Skip to main content

Franny the Flamingo

Image
By

Recently I asked Lisa Schwartz, "Why is the flamingo ITSM Academy's mascot?"  

"Franny has a long history at the Academy. At our very first conference, we were just two ladies with a dream, traveling to Long Beach CA for an early itSMF show. The frame to our booth came - think silver scaffolding - but the beautiful art panels I designed and ordered, didn't arrive on time.  

Time travel to 2023 to read about Franny's 19th birthday party in Vegas!

Because we are in South Florida, our booth theme was Beach, and the giveaways were koozies, beach balls, etc. I also had ordered a somewhat sizeable inflatable flamingo, which I bought because it was 50% off. 

Well, we just had the silver scaffolding, so what's a girl to do? 

ITIL Training

I blew up all of the inflatables, including the flamingo,  who we immediately named Franny. 

I shoved the beach balls into the silver frame and hung Franny from the top, using a conference lanyard.* Thinking, Klassy with a K.

Sadly - and shockingly - I don't have a picture... but at the time, I was pretty upset! I had ordered well in advance. 😠

But then, the darndest thing happened. Person after person, after person, stopped to tell us how cool our booth was. With comments like, 'I've never seen anything like it before.' And, 'I can tell you all are fun, I would like to train with you.'

So over the years, with many physical and virtual versions of Franny - she has had some escapades. 

🦩 She was lost in Vegas.

🦩 Stolen in DC. 

🦩 And spent well over a year out on a fla-mingle, traveling from one team member's house to the next. #wemakememory

She has become a symbol and a constant reminder. Even when things don't go the way you planned, smile until you are actually feeling happy and work with what you got. 

Pandemically speaking, we've learned a lot from Franny. When things get rough, take a deep breath and three... two... one... flaminGO. 

In the end, all that really matters is that our amazing alumni are being served high-quality education experiences." #Flamingoals

--------

*Oh, and I found out years later, that some of the folks at the conference thought our pink flamingo had something to do with another training provider who also has a pink animal associated with them. I was simultaneously mortified and highly amused by that.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Four Service Characteristics

By
Recently I came across several articles by researchers and experts that laid out definitions and characteristics of services. ITIL provides us with a definition that can help drive the creation of value-laden services: A means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks. An area that ITIL is not so clear is in terms of service characteristics. Several researchers and experts put forth that services have four basic characteristics (IHIP): Intangibility—Services are the results of actions not things. They have no physical presence and represent a logical set of elements. One way to think of service is “work done for others.”  Heterogeneity—Also known as “variability”; services are unique items because of the mechanisms used to deliver services, which is people. Because the people element adds variability, the service is variable. This holds true, especially for the value proposition—not eve...
Post a Comment
Read more

What Is A Service Offering?

By
The ITIL 4 Best Practice Guidance defines a “Service Offering” as a description of one or more services designed to address the needs of a target customer or group.   As a service provider, we can’t stop there!   We must know what the contracts of our service offering are and be able to put them into context as required by the customer.     Let’s explore the three elements that comprise a Service Offering. A “Service Offering” may include:     Goods, Access to Resources, and Service Actions 1. Goods – When we think of “Goods” within a service offering these are the items where ownership is transferred to the consumer and the consumer takes responsibility for the future use of these goods.   Example of goods that are being provided in the offering – If this is a hotel service then toiletries or chocolates are yours to take with you.   You the consumer own these and they are yours to take with you.      ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The New Four Ps of Service Management

By
By Donna Knapp For years, people , process , and technology (PPT) was a widely recognized framework for balancing and integrating the components needed to achieve optimal performance and outcomes. In the ITIL v3 Service Design publication, this framework was expanded to the four Ps: people , processes , products , and partners . ITIL 4 has further expanded and evolved this framework to the four dimensions of service management. These four dimensions are collectively critical to the effective and efficient facilitation of value for customers and other stakeholders in the form of products and services. The four dimensions of service management are: Organizations and people Information and technology Partners and suppliers Value streams and processes. These four dimensions represent perspectives which are relevant to the whole service value system (SVS), including the entirety of the service value chain and all ITIL practices. Each ITIL practice is a set of organizational resources base...
Post a Comment
Read more