Laura (she/her)’s upcoming schedule

Laura Santamaria is presenting at these upcoming events.

DevOpsDays Boston 2021

Communication and Empathy across Remote and Distributed Teams

Over the past year and a half, the world went a bit sideways, and as a result, many companies went fully remote and are considering staying remote in some fashion. Some folks suddenly found themselves working remotely for the first time or working with teammates who have never worked remotely before, and that situation likely won’t change. However, working remotely means adopting different communication strategies and finding ways to empathize with coworkers without socializing or discussing things in person, and many folks still attempt to engage the same way as when they congregated in an office every day. The difficulties for remote and distributed teams around communication and empathy get even worse when tossing in high-emotion situations like incidents and being on-call.

Let’s explore:

  • how communication and empathy across remote and distributed teams is different than for in-person teams,
  • why these differences arise, and
  • what teams and individuals can do to improve communication and to create and maintain empathy on remote teams, from using communication frameworks to helping others learn how to empathize with you.

27 September 2021

All Day DevOps 2021

Cultural Confusion: Bridging the gap between initiative and implementation

When talking about a “DevOps transformation,” we talk a lot about changing the company culture. However, what do we mean when we say “culture”? The term itself may seem clear from a high level, but it gets fuzzier and fuzzier the more we attempt to drill down and focus. What might be clear to someone in a leadership position when they talk about changing company culture gets unfocused and confusing as implementation begins further down the chain. As a result of this fuzziness, these transformations can fail to materialize or fail to persist after the initial focus by leadership. Handling that fuzziness throughout the organization is crucial to building a DevOps mindset that sticks. Let’s explore how to find a path forward together.

28 October 2021