Creative Operations New York 2019

Workshops

We are delighted to announce that all attendees of Creative Operations New York 2019 can join one of two workshops at the conference [included in your registration fee]. These workshops are a great opportunity to network with peers who share similar pain points and get hands-on with a specific topic. 

Let’s Hunt for "Hidden Factories"

As a Creative Operations leader trying to get the most out of your team, you need to look no further than the intersection of people and process. That’s where you’ll find the “Hidden Factories” of wasted effort and invisible frictions that drag down the workflow.

Hidden Factories are those invisible bottlenecks and ineffective processes in your content supply chain. A flurry of work can happen with nothing to show for it. There are hundreds of ways you can find invisible waste in your department, in every process and action. But although hidden, these are right in front of your eyes, and can be seen by those who look for it.

In this workshop we’ll look at a some real-life examples of Hidden Factories that affect creative operations — and how they were resolved.

This will set the stage for a lively conversation by participants about the invisible frictions that drag the work down in your own workplace. As a community, we’ll share our own challenges and the solutions that worked… and some that didn’t.

You will come away with inspiration and ideas for how to identify waste areas and take action to foster a better workflow.

with Kevin Gepford, Creative Operations Associate Director, AT&T

Let's Talk about how to become an Internal Strategic Partner

For an in-house agency looking to become more of a strategic partner, one of the challenges is to manage internal client relationships effectively. The key challenge in transitioning to a more strategic role is bridging the gap from managing project requests effectively, which is project management, to managing client relationships, which is account management. 

Building the client’s trust, communicating effectively, and establishing credibility by delivering quality work on time and on budget is the job of Account Management. Effective account management involves proactive discussion of the overarching business needs of the client, which in turn leads to the development of strategy. 

We often see in-house creative shops blur the distinction between account management and project management because they appear to be similar, but in fact, they are very different and each role requires different skill sets.

In this workshop, we will lead an interactive exercise for participants to explore the fundamental differences between account management and project management, the pros and cons of each, and why these roles are critical to successfully building trust and respect between the in-house agency and the business owners. 

with T. Alex Blum, Founding Partner, Blum Consulting Partners

and Andrea B. Ruskin, Strategic Consultant & Partner, Blum Consulting Partners