Weekly Recap #3: “MfG – mit fetzigen Grüßen!”
This is Harry from diesdas.digital, and it’s been a week again, which means: recap time! So many things happened these past seven days, so let’s hit the road with the dull stuff:
Paperwork
In Germany we have a word for “too much annoying paperwork”, which is “Papierkrieg”, literally translating to “paper warfare”. Is that a thing in English? Or is the whole concept of Papierkrieg just a product of German bureaucracy? Anyhow, it just never ends, does it? So many forms to fill out … I don’t even know what this one was about, but we had to fuck the system, wenigstens ’n bisschen.
People
As you can tell from the stamp on the letter above, Lars finally joined us, having finished work with his previous employer. At last, we got Lorenz, Lars and me full-time in one office, reducing the effort required to keep everyone in the loop. Although, to be honest, I didn’t mind the experience of the past two weeks, with us scattered all over the place … Slack + Google Apps + occasional phone calls worked pretty well to keep everyone up to date, which gives me confidence that remote work is a viable option for us. I’ve always felt that we should embrace remote work as a company from the start, rather than clinging to the very inflexible “we need everyone full-time & on-site” model.
Interlude with Erik
Erik Spiekermann stopped by for a visit, spreading some wisdom, as he usually does:
Always name your colors! When we worked with the BVG, we wanted to introduce a new color, which was called “traffic yellow”: nobody would’ve wanted that. When we renamed it “sunny yellow”, newspapers titled “here comes the sun” and everybody loved it!
There you have it! And if you ever need help naming your colors, there’s nobody better out there than Gabby Lord, trust me on this! When I was still working at A Color Bright, everybody called for her to name colors.
Projects
Lots of stuff happened, including a kick off meeting with Alphabet Type and a workshop with SmarterGerman (you might remember the “how did you learn German” survey). Both went super well and we’re excited to get back to coding, designing, building with the results from these meetings.
I gotta say though, meetings take up a tremendous amount of time … be it for advancing the ongoing projects or for keeping a steady flow of upcoming work. It’s challenging to make time for being in the zone, when you’re getting hammered with mails and messages and calendar notifications. That being said: A) It’s a luxury problem to have and B) it’s only been the third week, so everything being a bit chaotic should surprise no one. We just gotta find a better rhythm to get all this under control.
By the way: We haven’t forgotten about the promised blog post about the German survey, but we can only do one thing at a time. It’s coming, promised!
New biz!
Again, thanks go out to everyone who recommended us to potential new clients—because of you some interesting prospects popped up: We talked to a startup as well as established companies, might be giving another workshop, and we are ready to start two new projects. Smallish in scope, but you never know what turns into something bigger eventually.
Other observations
- Tech of the week: harp.js — a static site generator à la Middleman, but without the Ruby dependency. 🤖
- Find of the week: Oh Beautiful Beer (via Ivo Gabrowitsch 🍻)
- Lightbulb moment of the week: Work is so much more enjoyable when you’re around people you can trust and rely on, personally, but also regarding skill. Even though so much was going on this week, I never felt overwhelmed or stressed, because I knew these fellas would have my back. 🙌
- Read of the week: The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber. Now that I’m commuting to the office again, I have time to read on the train and started this book. The premise is quite odd: A Christian missionary is sent to an alien world to teach the locals about Jesus, God and the Bible. Avatar, but with churches and prayers instead of guns. I didn’t expect much, but it revealed itself to be a total page turner. So much care and sensitivity in the descriptions of the locals and the protagonist’s thoughts. Beautiful language, too. Highly recommended, to my own surprise. 📖
And that being said, it’s a wrap! We’re excited to be back in the office on Monday, but for now, have a nice weekend! 🖖
