Community Showcase: Erin Peterschick

Luis Malbas  
Hello, welcome to the Training, Learning, and Development Community. Thanks for joining us who do I see there's Molly's and Chad and Kim. Hey there, how you doing? Thanks for joining us for this afternoon edition, where I'm going to be talking with Erin Peterschick for another member showcase. I love doing these things where I get to talk to actual l&d people were that are helping support TLDC and just bring a great deal of diversity and color to our wonderful community. And Erin in particular, is, is pretty darn interesting. And so I have like, 11 questions for you. Looks like people are voting them up already. So um, yeah. Is it cool if we just get going on this, Aaron?

Erin Peterschick  
Well, let's jump into it. My friend. Well,

Luis Malbas  
yeah. Okay. So I don't know. I guess we've kind of spoken like I maybe met you are talk to you a year or two ago, I can't even recall. But tell me like, let's talk about your start in l&d and instructional design. When did you first learn about the field of instructional design?

Erin Peterschick  
Yeah, I think like so many of our TL DC members, and it's nice to see some friendly faces. I am an a career transition or accidental instructional designer, I slid into it sideways from other careers. I've been doing it for about 10 years now in earnest. I started out in teaching English as a foreign language while in China for several years. And that quickly transitioned into exec Ed, and leadership development programs within us firms that were in China. So I kind of started looking around as I was getting ready to move back to the States. And I was like, oh, what, what jobs can I do, because I really enjoy what I've been been doing here. And just, you know, kind of stumbled across all kinds of resources, whether it's, you know, the accidental accidental instructional designer book, or just looking at job descriptions that, you know, started to talk about software that I had not yet been exposed to, because all my stuff was really fancy in PowerPoint, and Word docs.

Luis Malbas  
Right? Right. So did you actually know that there was this thing called instructional design? Or did you like say, hey, wait, wait, there's this? What is this thing, this instructional design thing? And

Erin Peterschick  
I think it was a bit of a Yeah, I think it was a bit of a reframe, you know, like, what's, what's the lingua franca that we're all using in in the trade? You know, certainly, if you come out of teaching, you know, you think of yourself as a facilitator, as an instructor. I've done training in my old roles, and really enjoyed it. So you know, I think it's just kind of getting getting to some common common language and even understanding what that common language can be or what the differences are, as you're looking at the various job descriptions and the ways that people talk about our field.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, yeah. And so what do you enjoy most about it, there was must have been something that really got you to sort of stick with this, with this whole path.

Erin Peterschick  
Yeah, I think probably again, like so many of the other members that we've, we've heard from or or seen in conversation outside of these member showcases, a lot of it is the joy of helping others. A lot of it can be the joy of I don't personally have children, but you know, it is fun to watch the light bulb and the dots Connect for people. I think, you know, on some level, when you do your job well in in learning experience design or instructional design, what you do is is make yourself semi obsolete, you were you are simply the you know, the, this the mentor or the gate opener to someone else's passion for a topic or a thirst to learn more and go do more self directed learning, and then, you know, connect to the ecosystem that is the world of learning and lifelong learning from there. So, you know, that's, that's, that's one thing I loved about teaching and China's You know, it was weird opportunities for certain people who either weren't exposed to foreign instructors, or how we kind of did things in the West are in western business contexts. And a lot of times, you know, they just they just got so excited and they would go do all kinds of things that I had nothing to do with whether it was connecting with other expats and and, you know, learning in sort of community settings, or just uh, you know, getting emails years later from even my students that were were young at the time and then you know, they're in college and they're just like, hey, Miss Aaron, like, you know, you didn't know, but here's, you know, here's what I've done with English so far. Here's what here's what you You set me on the path for so a 45 minute intervention for me might be something much more profound for somebody else.

Luis Malbas  
Can you give me more detail but I'm really fascinated with that. Like, so. The whole China thing like what happened there you? Yeah, there and tell me that story?

Erin Peterschick  
Well, one of sometimes you talk to people about what their careers were before ISD. So I'll back up a little bit to say that prior to, you know, jumping both feet first into adult learning and learning experience design, I was in electoral politics, I worked in legislatures and for elected members. And then I came back to the state of Washington where I was born and raised and ended up working for DSA HS, which is the Department of Social and Health Services, got a large federal grant and did almost like a startup culture where you are taking up some of money and, and standing up a team and trying to do large scale transformation. So change management and kind of, you know, all the all dots kind of connect in hindsight, where that's where I was doing some of the training and some of the advocacy work, but very firmly in the public policy space. And specifically in mental health. Well, when you get to China, there isn't electoral politics for darn sure. And mental health isn't really a field or a discipline that they have. So a lot of my background was sort of, you know, useless. And what you do have is an interesting currency, which maybe is a little challenging to unpack here in the short time we have, but what I showed up with was the knapsack of invisible privilege. So I was as Caucasian as I am, I was a native English speaker from a country that had you know, that was kind of increasingly desirable to have foreign instructors from, I have a mild accent coming from the Pacific Northwest, which was also a desirable currency. And, and then I was with my husband, so we were a package deal. So they like that. So what I ended up doing was starting out in the public education system, so teaching more junior high and high school aged kids, which is not something I ever saw myself doing. I by choice, don't have children, I like other people's children fine, but not a real big passion for the child space and youth education space, I tend to leave that to the people who are really passionate about it and want to support them from afar. So you might see something like 60 kids in one classroom, for 145 minute class, and you would see them about once a week. So teaching all the grades that we did my husband and I would seriously see something like 1200 kids or something crazy like that. And that's what I mean, it's just, you know, like, Oh, you know, what is a short burst intervention for me? Just I couldn't even fathom some of the ripple effects. And it's been fun to have people come back and talk to me about that. And that was true for my executives, the professionals, the Chinese business professionals who were trying to be successful in a Western company that had footprints in in countries like China, also India, Africa. And you know, how do you how do you successfully kind of navigate cross cultures? That's always been something I'm interested in because I myself, I have been an avid traveler, and have lived overseas several times through my own gumption. So I have a lot of empathy for the, you know, for the sort of the learning friction and the cognitive dissonance and the the culture shock that can come from both being in those environments, and then trying to learn in those environments to adapt to other environments.

Luis Malbas  
How fascinating is your husband and educator, too.

Erin Peterschick  
He is not he is a musician, term CPA. So both of us have had pretty significant career pivots. But we also are both very passionate about lifelong learning. And if anything, I would say it's, it's even some of the glue that is kept my relationship thriving for the 20 years that I've been in it.

Luis Malbas  
Wow. Musician turned CPA. How'd that happen?

Erin Peterschick  
Good question. his bio is funny, because it'll quickly read something like, you know, Craig got his Bachelor's of music performance from the Berklee College of College of Music and promptly joined the ranks of the unemployed.

Luis Malbas  
Wow, that's fascinating. That's a whole other conversation.

Erin Peterschick  
I know you're a musician and and we talked about that. And I've got my punk rock roots from my, my high school and even to this day, so we'll, we'll have to riff on that some other time.

Luis Malbas  
No, we definitely have to do that. That is really, really interesting. Wow, did he play in in any bands or something in Seattle? Or was it was that

Erin Peterschick  
not so much in Seattle, he's done some music performance in Portland. And then he did some in China, which was pretty interesting, because there's not a big appetite for things like jazz. There's more of an appetite for classical. And he's trained in both because he plays double bass. So yeah, I know he's much cooler than I am. If you want I can go get him. I want to talk to you to

Luis Malbas  
nice Okay, next time I will have to schedule another conversation. So this is kind of a unique thing because I don't ever get to talk to any other event producers in a member showcase or even in TL DC so I'm going to be asking you some of these questions and I'm sorry if we go long on this, but I'm dying to know I want to know more about you know, I had, you know, it was years ago Breton had told me about learner Palooza and I think he was friends with with with Darren. Yeah, and and I had kind of, you know, looked at it and I'm like, oh, wow, interesting. And, you know, I love Washington State love the Pacific Northwest. I have friends. They're so lovely. I was really, really curious about it. But tell me the origin story about learner Palooza. I want to know this.

Erin Peterschick  
Sure. So one of the questions that you've asked prior to LDC member showcases is kind of what what is one of the things that you're most proud of, and this would be one of my answers is kind of goes back to what we were talking about with the China origin story, too, is coming back to the States. You know, I didn't have the sponsorship at first as I was job seeking and trying to find my footing, have an employer who might send me to the big industry events, events that I'd never attended prior because I was new to the field. And certainly, as I've been living on my tiny salary, I wasn't rolling in dough. And those are you know, some pretty significant financial outlays if you're if you're self sponsored to attend the big industry conferences, so I had the good fortune and I'm a really good networker, like one of my superpowers is definitely networking. And that's part of you know, how you and I did come to connect. But one of the first things I did and we've talked about this and other showcases is I joined my local chapter of of ATD. It was it was a no brainer. And one of the past presidents of that chapter was this gentleman there Neverland, who is a real mover and shaker in the in the l&d space. And so you guys probably have heard his name, too. And if you haven't, definitely recommend connecting with him on LinkedIn. So Darren, had the good fortune to be working at the Gates Foundation at that time, and had access to a pretty cool space that people were curious about. And he had some ideas about how we could do some things differently in sort of direct response, and even critique of those big industry events that, you know, maybe they they could have, you know, freshened up certain aspects. I again, I don't know, you know, I didn't have any critique myself. But I think it's always interesting. We in l&d are really good about like being scrappy, like, what can you do meaningfully with very few resources. And Darren's a good person to talk to about that kind of stuff. So we ended up starting an event that we called learner Palooza at that and it was a it was a co production with our, our local ATD chapter like we basically you know, said, Hey, we want to, we want to help drive member membership, member pay, you know, do pain members, let's leverage this kind of cool space that people are curious to check out and, and we did a half day event, and it just kind of grew from there. It was well received. Again, Darren, you know, Darren used his tremendous connections to bring in fantastic keynote speakers. And we just did some cool stuff with technology, we kind of traded in certain formats that are now quite common, but at the time were were, you know, just not as well use things like the speed learning format, kind of similar to speed dating or speed networking. We had lots of different stations and not a whole lot of not a whole lot of people with PowerPoints and slides projected on the screen but really, you know, kind of these coffee corner conversations intimate but like time bound in a way that how do you get your meaning across cogently as a as a presenter? And then what, you know, usefulness, tools or tips or tricks Can you impart to your fellow learning professionals in a very short amount of time, and we would have multiple rounds, so people could go to a lot of different topics, and it was a it was very energizing. And so each year we would disrupt ourselves we would try not to rest on our laurels and we would say okay, what you know, what makes sense to pull through in each year we would pull through sort of that speed learning approach, because it was so well received and we had some data to back that up, you know, from our from our end users or participants, and then we would just kind of shift the space, the format, the duration, the theme, and, and yeah, so a small but mighty team, kind of CO founded by Darren and I did that for about six years, and then we shifted into the into the pandemic. And we were one of the first people to pivot an in person event to virtual. And that is a pretty crowded space now. So Darren and I are regrouping and kind of trying to figure out, you know, do we partner with some other folks to maybe, you know, help them take Luna Palooza and bring it to the next level, and we're looking at some other things that are, are moving us and intriguing us

Luis Malbas  
learning. So why did you get involved? What was it? What was it about producing an event that like spoke to you?

Erin Peterschick  
So I had a background in event production like that, I think that's another kind of skill set, that's a natural slide into this space. Like, if you ever talking to folks, again, who are teachers, or, you know, they're, like South Southwest Airlines, loves hiring teachers, because they make good flight attendants. And I think that it's true, like, there are certain jobs, you know, like you work in hotels, you work in customer service, you work for Starbucks, you work for heck waiting tables, like I used to wait tables, you know, you're gonna have sort of that people facing customer service, attitude down, down. And then by virtue of some of my other jobs, I just had done a lot of event organizing. So Mark, comms Marketing and Communications was, you know, kind of easy for me to reach for. And that's another like, like, how can learning and development people kind of pull pages from marketing professionals books, right, like they've been doing aspects of what we do better than we do for years? Or are we just we can learn, you know, there's a lot of natural cross pollination. If you're Yeah, if you're just used to kind of wrangling individuals in the space. And, and in time boxes, I think I think those are skills that can be can can certainly be leveraged in learning design, and particularly if you'd like to facilitate and I'm not scared to stand in front of a crowd. I have a background in speech and debate and theatre, which a lot of us I think, end up having, you know, some sort of performative aspect doesn't hurt, but there are a lot of amazing, introverted learning professionals as well. So I don't want to say you have to do that. Right. And we've talked about that in this this community.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, for the, for the event production part of it, for sure, like having some, I think that probably the more effective event producers that I've met, have had some theater experience, you know, either as, as actors or organizers or something, you know, yeah,

Erin Peterschick  
yeah, community organizers, you and I have talked about sort of the punk rock scene of like the, you know, the 80s, in the 90s. And that was very DIY, right, like, that was advertising that was recruiting speakers effectively, you know, in the form of your performing bands. So, so again, you know, it's sort of like, what are the shared competencies that you can, you can apply. And if you're already kind of interested in or have experience in that space, then you know, it's it's not that daunting to throw throw an event, I would say that this is kind of cheeky, again in this audience, but you know, there's the expression about those who can't do teach, which I don't agree with. But for me, I always kind of say, like, those who can't attend the biggest industry conferences, put on their own.

Luis Malbas  
No, it's true. That's funny. Yeah, and I can't help but think about, like, when I was a kid walking around, you know, with the leather jacket, and rip t shirt, and rip jeans, and like handing out flyers and trying to organize, you know, these little punk rock shows that, you know, whoever would end let us rent space, and just having developing that skill set of just yeah, having to organize it, and then you know, market it and do all that you don't even realize what you're doing, you just want to get your friends together and play a show. But that's actually you're definitely building building up a bunch of skills there.

Erin Peterschick  
Right? And you can think of the attendees or the participants of that is like learning cohort, you know, again, you could kind of have the animal, you know, the corollary to learning learning cohorts, I would say what, what you just said, so I'm working on right now, I'm really passionate about the leadership development space. And because we're in Seattle, which is kind of like, you know, the other Silicon Valley, again, you know, in your backyard. So, you know, you know what all these tech companies are kind of like technical leaders and individual contributors who don't necessarily, you know, want to pursue like the management track for career trajectory. These folks are also learning to lead from place and kind of be courageous practice vulnerability, you know, some of these things that you're talking about, directly, directly show up and things like leadership development programs, so you know, like you being courageous and handing out those flyers, getting good at storytelling and sort of trying to connect with people like emotively, like What's the hook? What's the with them? What's the you know? Why? Why should they take that flyer and maybe attend to your event and how cogently, can you deliver your message in a short attention span time?

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, no, it's true. I think that for me, now the big thing is just trust is because it's so hard to find that now like, especially in digital spaces, and it's one of the reasons why I'm doing what I can to kind of push like this face to face, like actually having human faces to kind of look at and, and be able to communicate with versus just these, you know, usernames, like random usernames, like on Twitter or something. So yeah, totally agree. Now another event related question. How about your favorite learning Palooza session that you've seen? Any any? thankful for you?

Erin Peterschick  
Yeah, that's a hard one. And it's funny, because behind the scenes, like I often didn't get to attend, like the content, the meaty content, like, I can't tell you how many I've missed. But yeah, we were pretty proud. I mean, we're always proud of what we do and like the pivot to virtual allowed us to kind of expand our footprint beyond being more of a regional one. And it was so thrilling to watch you know, the the accolades roll in from people I hadn't connected with on LinkedIn or had never met or heard from and they're, you know, they're in Japan, they're in Africa, they're in Sweden, you know, just all these random places. And, and just, you know, saying, like, hey, this was, this was valuable for me. And I'm just like, seriously, that's amazing. But one year, we expanded to a day and a half, which was kind of bold for us, because we usually try and keep it to a day. So you know, there's only so much you can pack in a day. And we ran with the theme of superhero, like, how do you kind of like, you know, harness your inner superpowers? And then, like, leverage them for the collective good? How do you partner with others? You know, sort of that like that, you know, how do you build your super squad? And like, how do you take inventory of your own skills? And like, where do you you know, where are the gaps? And how do you address those gaps, like not everybody has to be super at everything, but it's kind of nice to kind of know, you know, where you are now, where you want to go from me to we, you know, there's like the stuff I can do leading from place, or there's stuff I can do leading with others, or through others, and scaling through others. So, so that theme was just really robust, and we just had some fun, cool stuff. So we were you know, we really liked the sessions that kind of emerged from that because so many of the facilitators and presenters and really they were facilitators, we don't really do sage on the stage presentation. They just really took that theme and ran with it and like we're energized by it and like participants were energized by it, like showing up in costume. So it was like this weird like jam of, you know, kind of like almost, you know, we have a lot of cosplay, but like we had costumes, even at the photo booth, and just how much people got a kick out of that. So like don't, you know, don't ever discredit like a good themed party. Party can be a learning event or conference.

Luis Malbas  
Oh, that's awesome. That's, that's, that's that's a great theme. That's a fantastic theme. Um, so just as somebody who is a conference producer, why do you think those types of professional development opportunities are important for l&d professionals in particular?

Erin Peterschick  
Yeah, great question. And I think, you know, if we wanted to zoom out and sort of look at the different personas, who show up at those events, each of them are going to have a different what's in it for me, so I'm one of those people where I really like the stuff that happens in the margins. You know, I like the hallway conversations and the kind of the yummy, you know, juicy, like connecting people moments that might happen in the outside of session time. But you might have people that are more of those kind of like, I'm here to build my toolkit. And so can you, you know, how can you check the boxes for those folks, you have people that are in different stages of their own career. One of the things that I think is kind of challenging for us as event organizers, particularly if we're trying to sort of market to the middle of the bell curve of our profession is you're, you're gonna be hard pressed to attract sort of the the C suites, the director types, if you can you get them in as your facilitators, your presenters, your, your keynoters, because they do have, you know, they have the business perspective, that's so critical for us to understand, you know, if we are working in an enterprise, we need to align learning to the strategic, you know, business goals and objectives. Like that's just that is like, step one on one, which, which, you know, some some people don't always know or know how to align to, but because they might be earlier in their career, or they're transitioning from, you know, from higher ed or K 12 to corporate and that's that, you know, like, that's one of the things I've heard from those folks, but it's hard to actually attract those kinds that caliber of Sort of the, you know, more advanced in their career or just like ridiculously successful like higher up on the on kind of the corporate totem pole as just like generic attendees and participants So, so maybe know that your event might not have a lot of those folks, but if they do, you know, I don't think it hurts to try and connect with those people and add them to your network or at least attend their sessions and kind of hear from them. We, as much as we would be alternative like you might not see us inviting in like, like a TDI springs, you know, the Oprah's and the Obamas. And, and you know, those are the star power that absolutely justify attending those sessions, you know, paying the ticket prices or whatever. And I think we can learn, you know, leadership and certain things from them, but like, are they really going to help us like, be awesome l&d folks, like, I think it could be arguable. So when I'm designing, you know, when we've designed learning Palooza events, you know, we were again looking for, like, who were who are sort of the star power, but also can like help people like advance their, their mental models around learning their, you know, their skill sets, as people who are trying to help other people learn their business acumen, you know, to be successful in their own career and trajectory. Or, or if you have those individual, like freelancers, and, you know, ICS or consultants, like what, you know, what are their needs, and trying to design programming that meets their needs. So that's a very roundabout way of answering your question, and I didn't quite answer it, but like, I think, you know, attend these events, because they will level you up in ways that you will never understand. And it's often the people, the networking, and the learning in the margins are the whitespace that are going to give you your most all hawser values. And that's certainly true for me in terms of like, almost every job I've gotten since moving back to the States, and getting involved in this community has been directly tied to my brand, you know, my personal brand as as a co founder of learn Palooza, or just the people seeing me in action as an event producer, or, yeah, or just, you know, they like they like how I show up in the learning space. Yeah, I haven't gotten all my jobs. I haven't gotten everything I've interviewed for, but it certainly directly has influenced my employability and, and really personal brand. Yeah, wonderful network as I mean, on small potatoes compared to some of the amazing people out there doing just cool, cool stuff.

Luis Malbas  
Right? Do you think it's particularly challenging to to produce an event for for trainers?

Erin Peterschick  
I think that that the answer to that question, now is different than it would have been even, you know, 18 months ago, I think with the pandemic, we've seen some sort of pandemic driven growth in both our industry and really the ability to deliver meaningful, not in person events, or hybrid events, that the the, I mean, the event production tools that I was looking at, when we were practically you know, preparing to pivot to virtual, because we had a low budget to, you know, like, it depends on your budget, like what was available in the event space, totally ran the gamut price wise, was not particularly designed toward meaningful connection or learning. It was very classical sage on the stage, event production, etc. Now, um, I think that you're seeing more people enter the space that bring various backgrounds for things like, you know, hey, have your most engaging virtual meetings possible, or your most engaging, virtual conference possible, and like you see MCs and like team building, and networking activities that are just like sophisticated or fun and funny, and I just I don't, I don't know that we would have seen as many of those throughout the price points that we're seeing now that we would have 18 months ago. So I don't know does that help answer your question? Like, I think it's I think it's different for sure.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah. No, I think for me, it's always been a challenge just because to me, Coachella. Thanks, Kip. So, yeah, it it's always it has always kind of been a challenge for me because, well, the one of the things that's nice is just educators in general, especially trainers, they just love to share. You know,

Erin Peterschick  
we are the most the most generous profession I have ever encountered like it is as somebody who tries to come from a place of abundance, holy cow, I love the people in our field like they do they want to share. They want to help people like legitimately like agenda lists, and like non transactional and like yeah, like you get out of it, what you put into it, but like there are so many wonderful people that are just putting their heart and souls out there and yeah, just yeah, couldn't agree more.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, and like for me personally, though, I sort of I'm just trying to unlearn everything that I have learned about producing events. And, and it's, I'm still working progress in that way. Because now I just kind of focus, a big focus of mine is really just sort of connection and trust, because I've just felt like, you know, a bunch of division over the last couple years, and people really feeling isolated. And so, you know, and I just tried to do a little bit at a time just figuring out what, you know, slowly make the next moves to something that the things that, that that, you know, the satisfying me and make sense for me. Totally. Yeah, totally.

Erin Peterschick  
Yeah, that's the yummy stuff. And I think I mean, I think the, the opportunity for us as thoughtful professionals, who, who maybe think about this differently than event organizers or corporate, you know, kind of corporate, you know, people in other kinds of fields, you know, marketers, whatever, is, you know, yeah, what's the red thread? What is what is meaningful to, you know, to people in terms of what they walk away, knowing how to do feeling, you know, certainly, you know, thinking like changing hearts and minds, but like, with it with a sensibility around, not like dei washing things, you know, like, let's not just do this thing, because we check the dei box or, yeah, like, I just feel like we're gonna be thoughtful, in a way that maybe we'd be natural partners for like community, community organizers, and social justice activists, like we kind of bring different you know, like, we could complement them and they would compliment us to get to things that are those trust and, and sort of connection and, like, reduce the polarization that we certainly experienced here in the United States. It's, it's been, you know, head spinning for me coming back, you know, after, you know, we quite a few years away, and then I'm just like, What is this place that I've returned to? And like, how do I not stay in my own echo chamber? And like, you know, what are my you know, what's what's, what is the onus on me to learn and grow in these spaces that I might, you know, I might have been aware of, but haven't really embodied or lived in, like, total work in progress there, I'm not gonna lie, like, I lost my mom this summer, and I am grieving, and I am a mess, I am useless to most people. I am not on LinkedIn, like I used to be, I'm barely showing up, you know, in certain spaces, I'm like, and I gotta take care of me right now. And that's even how I felt Yeah, you know, certain over certain aspects of the last four years politically, because, you know, you can look at my LinkedIn, you can, you can see which part of the political spectrum I came from when I was talking about my, like, electoral politics job, but like, moving beyond visible diversity, you know, yeah, I lived in China, and I know what it's like to be a visible minority, and even to be like, marginalized, because I was a woman, but then have all this ridiculous privilege. But like, you know, neuro, you know, I'm more fascinated lately about, you know, cognitive diversity, and how, how do we harness all of the magical wonderfulness that are unique human beings, and make, you know, teams and leaders that will lead us into the next, you know, sort of the next, you know, generation of maybe, you know, maybe not capitalism as we know it. And, and, you know, like, we have all these buzzwords around innovation and disruption. And I'm like, yeah, you know, what leads to innovation, really diverse teams that probably experienced some conflict, and they don't have to, you know, again, you don't have to, like check boxes, of, you know, we got, we got women, we got whatever. So, you know, what are what are the opportunities for us as learning professionals to add to that conversation and design meaningfully?

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, and I do feel like, this is a time where we can get out there and discover and explore and, you know, and just be able to sort of I, you know, saturate ourselves with these kinds of, you know, these new things that they're just available to us that, like, the old rules have kind of, they're gone. And, and that's how I try to look at everything now. You know, I, you know, I just redo all my systems and processes on a regular basis, because things are changing so quickly. And, and I feel like that's just kind of the way that things that things work right now. And I do,

Erin Peterschick  
that's one way for you to lean into continuous learning and continuous improvement, which is, you know, again, sort of buzz phrases, but what does that look like, for individuals, for teams, for companies for leaders?

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, and it is, it feels good for me to try to do, you know, to focus on social justice initiatives and, you know, and have conversations about that. Also, because since we're, you know, a small community, but one that is full of a lot of heart. You know I think that those conversations are there more. I don't know they're more acceptable within this group I think probably because of the trust that I'm trying to establish or try to create and also the transparency that I have I mean, I think most people know that right now I'm in my office music studio that used to be like a shed and I just work out of here and

Erin Peterschick  
a small and scrappy that's like my middle name you know, that was where Palooza like you don't you don't need to have a big budget to make a big impact and Oh yeah, so thank you for you know, thank you for creating those spaces you're also making me think of lesson that I keep learning and I learned certainly around learning Palooza in the event stuff so it'd be curious to hear your your take on this as well as sometimes when I'm feeling stressed I have a tendency to sort of over express my individuality you know very heads down and like go it alone but what I need to do is lean into you know my my deep deep need and value for connection and community so don't forget all the help that we have surrounding us and crowdsourcing and like putting multiple heads together like I love thought partnering and and so like if you're experiencing pain points as you're sort of revisiting design or how do we meaningfully create these these you know trust and and sort of you know kind of vulnerable connection moments or or you know long moments or whatever you want to call them you know spaces in the TL DC community is you know like put it put it out to the wise crowds that are the community themselves and and don't go it alone is you know, I didn't hear you say you were going it alone but just you made me think about that as we were really struggling with like the pivot to virtual and just like the compress timelines like I just I got backed into a corner and I was just like you idiot you literally know this about yourself like you know that community and connection so important to you and you have this amazing network that you're talking about all the time leverage them and I did and I like blasted through some like wicked problems that I was kind of banging my head against because I just I kind of couldn't see the forest through the trees because I was so stressed out about stuff so

Luis Malbas  
yeah, no Aaron I really appreciate you saying that I mean that is that is a big thing for me it's it's something that I'm grappling with now you know, because we are planning on producing like a community dei event and you know I'm coming to this realization that I have always quietly tried to do these things like create a more diverse sort of audience but I didn't say anything because I didn't feel like my bosses would appreciate it because they were a different ethnicity than me you know or I was different from them and so I had to just quietly sort of you know, try to try to make things happen and I was still doing that I was just quietly trying to like you know make the program you know have make it more balanced as far as gender and is and ethnicity and I have to stop doing that I have to be a lot more transparent and just you know, say yeah, this is what I've been doing all along and I'm going to I need to own it so

Erin Peterschick  
yeah, I mean like think about like you know clear communication of learning objectives or whatever where you're like these are the objectives here's the why here's the value prop behind it you know like if you want to again kind of borrow from the marketing playbook you know what's the value prop to the various people along the adoption curve or whatever and and and then just the nothing about us without us like again, like I have no room to talk I am probably a hypocrite and have you know, done so many you know, gaffes and and and foot and mouth and all that but but you know coming from an authentic space or coming from a space of curiosity and learning you know, is is requisite for for yeah and just you're never going to be good at this like that's the point you don't stick the landing and there's some tremendous resources out there that I've learned so much from and and I'm happy to share them with the community as as as this chat if it makes sense. And then that was one thing that we grappled with with love the last learner Palooza you know, as we were like, in the heart of Black Lives Matter and so much that was going on we were like what do we what is our positioning on this and like, where do we talk about it and and and I you know what is what is tokenism? What isn't and I just want to hold up like we were lucky enough to partner like kinda at the last minute with designed by humanity. So if nobody knows about them like I will always give them a boost because it's literally bipoc and again, even that term is apparently not always the one to use but I think they themselves use it. Learning Experience designers, so if you want you know, people, people Who are of our industry and actively promoting the hiring and promotion of bipoc talent like those those that's a tremendous resource and then like there's a company here in Seattle called tonal to nl and it's co founded by two black men and women I think ones from the Seattle area and I think the gentlemen is from outside the US but they mean they create this beautiful you know kind of counter to Getty Images stock you know stock photos and imagery of people of various ethnicities and lifestyles and so like if you're looking for those kinds of assets there are companies out there creating them and you know, like, let's patronize them let's boost them because we are all better together

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, I have to reach out the you know the designing for humanity folks. I think I've only I've talked to a couple of them but I need to I need to pursue more conversations with them I need to Yeah, yeah. Thanks for sharing that. All right, last question. Aaron I think thanks so much for doing this I love talking to you every time we have a conversation I'm like man she is awesome amazing. You're my what is something that um what is it what is one thing that people need to know about you?

Erin Peterschick  
Oh gosh. So I do like helping others along their career trajectories and and I hope that I embody some of that generosity that we were talking about earlier. So I'm a little contracted in my putting myself out there as much lately but at a minimum if anybody would like to connect on LinkedIn I my superpower is connecting people and and yeah, every job I do and and everything I'm like, you know who you should talk to. And then it's, you know, informational interviews, things like that. So people should know that I'm pretty open door when it comes to that. And just work with me on getting on my schedule, if you do want to talk more, love it. And if not mean someone else, you know, I'll point you to someone else.

Luis Malbas  
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk I really appreciate it and if you know if TLD C can be of any help with you or learning Palooza or anything like that, please don't hesitate to reach out. This is just we have a great group of people here and we're just forging ahead with what we want to do so

Erin Peterschick  
agreed and I think you're occupying the space beautifully right now I'm happy to happy to let you you know kind of take the lead on that as you know, Darren and I are kind of figuring out what's next for us and what the next but I do think Yeah, again Better Together we could we could do some cool stuff and thank you for everything that you're doing for TL DC I haven't been able to show up as much lately but like so amazing the people the offerings, the platform, the friction lessness of all of these connections and thank you all everybody in the audience for showing up at four o'clock on a Thursday. So

Luis Malbas  
thanks everyone. Really appreciate your time and then tomorrow let's see we have got Jay rock Jonathan rock is going to be on that one is already looking to be a pretty pretty sizable audience for j rock because he has He is such an entertaining character. So pop in tomorrow at 8am tomorrow if you're interested and with that, we'll see you later thanks again Aaron. Really appreciate your time. Yeah,

Erin Peterschick  
thank you. Sorry about the jargon Feel free to follow up if there's anything I need to correct or unpack they're not my not my aim, but

Luis Malbas  
Alright, bye, everybody.

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