy to report that, if all else fails, at least I can officially pretend to be a grown-up adult. I am just a girl, after all, but yet I managed to act as a professional adult this week. I attended a work "retreat" that was less retreat-y and more like an intensive, 3-day workshop and conference. ICANN (remember: prepare for many acronyms. This one is the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers) is based out of LA, so it made sense to host this all-hands meeting there. I (over)packed my bags and drove up to Culver City, where I had my very own room booked at the Hilton Los Angeles Culver City. At ICANN, there are about 400 employees total, and 100 of them make up the Global Domains & Strategy (GDS) Team. Within GDS, there are about 7 smaller departments, and I am part of the Service Delivery, Support and Vendor Management (SSV) Team. It was funny to think about how the entire hotel occupancy list must have been filled with ICANN staff. There were "Welcome ICANN" signs everywhere, and all of the hotel's conference rooms were booked for our needs. We even had our own Wi-Fi network! It was legit.

The GDS Team and more at our meeting!

Most of the people on the SSV team actually live in LA, so they normally work a hybrid schedule and see each other in person a couple days each week. Me, my direct supervisor, and our newest team member, are all three NOT in LA. We are all spread out across the country and work remote, so we kind of felt like we were the ones at the kids' table at Thanksgiving. Our main interactions with everyone have been through a screen, and it was hard being so new and so thrown into the in-person mix because I barely know anybody. As a new hire, I didn't have the established relationships with anyone and felt pretty lonely the first day I arrived. I scrambled to find the energy and the courage to have endless "Hi, I'm new, I started in February and I report to Daniel and Jeanne on Service Delivery" introductions, but I did the best I could. Each night I would pull up everyone's work profile photos and try to place their faces if I had met them that day. I definitely do not remember everyone's name, and do not expect them to remember mine, but at least my face will be familiar next time. Thankfully, over the course of the week, I got to know more and more people and felt a sense of unity and belonging begin to grow with the team.

Some of the GDS Team had to fly in from all over the world. ICANN has global offices in many places, and there were GDS Team members from Istanbul, Singapore, Brussels, the UK, and Washington, D.C.. I loved the diversity. The value of having employees from all walks of life was on full display as I looked around during meal times. The accents were wonderful to listen to. Some people talked to their regional coworkers in Turkish, Chinese, or Spanish, or a mixture of many other languages. I was glad that everybody knew English, but once again felt shame that Americans are so far behind when it comes to being multi-lingual.

This entire week was mainly so draining for me because I felt tense, strange, and out of place. Normally, I am able to get my social battery charged up enough to last me full days with my peers, but this was different. I was the youngest there by about three or four years, and am very obviously in a different life and career stage than most of my coworkers. Everyone I met was married with kids, or planning an engagement, and I stood out like a sore thumb. Some people even mentioned grandchildren, and I don't even have my own pet! I tried to join conversations as best I could and found some common ground with basketball and video games, but many of the hot topics were about everyone's children and spouses. A lot of ICANN staff have worked there 10+ years, and have known one another through many iterations of the organization. As a very new newbie, I felt that it was hard to balance wanting to get my name and face out there while also trying to let old friends catch up after decades of work together.

Overall, this week was good, but absolutely exhausting. Each day was jam-packed with activities, meetings, presentations, and workshops. I was working longer than 12 hour days, since a 7am breakfast and lunch were provided and dinners were all planned social events that went well past 9pm. For those of us who arrived earlier on Monday, we had an impromptu mini-team dinner on Monday after a welcome happy hour. On Tuesday, after a full day of workshops and meetings, the main social event for the week was at the Top Golf in El Segundo. We had an entire floor booked for three hours. I got to mingle, hit some embarrassingly bad golf swings, and chat with members of my team as well as other GDS departments.

Top Golf - ICANN style! I was embarrassingly bad at hitting the ball.

After an exhausting Tuesday, I was hoping Wednesday might be a bit more chill, but the activities didn't let up. It was another full day of meetings and presentations, lots of introductions and brainstorming, and another happy hour at the office. Don't forget another team dinner at Locanda Positano, this time just for the 30-ish SSV Team members.

The spread at the office on Wednesday!

Chocolate Souffle at Locanda Positano

I didn't get photos of all of my meals, even though my phone usually eats first! I felt weird doing it since most of the people around me were not the type to photograph their every day lives.

It felt nice and fancy to be well-fed and staying at a hotel by myself, but I was very glad to go back to San Diego at the end of the week. I managed to get a night of free parking at the hotel (we normally had to park at the office and walk 2 blocks to the hotel) and felt like a princess with the valet service.

My valet ticket :)

This week wouldn't be complete without a report on the outfits I chose for the week. Packing for trips is always an ordeal for me, as I am known to overpack by at least three outfits. Thankfully, I figured it out last week and the attire was very casual. Everyone leaned much more on the "casual" side of "business casual," especially for the ICANN staff from California, so I kept it cute and practical. I was hoping for more of a chance to style some real fun business outfits, and I definitely packed at least 10 other options, but wanted to be realistic.

Tuesday's outfit: Linen blazer, slacks, flats.

Wednesdays outfit: Sweater, slacks, sneakers.

Thursdays outfit: cropped blazer, pink fun pants and sneakers.

I hope I made a good impression pretending to be a grown adult, and I think I added some value to my first official work trip. I learned a lot, met a ton of new people, and hopefully I will get a chance to do it again. For now, I'm glad to be back, away from the LA traffic and noise. I missed sleeping in my own bed, and admittedly, I was itching to get back to my games on my PC and my PS5. I wasn't coming back to a spouse or kids or pets, but I was still happy to be going back to my own home and my own bed, and that should count for something. Maybe I'll be a real grown-up someday!

See you next week.