Why It’s Only The Work That Matters
A timely lesson from MozFest
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Stood in a geometric room, portholes for windows, odd comfy couches and plenty coffee. I had a great talk with a developer friend at the end of the Mozilla Festival over the weekend. I was a noob so he asked me what I had been expecting. Well, we’re building a company I said, so recruiting was part of it, but being in a room full of makers had its own benefits.
Overall, what struck me was the level of attention given toward the work produced. The showcases came in many forms: peculiar switches on older ideas; random obsessions turned into hack projects; steampunk standard gizmos and some genuinely useful products that caught cheers from the crowd. I found it interesting.
There were many disciplines crossing paths here and so the focus on creating great works — whether labours of love or something more product orientated — the importance of focusing on process and production was heartening.
I’m used to online video meetups, film festivals and entrepreneurial crowds. A lot of those sorts of conventions have a focus on fan-bait celebrities. People tweet about who they‘re standing next to rather than the work on show — this happens at MozFest too (James Ball was in the house) but to a far lesser degree I think — so it was refreshing to watch all the love poured over the work itself. That was cool and a rare thing and something I hope MozFest retains.
I’m usually surrounded by startup people whose common tendencies centre around due credit and ambition. As I walked around the makes and demos at MozFest there wasn’t so much of that. I heard people speak with such zeal about what they had just made and how; the pleasure was in the making, not the glory of having done the thing.
For me this weekend was a good reminder and a timely one. As we’re recruiting our first hires and bringing talent into Storygami we’re so very aware that we need to find people who fit our product philosophy.
I mean, the degree of admin involved in recruitment alone — contracts, salaries,equity etc — it’s easy to forget that we’re all coming together to make great stuff. I came away thinking that we’d do well to remind anyone we bring in that building great things is all that matters for Storygami — that everything else is distraction.
This invariably means setting egos aside, sacrificing time, energy and sometimes sanity so that you leave behind something cool, something beyond yourself. I’ve learnt that nothing beats that. Nothing beats knowing what you just made was worth every drop of sweat and it better to know that the folks that helped you build it feel the same way.
It was this kind of singular passion for creation that I found on display at every floor at this festival. That’s what I’ll look for in our first hires: that love for imagination and creativity. I’m grateful for the reminder.
