As you may know, Team SPI is completely remote! This means we don’t often get the chance to get together in person—except for our annual summits. During the challenging last ~two years of COVID, that in-person experience has been… hard to come by. That’s why this past summer, with vaccines finally a reality, SPI leadership felt it was important for morale and planning to get our whole team together in person safely if we could.
I’m Sara Jane Hess, and I am the senior production manager at SPI. It might seem odd that a production manager is talking about planning a team summit, but once upon a time I was the operations manager and planned several of our past in-person events. When our previous operations manager announced she was leaving, I stepped in to help plan this year’s summit and get all the details in place. This included finding and booking venues, restaurants, and activities, amongst other things.