It was Friday, May 6th 2016 - as of today, only six years ago.
My last day at Agroknow, as I had decided to make a big step and move to a new corporate environment. I went to the office as usually, with some farewell treats for my colleagues; it has been more than 5 years since I started working for Agroknow and usually spent more time with colleagues than with my family. Numerous working days, trips abroad, good and bad times, beers and drinks, celebrations and valuable experience.
| A sweet farewell to my colleagues |
Agroknow has been a huge school for me. I was introduced to the concept of project management, starting with some relatively small Leonardo da Vinci ones, resource management, team & time management, and provided me with the opportunity to dive into information and knowledge management (which I really loved): digital repositories, metadata, technical interoperability, Knowledge Organization Systems like ontologies and controlled vocabularies.
I learned a lot (and in the end even became an advocate) of Open Access and Open Data, working on facilitating access to research publications and data,
During my time at Agroknow, I also had the opportunity to compose project deliverables with hundreds of pages, travel thousands of miles reaching even the golden status of Star Alliance, visiting dozens of countries in the EU and even further, met interesting people, took hundreds of photos and created a valuable network. I was invited to dive into Business Development, read relevant books, identified opportunities for collaborations and actually worked for various high-profile organizations outside Greece (as a scientific associate / contractor), like the UN FAO (multiple times!), the University of Alcala (Spain), the Open Data Institute (UK), ICARDA (Jordan) and IFOAM (EU), to name a few.
| Temporary working station at Agroknow during my last day |
Last but not least - and probably the most important, was that I was invited (and actually encouraged) to apply my love for social media and blogging from a personal level to the company level. I soon became fully responsible for Agroknow blog (covering a wide variety of topics like collaborations, participation in events, interviews with key partners etc.), manager of its social media channels on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and I even started an unofficial Instagram profile, which became pretty popular among colleagues (all my posts were deleted since then, as Agroknow obviously decided to use a different approach, more "corporate" compared to my informal one). I was responsible for being the "voice" of Agroknow without any kind of censorship, the messenger of the company's key messages to the world.
Why was this specifically important? Because it was a key feature that my future employer - NEUROPUBLIC - was looking for. They needed someone to help them with social media, but also with agricultural experience so that the company's smart farming work would be properly communicated. And it was just one of the qualities I got from my Agroknow times.
So I spent my last working day at Agroknow finalizing a deliverable, handing over some ongoing tasks and greeting colleagues. By the end of the day, the charger of my laptop failed so I exhausted the laptop's battery, left the office keys (after more than 5 years) and left the office for the last time, carrying all the good memories and experiences with me.
| Handing over the office keys was an emotional moment |
Leaving Agroknow was one of the hardest decisions I ever made.
Monday May 9th was my first day at NEUROPUBLIC
