Ok, great, great to know. Ok, let's make a start. First of all, thanks for joining this um um session this morning.Uh Let's spend the next 20 minutes to, to discuss about how we can make sure that whatever we do is well accepted and well known outside of our immediate circle. So let's start with myself. Let me introduce to you myself. I'm Sylvia Bellucci. I um I currently work as a customer engineer for public sector at Google Cloud. I spent the 25 years uh previous to Google in, in IBM. And last year, yes, almost one year ago, more or less. One year ago, I decided to completely change my life. I decided it was a time for a change and I left IBM to join Google. And after one year, I'm very pleased about the choice I made. I'm not just uh a Googler. I'm also a mom of three kids, Alessandra Jovanna and Emmanuel. Alessandra is 23. Giovanna is uh 19 and Manuel is, will be turning 12 in September. I'm also a runner. I like to run. I like to run marathons even though in the last couple of years due to COVID, I wasn't able to, uh, to complete any marathons to run in any marathons, but I hope I, I will restart again this year.

So th this is me, a person that has been working in the it industry for more than 25 years. So let's go into our topic. Uh Let me start with a, with a story. Maybe you already know it, but I think it would be worth, uh, rethinking about it again. Once upon a time, there were two woodcutters, let's name them. Uh Peter and Paul Peter is the old man. Paul is the young man, the brave one. The one that know that thinks that he can do everything he wants. They decided to hold a competition to determine the winner about who chopped more wood. The rules were simple, whoever produced most food in a day wins as simple as that. So one day, uh, both of them took their position in the, in the forest and start chopping in the fastest way, uh, possible at the fastest possible speed. Um, after one hour, Peter remembered the old man stopped and Paul was somehow surprised how, oh, he's already tired. He cannot cope with it. I will surely win. And after 15 minutes, Peter restarted again, but Paul was so secure of himself. So was so, um, uh, brave that he didn't think about what Paul was doing. It was just thinking that Paul was tired and for sure. Um, he was starting feeling that uh very motivating. He was sure with a smile on his face that the winner will be him at the end of the day. Uh Paul, uh and Peter compared and actually Peter cut more wood than, than Paul.

How did this have ever happened? How could you have chopped more wood than me? I heard you stopped every hour for 15 minutes. So it, it, it is unbelievable. Peter replied, well, whenever I stopped while you were chopping as fast as you could, I was sharpening my ax. So what this little story tell us, it tells us that you have to stop. Somehow you have to take a breath, you have to go out for a walk, read a book, you have to stop. Otherwise keep on working and working and working without thinking of your tools, which in our case might be our brain, our well being could not, it, it's easy. It's critical for, for your, for your success. So talking and thinking about how to promote yourself. It's important to stop by, to understand where you are and sharpen your Rs stop and because working and working and working endless hour doesn't bring you where you want to be. So let's talk about getting, getting noticed. I personally hate the word visibility. I remember some years ago when I was a manager in IBM, um a young employee came, came to me. She was a girl. She was a lady and, and she came to me and she said, OK, I want to be more visible. I looked at her in her eyes and I said, ok, please don't talk to me about visibility. I don't like the idea of people just wanting to be visible because visibility by itself is not a value. This is not something you, you should be strive for you.

You should be work to make an impact in the world, not just to be visible because visible sometimes mean something anything behind it, your visibility is important as long as it's somehow sustained by the strong presence by something important you have to say. So I said to the to a woman in front of me, to the young woman in front of me, don't talk to me about visibility. Let's talk about what you want to be in one year, two years, three years and I will help you to go there. I will help you and sustain and promote your career growth. As long as you study hard, you um focus yourself in order to make an impact in what you uh in what you do. And remember that the person that who knows best how to to best market yourself is you, you know yourself, you know your strengths, you know the things you might want to change. So it's up to you to make this change today. Today is your day. Today is the time for you to start thinking in another way and be sure that you make an impact outside your immediate bound immediate network. So what, what are the axis that you, you have to bring with you, which are the things that you have to remember when you want to make an impact, when you want to be sure that whatever you do reaches out to a larger and broader audience.

First of all develop relationships. Second is to find ways to share your results. And the third is to preserve boundaries. Remember this, these are three among, let's say hundreds of things that you want to focus on that you would like to focus on whenever you want to make an impact. But I I think looking at my personal experience that these are the three most important things that things that you have to think about and you have to care about in order to be successful. So let's talk about developed relationship. We all work in a connected world, we all work um with others and the mm that are sometimes very far away from us. So, you know, developed relationship is even more important than in the past, the COVID the pandemic situation as a a uh taught us that we have to be sure that we are connected even though we are remote workers. Even if we, our boss, our manager is far away from us.

It's far more important to get connected and to develop relationships because remember, you are not alone if you want to grow in your career, if you want to be promoted, it's important that you identify the key stakeholders, the key person that can promote you and support you whenever, whenever you need them and how you develop relationship, you, you, you have to be somehow social savvy to, to uh to um increase the audience and be sure that whatever you do is is somehow known by, by them in a, in a consistent way.

You have to find promoters, you have to find people that can speak about you in a, let's say, um positive way that associate your name with successes. Whenever you uh you have the more stakeholders, you have the more key people in the organization you, you can influence and a relationship with the more successful you will be 2nd 2nd tools I want you to bring with you uh share your ability to share your results. Bragging is something that in many cultures is not so well perceived. There are cultures where it's somehow looked with suspicious. Um uh iii, I live in Italy in Rome and in our country is not so well. Um so well um received the, the way of promoting himself in other countries in other cultures is more uh somehow common and typical whenever you do something to get others know. So it's a balance, share important things, share things that can associate you with something really critical, really key for your organization with, with your professional growth. We have many social tools that can help you. Linkedin. For example, Twitter or whatever social tools you might find, find appropriate for your specific situation. It's important to share. If just yourself, your peers and your managers know what you have done, sometimes it's not sufficient because your manager won't be there tomorrow.

Maybe he changed his job and whatever you achieved might be lost if you want to, if you really want whatever you do want not to be lost, it's important that what you do, what you um achieve is amount shared in the way that makes you more comfortable um sharing things that you know, sharing things that you have studied, contribute to blogs, to articles um post, whatever you think it's important.

Just not for the sake of saying, hey, hey, I'm here. But because you have something to tell to the others. Remember completing tasks is just the first step. The second and maybe in some cases, more important step is to let people know what you have done. It's critical to spend some time in stopping and making sure that you share your results. The third one, I'm, I'm really uh I really care about it. Preserve boundaries. We are not just workers. Even if you work 24 hours a day, the day is just 24 hours. So you, you can think of working and working and working without even um getting standing up going around making connection and most important of your personal life. Remember the story where with which we uh started our conversation, the two woodcutters, one was just cutting and cutting and cutting the other. The other one, the old one every hour stopped and, and sinks and sharpened his axes. What does it mean? You have to stop at some time at some point in your day? You say, ok, I'm done now. It's time for me to read a book. Now it's time for me to go to the cinema, to the theater, it's time to talk and to call uh that friend I've been called for, for many days.

It's time to play with my kids to spend some time with my husband, my, my um my, my, my closest friends, my, whoever they are the, the key important people in your life. So it's important. Uh Well being is in a critical and key part of your success in your career. If you want to rise, it's important at some point to stop and to say, ok, now it's time for me. I want to go out for a walk. I want to take my bike and uh hang out. I want to uh just to relax. So sit down to, to sleep, whatever you think it's important for you, for you to, to regenerate because workaholics is not the way we want and we want to grow as, as significant people in this society. So remember three things I would like you to bring with you a at the end of this uh of this chat. So develop relationship and uh preserve somehow uh and be sure that you, you grow the number of people that might influence your career, your promotion and share your results, making sure that whatever you do is not limited to your immediate circle, circle and then preserve boundaries.

These are three key tools that I think it's important to bring with you in your life and then to close our um our talk. Let's bring with uh with us. Keep some key takeaways. I would like really for you to think about them in your daily life. Remember to be your real self. Whenever you share your results, it's important that you present yourself, not just a hero, but just like a real person that has strength and also weakness that uh can recognize them both and promote them as um as the time requires. So remember to be your real self if you want to share, if you want to be sure that others uh when they think about you have a uh a positive idea of you, um it will happen if you will be real if you don't, don't just brag for the sake of bragging. But if you, if you really promote what you have done because you are are a strong and competent person. Remember this is your moment. If you want to success, it's important um to start working smarter instead of longer. I really like this uh this sentence. Uh working long hours doesn't, won't bring you in the, in the long term anywhere because you will feel exhausted without any, any time to sharpen your acts and it will be really um critical for you, for your, for your career growth to know where you want to be and start working in a smarter way.

And as my last comment, please don't let anybody put you down. Don't let anybody uh say, OK, but she doesn't value she don't, she, she's because you have to, to, to fight, you have to promote yourself in a positive way to demonstrate about shared value. It's up to you. It's your life. Nobody will give you any other life. So we have just this one life. It, it's important to spend your time in doing the right things and for me doing the right things means as I said, being your real self develop relationship with your key promoters, being sure what that whatever you do is shared with a broader audience and making preserving your boundaries.

Your life is one, no one will give you another one. So it's key and it's important to stop by to find time to sharpen your axes. And then we start again with a new passion and new enthusiasm. So thanks again for joining this session today. I hope that's something that the things that I uh I share with you would be of any value, feel free to get in touch with me after this conference and during the conference itself to schedule a meeting or ping me on linkedin. Uh At the beginning, I shared with you my, my information. So I'm, I'm pretty available. I'm mentoring a lot of women, women across the world. So I, I open to have more because I like to talk and to share my experience hoping that I can helping others to uh to make a difference in the world, which I think is the key, most important thing we have to do in our life. So, thanks again for joining. I hope that you are enjoying the conference and uh let's go for the next session. Thanks again.