HockeyGeekGirl

Susan Ibach aka HockeyGeekGirl

Hi, my name is Susan Ibach (aka @HockeyGeekGirl). I can help your organization build trust to reach new communities or develop new partnerships. Whether you are a non-profit trying to get sponsorship dollars, or a technology organization trying to inspire developers to use your new service it all starts with trust (and a little creativity doesn’t hurt either!).

How can I help you?

• I can help you approach new organizations for partnerships and sponsorships
• I can help you develop or deliver effective low-friction training materials
• I can help you refine the way you talk about your work or services to clearly show your impact
• I can help you understand how to build and manage an ambassador community

Why do I believe I can help you?

Approach new organizations for partnerships and sponsorship?

I spent 8 years at Microsoft evaluating sponsorship packages to further our marketing and product goals and 3 years at Amazon evaluating and approving non-profit partnerships to deliver community impact aligned with Amazon community goals. I can deliver a custom workshop for your team, or keep an eye out for my course on how to go after sponsorships coming soon.

Develop or deliver training effective low-friction materials?

I spent 15 years as a top rated technical trainer and 8 years at Microsoft developing and delivering presentations and courses including co-creation of an Intro to Python course that reached over 1 Million viewers and was translated into 10 languages. I am a frequent and popular presenter at conferences because I ensure the content delivers value to the audience. Whether that audience is industry professionals trying to master a new coding concept, university students trying to create better resumes, or non-profits trying to design better workshops for underserved communities, the audience leaves with clear take aways and next steps.

Refine the way you talk about your work or services to clearly show your impact?

You can’t convince someone to become a customer or partner if you can’t explain the value of your work or product. At Amazon, I dug through existing research and commissioned new research with Gallup, digging deep to ensure our community programming was making a difference and a meaningful spend of budget dollars. At Microsoft, as a developer advocate I had to show programmers there was sufficient value in a new feature or product to take time out of their overloaded schedules to download it and try it themselves. Throughout all this you still have to remember you are talking to a person whose life is bombarded with information and work. You need to open with a story that captures their attention. I have years of experience writing blogs, articles, and presentations that tell a story with a specific purpose, everything from announcing scholarship winners, to explaining how to handle NULLS in pandas or trying to settle the debate over which is better the New York or Boston marathon.

Understand how to build and manage an ambassador community?

At Microsoft I managed the Canadian Microsoft Student Partner community for 5 years and for 2 years managed the Microsoft Student Partner community globally. I had to build, maintain, motivate and engage a community of volunteer students from around the world as local ambassadors and experts on Microsoft technology. I’ve touched on all aspects of community management from NDAs to program benefits, rewards, swag, membership tracking, renewals, and discussion groups.

A little more about me…

This site contains blogs and resources that span my career

• Tips and tricks on how to be a technical advocate or evangelist through my developer relations posts.
• I am a coder so I have been blogging about Python, Data science & AI
• I also blog about running, I started out as a 3-5 km runner who found 10kms were brutal, but somehow ended up running marathons.

My experience includes

• Establishing and managing a national program working with non-profits to achieve shared goals
• Managing national and international ambassador communities
• Creating engagement experiences at hackathons and conferences
• Organizing in person competitions, workshops, conferences, and hackathons.
• Creation of learning content including videos, and online tutorials
• Content creation and promotion of professional certifications
• I pride myself on being a passionate, engaging, motivating speaker (Sample list of my presentations, and content.)

I was awarded the Technology Innovator of the Year Award by Women in Communication and Technology Canada, 2016.

You can reach me on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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