Today was the first of 2.5 “Serendipity Days”, which is a hackathon organised by the Digital Media department at NPR. The Visuals Team attends as well. And it was great! My goal for these days was to a) find out more about the culture at NPR and b) get to know more people.
And at the end of day one, I’m already very satisfied. I learned SO MUCH from my team about NPR while we had conversations about the work culture and how people express their creativity at work. We interviewed two long-time employees and had many ideas. I would have loved to do a more grassroots, maybe even guerilla approach which would have involved putting up large sheets of papers in the elevator, but it seems like that’s not allowed. Which, as a fact itself, made me very sad. But besides that, it’s great to be part of a team with very smart and structured people. Normally I’m the one pushing for more structure and practical outcomes, but today I was the one wanting more thinking and brainstorming. THAT’s how goal-focused everybody is around here.
Oh, and while all that happened I saw all the Twitter likes and retweets and new followers coming in for my two blogposts yesterday, and it’s crazy. I have more than 2000 followers now. 2000! Crazy. I think it’s crazy. But lots of people replied to my blogpost with interesting links and hints and critique, and I spent the last two hours today updating my blog posts with these ones. Ah, communities. They are great.
Input? 7
Output? 2
Learnings?
Different locations emphasize different personal traits. In Berlin I was seen a super structured, organized, disciplined and tidy. Here, that’s normal: Here I’m more seen as creative and weird and crazy.
In the best case, people feel like the own the building they work or live in.
People like listicles.
People who build tools are human. Which means that tools are buggy.
Questions?
How can you “organize” grassroot movements? You want them to grow organically, but you also want them to…happen.