How I Work: Fieke, Senior Marketing Consultant at Procurios
Read the fourth in our ‘How I Work’ series of interviews and find out what office life is like at Procurios, a Dutch software developer. Fieke van Bussel, the company’s Senior Marketing Consultant explains everything you ever needed to know about conference room buzzers and the right way to introduce yourself in a meeting.
What is the number one advice you could give us when it comes to organizing effective meetings?
My best advice would be to keep meetings short and time the different agenda items. With most meetings we have a digital clock counting down, with a buzzer sounding after 3 or 5 minutes. This way we don’t keep talking about the same thing too long and keep our meetings short and effective.
What is the coolest meeting room you have at Procurios or would want to have?
A perfect meeting room would be one that keeps you not only inspired and creative, but also focused. For example, a room where you can stand at a high table, with inspirational quotes on the wall and maybe some lounge chairs for longer meetings. A nice view also helps!
What is the best advice you’ve ever received on organizing meetings?
Start on time. A lot of time is wasted waiting in a meeting room for other people to arrive.
What is the craziest meeting you’ve ever attended at Procurios?
I must say I haven’t yet attended a very crazy meeting at Procurios. What does drive me crazy during a meeting though is when people start telling their whole life story when they introduce themselves. And you keep hoping that somebody will step in or the next person will introduce themselves very quickly — and of course the next person always takes even more time to let you know who they are.
Where do you prefer to hold your meetings at Procurios?
If possible we like to hold our meetings outside in the sun, sitting at our picnic table. But in the Netherlands this is very rare!
How do you go about naming the meeting rooms in your company and why?
Our meeting rooms are named after all the things that make the room unique. We have a meeting room called “Near the Front Door”, one called “White Room”, “Pool Room”. One of our meeting rooms is even called “The Nutshell”, but nobody seems to really know where the name came from … Maybe it’s for the simple reason that we would only use this room for very short meetings!
If you were to design and name any meeting or conference room, how would it look like and what would you name it?
I would name meeting rooms after movie quotes or quotes from historical figures. You could call one room “You Had Me at Hello” or “Yes We Can” or “Keep Calm and Carry On”.
If you were to hire an office assistant, what should their personality traits be?
Off course they should be very organized, friendly, polite and have good communication skills. But it would also be nice if this person had a good sense of humor and knows how to use Joan.
How has Joan changed your meetings?
It helps us direct our clients to the right room without them having to ask a lot of people where the meeting is. Joan also makes planning a meeting a lot easier because we can look up meeting room availability in our Google Calendar.
Follow the rest of the ‘How I Work’ series here.
About Procurios
Procurios is a Dutch company that has developed a multifunctional software platform. Procurios’ software contains standard modules that can be combined to a branch or organization-specific product, allowing customers to tell their own story on their website, newsletters or through any other online of offline media.
Joan Meeting Room Assistant
Procurios has equipped 4 of their meeting rooms with Joan Meeting Room Assistant, all managed by Google Apps calendar and running in the cloud.
Originally published at getjoan.com on May 31, 2016.
