Weekly #27: Great Good Things
Technically more of a quarterly since we have been radio silent, with our Weekly posts, for the last 3 months. For the first time we’re publishing on Medium and hopefully will keep doing it every week. Enjoy! If you really want you can read past editions here.
The short
- Finland, Finland, Finland, the country where I want to be…
- The Great Good Place
- Year One AK (After Komuhn)
- Ideas worth sharing - TEDxPeniche
- And then there were 5
- Retreat, retreat we got a treat
- Show me the money
The long
Finland, Finland, Finland, the country where I want to be... Anatita has a great passion for Japan. She dreams of travelling there one day and to discover the mysteries of the mix of ancient and ultra modern culture. In the meanwhile, she had to settle for Europe’s substitute — Finland.
Since part of the team has a second home in Finland, we booked her first-ever flight to get to know the lakes, the light nights, the strongest predators (mosquitos) and the Finnish stoic culture. For ten days and nights we chatted, played, ate, trekked, ran between sauna and the river, enjoyed the sun (yes sun, this year Finnish Summer is having a record count of sunny days), trekked some more and even worked some in betweens. Tita got some illustration inspiration from the creator of Moomin, we stomped the streets of the two biggest cities in Finland and in the end, we packed the bags together to start a new adventure in Portugal.
The Great Good Place. It’s not that we’ve been hiding it from you, we’ve given some small hints here and there but the reality is we’ve been a bit overwhelmed with it all… Well here it comes: Komuhn’s up to something so good it’s GREAT! Our team is engaged in doing everything possible for the team members to be able to work remotely from wherever they want. Now, it happens to be an interesting coincidence (or is it a coincidence?) that all of us seem to have a passion for the same place in the world — Peniche, Portugal.
Peniche is a small fishermen’s city in a peninsula that is the second most western point in Europe. There you can also find one of the best surf spots in Europe (some say in the whole world but we’re too biased to enter that discussion…) and we want to make it also one of the best spots in the world for bringing people together around great ideas. Here’s a hint for you: it involves an open design lab 😉 It’s just the early stages but it’s been great with all the great good people that have joined us so far. Check more about it here: thegreatgoodplace.org and join our project group if you fancy open participation projects.
Year One AK (After Komuhn). One year together, that’s always a big one, right? Let’s see what fits in ours:
- Komuhn rose from our pre-project codenamed Next, as in what’s next after our time in Espaço Ó (Wondering what’s that? We’ll share a case study about it soon). Pedro wrote a bit about it here.
- We met Susana and fell in love, made a proposal and she said yes ❤️
- We had an epic team Hangout on the beach and two team members lost their surf virginity!
- Half of the team spent the Summer in Finland making proposals to all the cool cats: Ikea Bootcamp with Ground, WDCD climate challenge with Design team for superheroes and Erasmus+ with Y-learn. Didn’t succeed. Big learning points.
- We had our first client project as team Komuhn. Another big learning point.
- We did two “road trips” to Lisbon and Porto looking for the best collaborative spaces.
- At the end of 2017 Susana decided it was time to part ways and it was yet another moment for us to stop and reflect where we’d be heading from then on. Her most valuable legacy to the team was “money talks” as we called them. In these gatherings, we talked — money. But not only, also all the difficult stuff. They should have been called “honest talks”.
- The year was spent between together and remote work. Susana spent some time traveling and Riikka and Pedro also spent almost half of the year in Finland.
- During this time we opened and 10 months later closed a coworking space, our little Use; a space to ground and to find our path.
- What stands out from the first year of learning to walk together, is exactly that: Walking together. We’re a team where each member is just as important as all of us. There’s no boss, there are no employees.
- Approaching the end of our first year happened also something remarkable: A common dream rising (TGGP). Pedro let his thought slip out in one of our team meetings very carefully, and from one moment to another, we made it together a great big future plan. A plan, that led to yet another team member, Gabs, to us.
- One last but not the least events in our first year as Komuhn was taking Anatita to Finland.
What a short, great, frustrating, instructive and happy year it has been. We hope there’s many more to come!
Ideas worth sharing — TEDxPeniche. Here we all believe that (good) ideas are what makes the world move (not money, that’s so 2000’s) and so what best way to make an impression in our newly adopted hometown than to organize the ultimate ideas fest — a TEDx!
We are aiming to have the event happen in November so the preparation process is now starting full steam. The theme we would like to see explored is strong bonds or in Portuguese “Vínculos”, to try and explore ideas about togetherness, community, collaborations, networks, and all sort of connections, which at the end of the day is what make us tick!
As is our trusted approach the organization of this event is fully open and accessible to anyone who would like to join and we have met some pretty amazing people who are now as invested in seeing this event succeed as we are! The most gratifying thing about working this way is that you can meet the most interesting people at every turn and learn with them and their experiences how to make these events better for everyone while also bettering ourselves in the process, pretty big win-win situation if you ask me.
As for the event itself, we already have a few very interesting ideas and we are now narrowing them down and exploring their feasibility, so we should have more news on that soon! Stay tuned for the next episodes, we guarantee they won’t disappoint! Follow and participate in the project, here.
And then there were 5. We didn’t really want to have more. We kind of had agreed this is not the right time and that we are quite enough as we are. Huh, what are we talking about? Wasn’t this about team Komuhn and not about Riikka and Pedro’s ever-expanding family? Well, happens that this goes for both… You have to admit, we make pretty great kids so seems like they’ll keep popping out every once in a while :D
After Susana left Komuhn, we decided to keep it small for a while. The problem is, we’re not very good at keeping things simple. When we met Gabrielle, little we knew that only a few months after it was clear that if she wanted, she’d become part of Komuhn. She was for a while on “a trial” (we’ll tell about this process more soon) and when she decided to give this craziness a go, it would’ve only felt weird to welcome her and not Ines, who somehow had crept into our circles. And we are extremely happy where we are now. Not only did we meet two amazing and skilled women, but also got them to believe in us so much, that they want to be one of us.
Oh and, baby Kai is under training already (three months in!)
Retreat, retreat we got a treat. Growth is usually associated with pain, there is even the medical term “growing pains” to explain the aches and pains of growing up, and our case was no exception. Sure the pains weren’t physical, as far as our health goes we are all well, thanks for wondering, but there were some discomfort and some needed clarification regarding the long-term vision for Komuhn by Gabs and Inês. And as any healthy relationship goes, if communication is needed, communication shall be had, and so we organized an afternoon retreat for the whole team! This happened at a bar at Baleal beach, and amongst lunch, ice-cream and ciders we had an amazing afternoon of sharing ideas and our histories, of bonding, learning more about Komuhn and its values and seeing all the doubts and concerns being thrown out the window, reinforcing our connection as colleagues, friends, family and officially becoming a fampany!
Show me the money. Now this is a very hard topic for our fampany. Some people find it very easy to discuss money and payments, but we are far more comfortable discussing ideas and brainstorming than leaning over excel sheets of our own bills! Regardless, as adults (or so we are told we should be) we do need to provide for ourselves, our families, our pets and any needs that only money can buy! This takes us to the new phase we are now in which we have grown our team and we are motivated and eager to put all our skills to work: we are now looking for the paying customers, for the projects in which we can help others turn their ideas into great impact in exchange for money, for the projects with similar values to ours who would like to co-create something amazing together. We will now immerse ourselves on the long hours of job hunting, endless job applications, and tones of interviews, until we can find THE project that will make us smile for the next few month — just kidding, I am hoping we will get it on the first strike! Is it you? Let’s talk.
This one was a team effort but from now on each team member will write on their turn and share all, in their own view, the insights about our ways of working, of what’s going on, of our adventures, of the learnings and also the struggles. Each one will take turns in being an open book! Give us some love 👏 and follow Komuhn below 👇
We are Komuhn. A team designing and building ideas towards impacting the world in a positive way.
