Seattle member EB Meyer was awarded a chapter scholarship to attend EDS24 last June, and she hopped on LinkedIn to spread the word and share her experience at the annual convention.
“Skot Waldron engaged our hearts with an excellent talk on intentionality, Gregory Hart spoke to our business frontal lobes with an AEC market update, and Scott Warrick lit up our amygdalas with offensiveness in the workplace. What a morning!”
She’s not kidding, EDS is always packed with excellent presenters. They inspire and energize us to be more efficient, authentic, and relevant. It’s a whirlwind three days and it goes by so quickly, but the things we learn and the connections we make last for years.
“Wrapping up in #ColoradoSprings! The knowledge sharing from 6 members at the SparkSDA session was incredible. We installed a terrific new executive committee. It’s all about the people.”
We’re glad you were able to attend, EB! Here she is, with other Seattle members.
I learned a new thing today that I thought is probably helpful to other admin/support staff: how to reduce the file size of multiple PDFs at once. The caveat: my tip is reliant on having Adobe Acrobat Pro (not just the free reader).
If you already know how to reduce a single PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro via Menu/Save as Other/Reduced size PDF, you’ve seen how much of a difference it can make to crunch down a big document. Depending on how the PDF was made (looking at you, Bluebeam!) these files can be pretty hefty – adding unnecessary digital weight to your project folders. Add in large-format scans and you may be saving unnecessarily large PDFs on your network or paying for cloud storage.
What if you have lots of PDFs to reduce? Like if you are prepping a project for archiving? Or need to send several via email? Well! Adobe Acrobat Pro can handle these in bulk without having to open each PDF separately.
Start by opening Adobe Acrobat Pro. I have the subscription, so it’s the current version 24. In mine, the tools are at the top – there’s one called Compress a PDF. If you can’t see it, the toolbar may be minimized; click on “see all tools” and that should show you lots of options.
Once you click on Compress a PDF, look in the left-hand menu bar — select “Multiple Files”. Now, you can browse out to the PDFs you want to reduce, or drag & drop. (One note here: your computer is going to require some processing oomph to reduce a lot of files, so maybe just choose 2-3 to start with and see how it performs. I crashed mine with 20 very large files, oops…)
Choose the Acrobat version you want them compatible with – I always go with the “10.0 and later”. Click OK.
Now – pause and take a look at the options in this next window and make sure you like the settings. You might want to save a separate, reduced copy and append the file name with “reduced”; maybe you just want to replace the original. Make your choices, then click OK.
Sit back and let Adobe do its magic! It will take a few minutes, so be patient; I regularly take 50MB PDFs down to 3MB, saving tons of storage on our file server.
Our last Business Practice Event (“BPE”) of 2023 was last week, on November 16th. We met for dinner and a presentation by the amazing Jess Hickey, where she walked us through the tricky realm of workplace harassment (she’s in the black jacket in the picture). We are grateful to Jess for sharing her knowledge and experience with us!
The Board of Directors for 2024 has been voted on, and the officers will be installed on December 12th at our holiday social. We’re looking forward to another awesome year here at SDA Seattle!
The Seattle Chapter was the proud recipient of the 2023 Best In Class Award: Program Winner for our 4-part educational series presented by Jess Hickey, titled “Stories They Never Told You About Business.” The presentations covered finance, human resources, marketing, and administrative topics, and everyone resonated with Jess’ honest, down-to-earth communication style and wit.
This is the first time we’ve done a series like this, and it was successful by all measurements; it was well-attended, received positive feedback, included tips that we could use immediately, and was enjoyable to attend. Having four guaranteed presentations took a little weight off the planning of our education calendar and attendees knew what to expect. They resonated with her speaking style, and Jess did a great job overlapping just enough fill any gaps between sessions without wasting time rehashing what we’d already learned.
I was not able to go to the national conference this year, but we had seven Chapter members attend, flying all the way to Tampa, FL for the June national conference. I’m looking forward to hearing debriefs on the sessions they attended; the speakers are always top-notch.
L-R: Brittany Jamison, Emily Meyer, Gretchen Renz, Kurt Wong, Carol Wanda Spradlin, Eunoh Lee, Judy Beebe.
Seattle Vice President Brittany Jamison and Director Carol Wanda Spradlin kill some time at the airport with a beverage.
We are the winners of the 2023 Best in Class Program Award.
We also celebrated our Chapter’s 55th Anniversary!
SDA Seattle is pleased to welcome Sharron O, Dawn I, and Aprille B to the Chapter! We look forward to seeing you at an upcoming event, either in-person or online.
Huge shout-out to Amy J. Nanni on becoming an SDA Fellow, class of 2023! SDA’s Fellows program recognizes individuals who have made a significant contribution to SDA and to the A/E/C community, and who have elevated the standards of practice management. Amy is a member of the New York chapter, and works at Construct Architecture Studio. Congratulations Amy!
Hearty shout-out to Jim Gregson of Parker, Smith & Fleek for sponsoring our Seattle Architecture Foundation walking tour of Hidden Spaces around downtown Seattle on Sept. 8. And many thanks to Dan from SAF for leading the tour!
We were delighted to welcome backJess Hickeyfor another educational hour (Part 2 of our four-part program*). This time she talked about a framework for getting ahead and getting promoted. In a nutshell:
At work, make sure you act in a way that’s promotable. What qualities are important to your firm?
Of course, you should be good at your job. And you should be able to demonstrate that you can do the next bigger job.
Prove it! Show your employer you can take on new or different responsibilities, that you can master different skillsets.
Be easy to work with – be a good partner; respect others. Don’t be the Debbie Downer or Whiny William at work.
Build relationships, whether that means you make work friends or you get to know the company leaders. Look for sponsors in your firm, e.g., a mentor or someone who champions you.
*Stories They Never Told You About Business
Part 1 (March 17): What the Finance? How to pull all those financial tools together and run a business with them
Part 2 (June 16): Getting Ahead: Frameworks for Getting Promoted
Part 3 (TBD): BD doesn’t stand for Bad Drinks: Networking tricks and tips for even the most reticent of participants
Part 4 (TBD): Time Keeps on Ticking, Into the Future: Thinking about time as a tool rather than a captor
SDA national hosted a webinar on parliamentary procedures, and boy did we pick up some useful nuggets from Donald Garrett of Last Minute Meetings. Like how to remember the standard order of business meetings. Just think “Mrs Sun.”
Huge shout-out to 
