Fresh Air Meet (FAM)!

#00 Blog Thursday

Jack Anto

Published in

reportbee

4 min readNov 21, 2017

Why FAM?

To get out of boring office review meetings.
Save your productive 3 hours.
Monthly once a meet.
Feel the fresh air and move out of the box.
Walk out together, Team bonding.

3 Years and Consistent FAM

Take a while, have you been early in the morning, yeah! Obviously YES! At least once in our life we would have got up. And sometime we do visit parks, beach and other common place to feel the fresh air. But have you tried to attend a meeting at 7.00 IST in the morning. Do try it is the dope of fresh ideas and fresh thoughts. By science, our mind is clear after a sleep, resulting in clear thoughts, and effective communications with confidence. Try once it is magic!

In the same thought a team of designer met once a month on early morning. This is not something new to me. I have been practicing this for 7 years in one of active design community (Madrasters) in Chennai, India. But not in a regular basis, this also the main factor pushed to do with my internal Design Team at Report Bee. Myself Jack, I head the Design Team at Report Bee.

It all started with 4 member team including me 3 years before Oct 2014. Its touchwood; since we started, not even single month was left without FAM. It is always a fact and said, any meeting has to be properly organized, we need one dedicated person in charge. Special mention: Yesvanth alise Yesva (FAM Manager), he took the extra challenge and made it happen for all these years. Best part is he is not part of my team officially, he took a break/left the team 4 months before and he is still managing and organizing the FAM, thanks buddy for being with team till now.

FAM Agenda:

Quick Share of all our past month work, individually one after the other.- 10 Minutes
Upcoming project discussion. - 20 Minutes
Controversy talks (Good & Bad) - 20 Minutes
Presentation/Activity on any topic - Learning curve/take a way. It is round robin, every member will have chance of presenting on the following months. - 45 Minutes
Jack - notes/ Announcements - 15 Minutes
Selfie of the month (Ritual :P)- 10 Minutes ( I mean it, because to get the best selfie the team works really hard :P)
Breakfast & Personal chats (CSK delight)- 60 Minutes
Back to office at 10.00 IST.

Learning of FAM!

Public Speaking: Encourage design talks, this increase the confidence for the designer in public speaking. Generally designer lacks badly, my personal observation.
Project Clarity: Loud and clear talks and more clarity on the fellow designer’s projects.
Punctuality Increased: The meeting always start on time! We made it successful only because we started it on time. FAM has simple thumb rule: If anyone miss/attend late for the meeting post 7.00 AM. He/She will be the sponsoring the FAM breakfast. This makes everyone punctual, positive approach.
Griming Talks: Open talk for all the unanswered question and even the minor doubts will be addressed.
Social Presence: Very few designers out of design school or self-taught designers, takes an effort to promote/share their work socially. In FAM, Designer who takes the presentation, has to click and post the selfie and promote him/herself (Mandatory). By this, it will increase the visibility as a designer in social medium.