Weekly Recap #21: Business as usual
You know the best thing about these recaps? For the first time in my life I instantly know the current calendar week. \o/
Hello there, this is Harry! For those who are new to this format: You’re reading the 21st edition of our weekly recap series of blog posts, in which we summarize what happens in our company diesdas.digital each and every week, since its inception. Alrighty, let’s go!
It’s Sunday already and considering the usual rhythm we’re a day late with this post … that wouldn’t be a problem if last Monday didn’t feel like it was weeks ago already. Anyhow, I shall focus and remember things … I think we made good progress on several fronts this week, namely:
Accounting
We met with our tax accountant to streamline our workflow and therefore save time, so Lars can do fun stuff again instead of sorting paper (although he’s good at that, too).
Workflow is as follows: Our accountants have access to our bank account via HBCI and also to a folder on our Google Drive where we put all invoices (incoming and outgoing) as PDFs. They can then match those up to our bank statements and tell us every week what is missing or outstanding. We keep everything on paper as well (because we have to), but we don’t care much about organizing it ourselves anymore, just filing everything in folders by year and month. This should save us a lot of time. #fingerscrossed 😶
Chasing leads
We spent a good amount of time in meetings and negotiations, trying to get some projects for the second half of the year. Over the summer, we’re pretty full, but from September on we don’t have much lined up yet. That’s fine, I’m rather confident that things will pop up in time, but we’re still trying to confirm at least a few smaller projects. These meetings can be arduous though … and sometimes you’re sitting there just wishing to get some work done instead of going through heaps of eventualities and scope negotiations.
Project progress
Despite quite a few meetings, we made good progress on several projects and once again I find myself relieved that I can fully trust the others to make smart decisions and work on reasonable things. I remember study groups in school and university in which I was usually the only one pushing the project forwards but now, in our company, everyone is like that.
And so it happens that Max suddenly has a workshop to moderate and then I hear Lorenz on the phone, talking to a client setting up a project and then there’s a calendar invitation from Lars for a meeting at exactly the right point in time with the right people and all of this just feels really good. To be able to trust and rely on the others, not feeling the need to involve myself and everyone usually using their common sense. A++, would found again with these people! 🤗
Visibility
I gave a talk at .process in Dortmund this week, which Lorenz and I roughly sketched out the week before (you might remember the scribbled poster). Lars and I put together the actual Keynote slides earlier this week and I gotta admit with each day passing I got a bit more nervous.
By Thursday morning we had a good slide deck though and after two practice rounds I was rather confident that we had the situation under control. On Friday morning I hopped on a train and arrived in Dortmund 3.5h later.
The cinema you see above and where all the action happened is located in the Dortmunder U, which used to be a brewery, but is now a cultural hub for creativity and art … unfortunately I didn’t get to take a look around, but I shall be back! The conference itself was located in a cinema, which was a good size to keep the audience involved and be able to respond to questions or shouts.
In general I was overwhelmed by the friendliness of the organizers, sponsors and hosts, everyone being very attentive and welcoming.
Thematically .process is a one day conference surfacing the hows and whys behind everyone’s work, looking at the process instead of the final products.
Also invited were Claudia Brückner, Coralie Gourguechon and Andreas Muxel, each providing genuinely interesting and inspiring insights into their work; e.g. how to design human interactions, how to build a radio yourself (and in general understand the black boxes that are our electronic devices) and how to build huge installations with sound and visual effects happening in real time.
Super fascinating stuff, I’m very happy that I could be part of it with our talk about agile work structures. We might expand on that topic in a future post, but now is not the time … there might also be a video of the talk, but I’m not sure when or where it’ll be available.
Unfortunately I was the only one from our team in Dortmund because Lars and Lorenz were busy doing something entirely different: singing. You might remember that they joined the Berliner Liedertafel some time ago and on Saturday they had their first performance on stage, Berlin’s Britzer Garten … take a look:
I’m a bit sad that I couldn’t be there, but it won’t have been the last appearance on stage for them.
One last thing: Next Thursday we will visit our friends from sehen und ernten for breakfast … everyone is invited to join us. If you have time and you can make it to Oberschöneweide, we’d be very happy to see you there! Here’s the Facebook event! 👍
And with that I wish you a nice Sunday, enjoy the rest of the weekend and have a good start of the week! And as always: feedback is welcome! If you liked what you saw, consider following our journeys on social media! We’ve been rather active on Snapchat and Instagram lately. Just sayin. 😇
Take care and until next week! 👹👻👽🤖
