#context: we meet once a week for three hours remotely

[kiefbowl]

why is she assigning a "group project" on the first day of an eight week course. and why is it a case briefing. a group case briefing?? okay.

[shitihaveheardatwork]

The Quest For A PS5 Continues

You’ll notice I didn’t update for like 2 weeks. That’s because the two weeks I spent in quarantine, working remotely, were highly uneventful. I took a lot of boring webinars, got a little certificate from the ALA for watching said webinars, and mostly just got good at color-coding spreadsheets logging my work hours.

Still, I was nervous to return to work on Friday. I’d been spoiled by bosslessness. How would I deal with returning to the physical office and, more importantly, my superior?

These thoughts occupy my brain on the drive to work. On the highway, I see a truck with a large decal.

“LOOKING FOR KIDNEY DONOR, TYPE A BLOOD”, followed by a phone number. I contemplated that I had type-A blood, wondered what it would be like to give an organ to a stranger, and was vaguely bummed out that this is the world capitalism wants us to live in. Billboard begging to stay alive from the back of your car.

We got off on different exits from the highway, but somehow the truck passed me again miles later, just as I was about to pull into the library parking lot. Was that a sign? Did I spit on the hands of fate by not calling that number? Who can say.

Time to face the boss.

I dreaded hearing about the inauguration or recent 1/6-related arrests, but it was all for naught. Turns out my boss had something bigger than politics on his mind:

Finally scoring a PS5.

You may remember from previous posts that acquiring a PS5 has been a stated goal for my boss since my first day. Apparently his battle with Sony’s artificial scarcity tactics is continuing to rage.

He did not speak to me much when I came in.

“What did I miss?” I ask.

“Not a single thing. Welcome back to the suck,” he answers.

Welcome To The Suck is a marine saying, iirc. Did he get it from the movie Jarhead, starring Jake Gyllenhaal? Is he a veteran? I don’t know, and I didn’t ask. Like previous attempts of mine to be friendly, he does not ask any questions of his own, like how my time in quarantine was.

He announces very casually that he’s trying once again to buy a PS5. He spends the first 3 hours of my shift in the reading area on his iPad, feverishly navigating from website to website, trying to score his $500 prize.

I know this is what he was doing because I got the blow-by-blow.

“Kohl’s has one! I-oh damn, it’s gone.”

“Ungh! Best Buy just messed me up! They wanted an authentication code, and by the time it got delivered to my email it was already gone!”

Updates like this land on me periodically. Meanwhile I reshelve. The cart is very full. I don’t think he bothered to reshelve anything while I was gone. There’s some books and DVDs on the cart I’m interested in, and I quietly check them out to myself and put them in my bag.

It’s about ten minutes past three when my boss announces that he’s late for a meeting. He calls in, staying at his reading room location. He for all intents and purposes looks exactly like he did when he was e-shopping.

“I had issues of various natures stacked up on one another,” is the reason he gives for being late. I love that phrase. I’m going to use it as an excuse for everything.

I’m not privy to the other side of the meeting, but just based on my bosses side, I can say pretty confidently that he’s a killjoy. From his responses and other context clues, I can tell they’re having a meeting about the planned “Book a Librarian” program. It’s what it sounds like on the tin: you book time with a librarian. They help you with research questions or some other technical issue you’re having.

Boss Wallace was having none of this.

“What if someone sues us? We need policies in place,” is more or less what he keeps repeating. He tells an anecdotal story about a library he used to work at, where they were almost sued after helping a patron with a job application. The patron did not get the job, and decided it was the library’s fault, and decided to sue. I couldn’t confirm or deny this story with some cursory googling. Considering everything though, considering his pattern of behavior, I’d believe he made it up just to have less work to do.

The meeting ends, and he immediately gets on the phone. With a coworker confidant on the line, he complains about the incompetence of management, their unwillingness to deal with “certain realities.”

By the time the PS5 shopping, the meeting, and the phone call is over, there’s only 30 minutes left until it’s time to go home.

“So, do you read much?” he asks.

It’s out of nowhere, and it’s pleasant. I think this is the first time in my month of employment he’s shown much interest in me beyond as a soundboard.

“I just finished the 4th Dune book,” I say.

“Well, now you’re in my wheelhouse!” he replies.

We chat about sci-fi for the rest of the shift as we shut things down and lock up.

“See you Monday,” I say outside, as I remove my key from the door.

“I won’t be in Monday. See you Wednesday,” he says, getting into his car.

This brief interaction was pleasant enough, but I’m relieved that I’ll get to go so long without seeing him.

Little does he know, little does anyone in the [redacted] City library system know, that I’ve got a job interview on Tuesday, somewhere else.

I’m nervous for it, but excited too. It’s a job I’d be happy taking, and I don’t think I’d miss much here. I have friends at the institution I’m applying to, who I know run a tight ship with a strong mission. It’ll be interesting, if the interview goes well, to see if anyone in the office will note my high spirits on Wednesday.

[physicsandfandoms]

2, 10, and 15 for Cy and 9, 12, and 17 for Khlora?

Cy

2: Post a line of dialogue from your OC.

This is a tough one. He’s so quiet, a lot of my favorite Cy moments are his own thoughts rather than anything he says out loud. And much of this fic needs more context than can easily be given. So, this is more than a line of dialogue, but I think it stands well on it’s own.

A memory surfaced, and he let it flow.

He remembered their days together as SeniorPadawans when Raen had begun formal training as a healer. Even as younglingsthey had both been strongly attuned to the Living Force, something Cy suspectedhad been part of what brought them together in the first place. Over timeRaen’s gifts blossomed into one of the rarest talents for a Jedi, healing.Already paired with a Jedi Master for several years, and not wanting to leaveher, they would learn healing arts when they were at the Temple, but were alsostill assigned regular missions on their journey towards knighthood. Trainingto become a healer would start in earnest after they were knighted.

“I think Master Che is trying to kill me,” Raensaid, falling back into the grass. They worked the hair tie out of their sweatycopper hair and let it fan out around their head like the stellar halo of aneclipsing planet.

“Well,” Cy said dryly, “at least if she did, sheif anyone is prepared to bring you back from the brink so she can work you todeath again.”

10: You are conducting a ritual. What 5 items would you need to summon your OC?

A pot of tea, a cup, a plant, a Jedi holocron, and an interesting book. Not only will that summon him, but that will keep him in place for several hours.

15: Your OC is given the chance to go back in time. Where do they go and what do they do?

Hoo boy would he jump at the chance for that one. Provided that this chance is given once things have settled down enough that it is clear that Chancellor/Emperor Palpatine is in fact the other Sith the Jedi were looking for, Cy would want to go back a couple of months before the Battle of Naboo. I am assuming that the general details of that mission are well enough known to your average Knight since that incident led to the discovery of the Sith’s return, Qui-Gon’s death, and a VONC leading to a new Chancellor. Cy would head straight to the Jedi council and convince them to let him speak to the full council. Something like:

“I know this is unbelievable, but please listen to what I am about to say. Somehow, the Force has sent me back here from 15 years in the future. We have one shot to prevent the fall of the Republic and the destruction of the Jedi Order that has occured in the time I am from. The trade disputes around Naboo and the Trade Federation are going to get worse. In two months the Queen of Naboo is going to ask for our help in negotiations of a trade blockade of her planet led by Nute Gunray. This is a trap. There will be a Dathomirian Zabrak Sith apprentice involved in this dispute, and we need to track him back to his Sith Master and kill them both once we have indisputable evidence of their treason against the Republic. The Sith Master is Senator Palpatine of Naboo. I will submit to any questioning or tests to prove that I am telling the truth. Oh, and someone should keep an eye on Master Dooku. He became the Sith Apprentice sometime after the Dathomirian was killed, but I think that’s still preventable at this point.”

Then he would go to the creche with the intention of picking up Khlora and hugging her because he misses being able to pick her up. He would get halfway there before realizing that she hasn’t met him yet and if he were to do that he would probably get bitten, and he wouldn’t blame her. When they did first meet is only a few months ahead of him, and he would be standing in the hallway debating if he should try to replicate their first accidental meeting as it was when it was, when Raen finds him. Raen came looking for him because it must be a bizarre feeling over a Force Bond when the other party in that is suddenly displaced in time.

Khlora

9: Your OC is having a nightmare. What is it?

What isn’t it? She’s lived through a lot of nightmare fodder and I don’t think anyone, Jedi or clone alike, doesn’t have PTSD from the Clone Wars. Likely a nightmare about the Clone Wars that consists of being overrun by droids and everyone dying. If I want to be absolutely horrible I could say that there might be some nightmares induced by being on Coruscant in the days following the 501st’s march on the Temple because all of that death might have some kind of reverberation in the Force, and that might be a Unifying Force type thing which is what she’s more attuned to.

12: What does your OC give another OC for their birthday?

Despite having some very basic interests of tea and plants, Cy is not an easy person to buy for. He definitely does not want a lot of stuff. Khlora typically conspires with Raen to plan a trip for the three of them (or four, sometimes Cy’s former master Arriaddik can join them too) offworld to somewhere with beautiful wilderness to stay for about a week.

17: How does your OC do during the zombie apocalypse?

She’s pretty okay. She has good survival skills, and would likely hole up somewhere remote until she comes up with some kind of plan to put an end to this. She prefers bladed weapons, but would get better with a rifle since that has a greater range so there’s less risk of contamination. 

[humansofhds]

Chantal Sanchez, MTS ’22

“I'm from Southern California. My first time actually leaving California was to come all the way to Boston for my undergrad at Boston College. I studied physics there during my first year, until luckily, being at a Catholic school, I was forced to take theology and philosophy. That's how I fell in love with theology.”

Chantal Sanchez, MTS ’22, is a second-year MTS student studying South Asian religions and is a member of the Harvard Buddhist Community's Buddhism and Race speaker series planning committee.

From Academic Decathlon to Lifelong Passion

During my senior year of high school, I quit the softball team and joined something called “academic decathlon,” which was basically like a nerd competition. It was all the seven subjects – econ, science, math, social science, literature, music, art – and then speech, interview, and an essay. Every year, the competition focuses on a specific subject. The year I joined, it was all about India. So I learned an obscene amount about India.

At the end of that year, I graduated and started at Boston College as a physics major. We had a few key requirements, including theology and cultural diversity. When I saw there was a Hinduism class that counted for cultural diversity, I was like, cool – I just learned all about India. So I took that class, along with another in comparative Islam and Christianity. Starting with those classes, I fell in love with the study of theology. In my Hinduism class, in particular, I realized I enjoy the work. I had developed a relationship with the professor, and I was loving what we were learning. By my sophomore year, I had switched my major from physics to theology.

Fast forward to the end of sophomore year, as I was preparing to study abroad in France. I heard from my Hinduism professor that there was a study abroad in Nepal that I didn't know about. I changed my plans, and I ended up doing a language program for three weeks in India before flying to Kathmandu, Nepal, for four months of study abroad.

For the academic decathlon in high school, I had learned Indian history from the beginning of time all the way up to the current day. I remember seeing a picture of the wind palace, Hawa Mahal, when I was studying during my senior year of high school. On study abroad, I actually got to see it in real life, in Jaipur. I had learned so much from books, so much about India’s historical background, deities, and iconography. Before going there, I knew that book religion is very different than place practice, as it always is. But seeing the doctrines and beliefs I had learned about in real life was transformative.

My studies abroad solidified things for me: I would specialize in South Asian religions. Today, that's what I'm doing at HDS.

Curiosity and Faith

I grew up in a secular household. My mom was 17 when she had me, so she was a child herself. She didn’t know what religion was, and she didn't really want to force anything on us. We actually shopped around different religions, like Latter Day Saints, Jehovah's Witness, a myriad of random Christian churches in So-Cal. A lot of them were hippie types of places – just music the whole time. I think we even went to a temple. When I was 12 she told me and my sister, you guys figure it out. I'm not going to tell you what to believe.

For a while, I was just kind of neutral to religion. I felt like I respected human beings, regardless of their beliefs. But I was still curious about faith. I always wondered, what is it about people that makes them believe? I always thought about it, especially the way religion connects so many people in the world.

During my study abroad in college, I often went to the Shiva temple with my host family in Nepal. There was one random Sunday when I was on my way to meet up with some friends from school, and I had an intense need to go to the Shiva temple on my own. I thought, OK, I already know the routine: I circumambulate this tree, touch this, do this. So I did it, on my own. Stopping at the temple became part of my routine for walking to school every day.

There was another moment when I was studying at the Buddhist monastery in Nepal, where there were practicing monks of all ages. One of my teachers was actually a Buddhist monk, who taught us, verse by verse, one of their founding texts, just as if we were monks in the monastery as well. I remember once, my friend and I went down to daily puja, which means worship. This worship involved a lot of sounds. They blow horns, there's a drum, and sometimes they chant. We were sitting and meditating in this cacophony of noises, which might surprise some people who don't think that's how you practice, especially meditation-wise. But it was in that moment of being drowned by all these sounds that I found clarity. I realized this is for me.

After being at a monastery and having these experiences, I've recently fully identified as Buddhist. I have my own Buddhist shrine altar. I’m on an interesting journey.

Coming to HDS

As a first-gen college student, I didn't know anything about college. I didn't even know Boston College was Jesuit until I got there, which is ridiculous. I had a theology professor during my freshman year who really helped me figure out that college is meant to explore what you think, not just to get a job. The job will come later, she told me, as long as you find your interests.

This professor, along with my Hinduism professor and another theology professor, helped lay the stepping stones for me. That path ultimately led me to grad school.

As I geared up for grad school applications, I was looking for schools that would support my specific studies. But I also loved the Jesuit values of Boston College, which is very much whole-person oriented. That was something I had in mind as well, that I wanted an environment that would develop me as a person.

I did Diversity and Explorations in 2019, which allowed me to meet some professors and see Harvard Divinity School. Ultimately, this visit, along with my wish to specialize and have interactions with a myriad of different religions and different people, is really what solidified my decision to come to HDS.

Exploring Interests in New Ways

For my senior thesis at BC, I focused on how the participation of women in politics has grown through Hindu nationalism, which is an interesting paradox. When you look at a fundamentalist right-wing type of organization, it usually hearkens back to traditional values. The traditional values of womanhood are to stay in the home. But now you have these women who are fierce proponents of Hindu nationalist politics who are in leadership positions. It's an interesting thing to see. I explored that during my senior thesis, and I’ve explored that more at HDS. In particular, I took a religious nationalism class this past year that gave me a breadth of understanding of religious nationalism, historically and all over the world. It really put my thesis into perspective.

I think one of my favorite classes I took this past year was called Writing South Asia. It was like an everyday English literature class, but focused on South Asian writers. I got to read poetry anthologies, novels, and plays from critical South Asian authors. It was like a breath of fresh air, honestly. Outside of academics, I always read fiction. I appreciated the chance to read genres that I read on my own time in an academic context, as well as the opportunity to gain a different perspective on my studies within South Asia (in particular, a perspective from South Asian voices, rather than from academic texts written by old white men).

Another favorite this past semester was my “Introduction to Buddhist Commentaries” class with Charles Hallisey. We read an entire commentary a week, which is a lot of reading and a lot to process. But the class really helped me understand how to look at what scripture is. We asked, what is text versus scripture? What is the meaning versus my meaning? Can we even use the word scripture in terms of Eastern religions? That class really was a mind-blow.

Remote Learning, Real Challenges

I initially thought I would apply for a Fulbright to continue my undergraduate thesis research after graduation. But unfortunately, I don't know anymore. A lot of that is because of the past year of Zoom University was unkind to me. I was very depressed all this past year because of school online.

I've always been a very driven person, and school has been my life. As a first-gen college student, since I was born, that's what my whole family told me to do. Your only job was to go to college. To not know what I want any more has been a little bit rough. I'm a little lost, and I hope that going back in person, making some connections, and talking with people will help me get back on track.

But among not having a great time this whole past year, a highlight was my Hindi Professor Richard Delacy. We had Hindi class four days a week. It was the most fun, engaging online class ever.

I also enjoyed being a part of the Harvard Buddhist Community's Buddhism and Race speaker series planning committee. We helped organize an eight-month long speaker series, which we’ve been planning since September of last year. All first semester we planned, contacted speakers, and figured out the funding. Since January of this year, we’ve “hosted” one speaker a month to explore different topics relating to the large umbrella of what ‘Buddhism and Race’ entails. A focus has been how we can look at our own practice of Buddhism and the Dharma and apply that to the issue of our time: race and racism.

Looking Forward

I’m really looking forward to being able to meet people and make friends! I didn’t make many because of Zoom and I can’t wait to diversify. I am also really excited to just be a part of the greater Harvard community. In undergrad, I was always going to random events here and there if I had a spare hour and I hope to be able to do the same now. And of course, I am particularly pumped to be continuing my work with HBC’s Buddhism and Race committee as we gear up to plan a dynamic in-person event in spring of 2022!

Interviewed and edited by Gianna Cacciatore; photos courtesy of Chantal Sanchez.

[godaddywebsitebuilder285]

Connecting the Dots

Two plans: one for design, one for culture.

What I’ve found is that the DNA between both dynamics must be inextricable from one another. Creating with compassion in an environment fueled by compassion means we never lose sight of what it’s all about: people. Beyond functioning in this manner because “it’s the right thing to do,” quality of work, loyalty internally (team) and externally (users), and product innovation are all benefits to reap.

Earlier we talked through the concept of “simplicity” and its application to creation and environment. Now, let’s revisit a few other examples of healthy benchmarks from a creative culture as we’ve discussed in this book:

Slowing down / pausing with intent

Everyone has a seat at the table

The New Day One

In taking a focused look at these facets, their correlation to HCD is readily apparent:

Culture: Slowing down / pausing with intent Design: Discovery / observation

The Swedish concept of fika transcends a mere “coffee break.” It’s about slowing down, the act of pausing during a typical day and making time to have a dialogue with someone (though a good cup of coffee is a vital part). I ensure this time is not only a known quantity within my team’s creative culture, but that it’s protected and actively utilized.

Instead of getting a product manager’s Powerpoint wireframe in your inbox with a request to “make it look nice” or a client’s request to crank out a design for their approval by EOD, we must slow down to understand the people who will be interacting with our design (and the design’s potential impact on others, the environment and community in which it will be used, and so on). Rushing to get something done to tick an account manager’s client-appeasement box at the expense of the human experience is to sacrifice empathy, quality, and any prospect of innovation.

Culture: Everyone has a seat at the table Design: Inclusion

As the very definition of cultural transparency, Nick Sarillo’s pizza parlors tack their full financial statements to a wall, daily, for all employees to see. Everyone’s hourly wage is listed on a nearby whiteboard, with the means to make more money articulated in tandem (training in more areas of business = increased hourly wage). Many managers have worked their way up in this manner, and offer training to other employees who wish to advance by taking on more responsibility. This is about collaboration yielding success to both the employee and the business, the sharing of information, and access for all; key dynamics of an inclusive culture.

Inclusion in the design process enables us, as creators, to recognize our own personal biases. By identifying the exclusion in our work, we humbly set aside our assumptions; connecting with people from diverse communities, building empathy, will expand our product’s reach (access). Via engaging humans throughout our design process, listening to them, and usability testing iteratively, objective solutions that yield innovation follow suit.

Culture: The New Day One Design: Ethnography

The New Day One concept evolves an employee’s first day from formulaic and sterile into directly personal and custom. Via the “Inspiration” portion of the day and venturing away from the office, we gain insight into a new team member as an individual that transcends what folio work can yield. What physical aspects of their selected location have impacted who they are? How did it inspire their way of creating, or approaching problems? Understanding the impact of spatial dynamics on an individual is vital toward an individualistic, yet ultimately holistic, view.

Ethnographic research provides an environmental context to human interaction that a video-conference interview could never yield. Through direct observation, ethnography is the qualitative study of human beings in their native environment. Is the individual sitting in a high-traffic area in an office, causing frequent distraction from their work? Are they a field worker primarily utilizing a mobile device in direct sunlight, yielding paramountcolor contrast needs? By making research truly human, we gain an understanding of how those we observe see the world and how they ultimately engage with it.

For the Greater Good

Greater Good Studio (GGS) is a social impact-focused human- centered design firm co-founded by Sara Cantor Aye and George Aye. Their business is located within the Logan Share, a co- working space they also founded in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood.

I reached out to the Studio to ask if I could stop by their space and observe a “morning in the life” view of their process: culture and design, organically, as both unfolded. Without hesitation, Sara (a former Northwestern University instructor) extended me an offer to join the team for observation. After signing a non- disclosure agreement, we agreed on a date for my visit.

When I arrived on a Monday morning, George (formerly of IDEO) greeted me with a cup of coffee and walked me up the stairs into the naturally well-lit Logan Share space. I noticed the open seating in the co-working section was already nearly full, as he gave me a tour of the “configuration by human need and intent”-based layout and active-project areas. On long single sheets of cardboard suspended by custom-built fasteners, entire lifecycles of project- centric human-centered design artifacts were on display. Once a project is deployed, George explained, the cardboard is detached and saved for forthcoming iteration, with fresh sheets re-fastened to form the partitions of a new project space thereafter.

The six core steps of the Studio’s HCD process manifest themselves in the following way:

Framing Defining questions to answer and people to engage

Research Learning from people about their needs and values

Synthesis Finding patterns of behavior and areas of opportunity

Concepting Creating a high volume of new ideas

Prototyping Making tangible mock-ups and gathering feedback

Piloting Testing solutions in real time with real people

As a team, GGS functions via a working method called ROWE (Results Only Work Environment), a concept leveraged from Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson’s book Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It: The Results-Only Revolution. Taken from an article on the Studio’s blog, they describe the practice within GGS like this:

“The basic principle behind ROWE is that staff doesn’t need to be supervised, when given the tools, clear expectations, and deadlines people will not only do their work, but do it better than if they were trying to fit into a mold. Within GGS, this practice is exercised by very diligent calendar management, clear deadlines, expectations on deliverables, and Cookie Rewards (little treats we give each other if we have to move something on the calendar).”

Once a month the entire team pauses for a five-hour, non-client project block of time called “internal day.” This time is reserved for studio-centric things: team members sharing learnings from conferences they’ve attended, how to improve internal practices, past project debriefs, etc. It’s the act of pausing with intent, in full effect.

Sara arrived a few minutes into my tour of the space, and the GGS team’s “BD charrette” was the first employee gathering (remote and in-person) of the morning. “BD” stands for “business development,” and in a cozy seating area, everyone had a seat at the table in all senses of the phrase. Sara and George ran through the status of a current request for proposal, then each team member had the opportunity to voice their opinion about whether the RFP should be pursued based on how it aligned with GGS’s (and their employees’) personal, values. Everyone was heard; every voice was respected.

The dialogue eventually shifted to another potential new client, this time with GGS at the presentation stage. Again, everyone at the table gave their feedback on Sara and George’s presentation plan of attack and, again, every team member’s voice carried equal value and weight. The studio-wide inclusion in the business owners’ decision making was genuine, effortless, and natural.

Forty-five minutes later, the group made a physical transition to a few nearby couches; less than a three-foot walk, as I eyed it. I inquired about the very minor spatial change for this next leg of the meeting and was told, “There’s a difference in purpose, so we transition to a different space.” Each member of the team then took their turn describing their weekend in three words:

“Sunshine, beach, baking.”

I got my turn as well. Changing the energy on those couches, from new business to being focused on the individual, made for a palpable climate change. In a few words everyone had a sense of what their teammates got up to over the weekend, eliciting smiles and planting the seeds for future dialogues throughout the pauses- with-intent over the rest of the day.

Next: “validations.” In this final portion of the meeting (pre- project status), anyone who wanted to articulate their appreciation for a team member over the previous week did so. One person recognized their co-worker for their selfless collaboration, taking time from their own project work to help theirs get client-ready on time. Similar-but-unique “thanks” emerged from varied people; no one was required to speak up, but everyone did.

After project updates I sat with Sara for a one-on-one to chat over coffee. I asked her about the synergies between their HCD process and how she interacts with her team in the office:

“I think where it’s actually become more intentional and obvious has been with our staff who are not trained designers. Operations folks, or our community manager, etc. I’ve had to say, ‘I want you to be a designer about this’ (whatever ‘this’ is). ‘We are your users, you’re trying to get us to do our timesheets, or clean up the kitchen, etc. Observe. Talk to people. Figure out our motivations. Summarize everything you’ve learned, and then have ideas.’

As a designer, I am constantly designing at every level. I’m designing deliverables in many cases for clients, or coaching our teams to design deliverables. I’m also designing process by which we work by writing proposals, scoping, etc. And at the highest level, I’m designing our company. I’m designing our culture based on our customs and traditions and policies (the hard and the soft) every day. My users are not hypothetical, they’re actual people.”

When All is Not Good

Sara went on to cite how her previous work experience shaped the leader she is today:

“I think a lot of my design choices are based in (unhealthy dynamics) with prior employers. Where decisions were not made transparently, everything financial was completely opaque. Lots of lack of trust with other employees. It’s been so critical that I’ve had bad experiences so I can now clearly say: let’s not do that.”

The tactics, mindsets, organizational shifts, and operational flexibility discussed in this book are predicated upon a simple truth: a company presently supports and operates as a creative culture, or it’s genuinely willing to evolve to become one. Along the way, I’ve been primarily speaking to those who are in a position to help implement change; even at a small scale. But what about when you’re not in a position to be heard, or the position to help facilitate change?

Reality isn’t always unicorns and rainbows. Bad experiences can impact us all. For example, the fabric of a company’s creative culture can become irreparably frayed thanks to management changes, acquisition, or it can lack sustainability. Whether these circumstances reveal themselves over years or overnight, your passion and evolution should never be their casualty.

Sometimes, creating within an environment that’s the best fit for your growth and passions means finding a new opportunity.

[diskwrite-ffxiv]

Liberty or Death - #2

(Previously | Read from the beginning | In-between context)

The East Shroud was as sinuous as Ojene remembered, labyrinthine bursts of browning foliage marked here and there with the blacked scars of what Garleans left behind. The forest was a living thing- a fact no one born in the Twelveswood, sheltered in the boon of Nophica's bounty, could ever forget. And like a creature alive it changed, snarling rivulets of yellowed underbrush into what was once the open road.

The coats of the Twin Adder detail almost blended in as they coaxed the tangle aside. They opted for hands instead of knives, unraveling vines and smoothing saplings away as they painstakingly convinced a new road to come to life. As if they were the water and the forest their shifting riverbank, they carved a fresh way forward only from where their surroundings allowed them to be.

Beside Ojene, pressed to the corners of the carriage in the blessed gaps where crates did not, the Maelstrom Levy grumbled.

"What's bleedin' takin' so long?" A Sea Wolf slapped in a wrinkled Private's coat leaned sideways, discontent throwing crevasses into his youthful face.

"Bloody Adders," grumbled a Midlander. "Yeh think they'd keep their priorities straight, but nay, oh nay, the forest!" Her voice canted into a high nasally whine. "What shall we e'er do iffin we don't dance naked in th' lilies an' consult with our wee forest spirits ter see if we can breathe the right way today!"

But as sniggers buzzed through the redcoats, abruptly the Captain snapped. "Quiet. Yeh swivin' sods, yeh think the Adders would appreciate hearin' yeh talk like that afore we're ter fight ‘longside em fer gods only know how many moons? Next one ter open their big fat fishtrap on the subject volunteers for latrine duty until I decide yer hands are finally shite-stained enough. Anyone wish ter take me up on that fine fuckin’ offer?" She flashed the lot of them a toothy grin.

Only silence was her response.

Ojene didn’t dare speak up- the looks they’d given her when they first saw her holed up at the very back of the carriage were incredulous, as if shocked to see a woman in her condition in the here and now. Being ignored from behind a stack of massive crates was the best she could hope to get. But she shot the Captain a grateful glance nonetheless, even if the officer didn’t see.

Once from the Shroud, always from the Shroud. Some instincts never changed. She wrapped an arm around the taut firmness of her middle and settled in to wait.

Her whole body ached with a fury, but that wasn’t new. Pain was a familiar friend, a constant companion through day and night. Aggravated, without a doubt, by the journey. The airship to Gridania. The night spent pressed into a cramped Wildwood bed. And at last the final leg, the bone-jostling ride to her final destination- the front.

With no progress forward, impatient energy snapped through the Maelstrom soldiers- that is until an entrepreneurial Lieutenant thought to redirect the lot of them into a nascent game of cards. Raucous laughter overfilled the tight wooden ceiling, and as Ojene leaned her temple into the carriage wall, she blew a sigh through her nose and tried to tune them out.

What she would give in this moment to not be alone.

But she’d made this choice, and she made it well, for the only other option was to stay still. And in the quietness of anticipation, there was nowhere to redirect the anxious churn of her thoughts.

No, the plan was simple. Straightforward. And insisted upon by herself that very morning. Her father, the aging weed who’d suddenly sprung to the fore, would take Sylbfohc to the little cabin pressed into the vestigial threads of the easternmost Shroud, the peculiar inheritance that’d come Ilvoix’s way but a year before the Calamity struck. A remote place, tangled into the forest like a secret, it may not have been but a few hours journey from the front, but it was not a trip Ojene intended to take twice. So the two men would go alone, to investigate the place she would go in three weeks time. Three weeks, before she would prepare to have this child. Three weeks, to do as much work as could possibly be done.

Sylbfohc would meet her at the Wall. But she would witness it in solitude.

Abruptly, the carriage lurched. The path was cleared. And the Maelstrom soldiers cheered as the slow trundle forward resumed.

It was another hour, maybe two, although Ojene didn’t keep track- it would take but a glance to the sinking of the sun, or to Ostulm’s pocket chronometer buried in the very depths of her traveler’s coat- but it was easier to turn away from the passage of time to the empty focus on jobs to be done.

When at last the carriage ground to a halt, this time unimpeded by the forest’s sprawl, she let the Maelstrom levy pile out first. Rough hands seized the crates, yanking their transport’s innards away until all that was left was a scant few boxes and her. They’d come back for the rest, but Ojene wouldn’t give them the chance before claiming her escape.

She reached for her bag.

First came the things from her pockets, dropped beside her on the seat. Then away she peeled the coat. Chill rushed goosebumps up bare arms, uncovered by her plain white undershirt, but she ignored them as she folded up the traveler’s clothes and swapped it out with the other coat stacked in her satchel.

She didn’t bother to stand, not yet, the fear of her throbbing hip throwing her to the ground too present. Around her shoulders she pulled it, black and red, like a coat of armor. Buckles fastened, straps secured, she stuffed her things back into her pockets, swung her bag over one shoulder, and plucked her cane from where it lay. To her feet, she struggled, but when she walked her step was true, buoyed forward by the pounding of her heart and the lightness in her head.

Down from the carriage, Ojene stepped.

And then it was there.

She lost her breath.

As if in a daze, she staggered forward. Her only awareness fixated on her body, on her movement, on the subtle twitching of the child within, on seeing herself forward safely- securely- in the sight of this, the towering behemoth, the one that lurked in her dreams. To it she drew, stopping but ilms away, and her chest heaved up and down with a frantic beat as she slowly stretched a hand forward.

It was cool beneath her touch. Inert. Black and still.

Ojene’s fingers pressed in. She closed her eyes.

At last she drew back, and a flash snapped through her heart. Her lips curled, a snarl, a burst of teeth- and with a hissing growl she spat, full-bodied, onto Baelsar’s fucking Wall.

Through the gates she walked, straight-backed, proud, and clad in Maelstrom red.

[ @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast​ for mention]

[globalcitizenshipessay174]

college paper help

About me

Write My Paper Online

Write My Paper Online All college students enrolled in a degree or certificate program are required to take faculty placement tests to be able to guarantee applicable placement in lessons. The outcomes of the assessment, at the side of educational background data, are used by faculty educational advisors to assist you with course choice. Testing at Bristol is free and college students are allowed one re-check. For example, we all know that, even outside the context of faculty closures, youngsters often don't receive the mental health remedy they want. Additionally, prolonged closures could be dangerous to kids’s mental health and can increase the chance that kids have interaction in unhealthy behaviors. We additionally know that, for a lot of college students, lengthy breaks from in-individual schooling are dangerous to student studying. For example, the results of summer time breaks from in-individual education on academic progress, generally known as “summer season slide,” are additionally well-documented in the literature. The prospect of losing several months of education, in comparison with the few weeks of summer season trip, due to faculty closure probably solely makes the training loss much more extreme. With thirteen faculties on two metro Atlanta campuses, Kennesaw State is a member of the University System of Georgia and the third-largest university within the state. The university’s vibrant campus tradition, various population, robust global ties and entrepreneurial spirit draw students from all through the area and from ninety two international locations throughout the globe. Effect of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act on the dietary quality of meals selected by students and college lunch participation rates. If you don't have a scheduled class and you have to go on campus, campus police should be notified first. “The writer did every thing in accordance with my necessities, additionally it was despatched to me earlier than due time. I hope to use Essay4you.web once once more sooner or later. The ease ofapplying a consistent grading scheme with detailed feedbackapplying a consistent grading scheme with detailed feedbackwas probably the most helpful feature. I was additionally impressed with how simple it's to arrange assignments for grading. From juanita brown, jody bryan, anne dosher, duane elgin, sheryl erickson, june katzen, bob lyman, randi pappa, dean radin, kaia svien, and tom robbins. I know other college students is aware of how to evaluate the plausibility of other filipino heroes social science elective slhs skilled elective me complete. I am two inches in the s, initially inside anglosaxon countries. It lifts the human mind cells beneath controlled laboratory circumstances over a protracted custom of critical talent. Determine whether or not there are three keys to good effect. A leader in progressive instructing and learning, Kennesaw State University presents greater than 150 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees to its approximately 38,000 students. These vital providers are tough to supply through distance learning fashions. As a result, extra youngsters with disabilities have acquired few to no companies whereas faculties have been closed. Without in-particular person education, many youngsters can lose entry to those essential services. Extended college closures could be dangerous to the nutritional well being of children. Schools are important to meeting the nutritional wants of kids with many consuming up to half their day by day calories in school. While faculties have carried out strategies to proceed meal providers throughout periods of school closures, it's difficult to maintain this kind of faculty nutrition program over the long-time period. This is a particularly extreme downside for the estimated 11 million meals-insecure youngsters, living within the United States. For kids with intellectual or bodily disabilities, almost all therapies and services are received by way of schools. Grade paper-primarily based, digital, and code assignments in half the time. Gradescope helps you seamlessly administer and grade all of your assessments, whether online or in-class. Students can expect to complete the examination in 1.5 to 2 hours. Students may be exempt from testing by utilizing SAT, ACT, CLEP or AP scores. All services might be provided remotely only, by way of cellphone, e-mail or virtual at all campus locations. In addition, all campus buildings, in any respect areas, will be inaccessible to students except they've a scheduled class.

[mybreadlover]

2 years of digital transformation in 2 months

2 years of digital transformation in 2 months

This week, CEO Satya Nadella delivered office.com/setup’s quarterly earnings report to Wall Street—our first in the era of COVID-19. On the call, Satya shared some new numbers: In April, we saw more than 200 million office.com/setup Teams meeting participants in a single day, generating more than 4.1 billion meeting minutes. Also, Teams now has more than 75 million daily active users, and two-thirds of them have shared, collaborated, or interacted with files on Teams as well. As Satya put it, “We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months. From remote teamwork and learning to sales and customer service, to critical cloud infrastructure and security—we are working alongside customers every day to help them adapt and stay open for business in a world of remote everything.”

To keep their teams connected in this world of remote everything, our customers need more than meetings or chat alone. Teams combine meetings, calls, chat, and collaboration into a single tool that preserves context and keeps everyone up to speed. Below, I dig into the role that Teams are playing to keep the world working and share customer stories about how Teams enable their work. But first, a bit more about those numbers.

About the numbers

Satya shared three important types of numbers in his call: daily meeting participants, daily meeting minutes, and daily active users. We see different vendors use these metrics in different ways, but we’re the only ones on the market that can release all three. The reason for that is simple: office.com/setup Teams are the only solution that offers chat, calls, meetings, and collaboration in one.

So how do we define each? Our daily meeting participants number is the aggregate number of people joining a meeting in a day—so if someone participates in five meetings in a day, they would be counted five times. Meanwhile, we measure daily meeting minutes by adding together the total time people spend in Teams meetings within a 24-hour period. For example, if two people are in the same 10-minute meeting, we count that as 20 meeting minutes. Finally, we define daily active users (DAU) as the count of unique users performing an intentional action in a 24-hour period in any of the office.com/setup Teams clients—desktop, mobile, or web. Intentional actions include sending or replying to a chat, joining a meeting, or opening a file in Teams. We don’t count passive actions like an autoboot, minimizing a screen, or closing the app. We also don’t count Skype Consumer or Skype for Business usage, since that’s a completely different app. Our DAU numbers are de-duped, meaning we only count each user once.

Powering the world’s work

Across education, government, healthcare, and business, office.com/setup Teams are powering collaboration for organizations of all sizes while meeting the highest standards of security and privacy. Around the world, more than 183,000 educational institutions use Teams. In the United Arab Emirates alone, over 350,000 students are relying on Teams for remote learning. On the business side, 20 organizations have more than 100,000 active users on Teams, including Continental AG, Ernst & Young, Pfizer, and SAP. Just last week, Accenture became the first organization to surpass half a million users, and we expanded our partnership with the NFL. We even collaborated with the League to help bring the first-ever virtual NFL Draft to life with Teams!

And after weeks of learning, working and living this way, we’re all developing new habits. Some COVID-19-era habits will prove temporal—I know many parents who can’t wait for the return of in-person play dates, for instance. But we believe the habits we see in Teams are more durable and will persist well beyond the current crisis. Data from regions like China and South Korea, where many people have returned to the office, but continue Teams habits they developed while working apart, back this up. For example, a report out this month showed more than two times the number of new Teams users each day in China compared to the end of January. And the number of daily active Teams users in China also continued to grow week over week.

In this era of remote everything, we have seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months. Teams are enabling this accelerated transformation by giving people a single tool to chat, call, meet, and collaborate. With Teams as their hub for teamwork, our customers are discovering new collaboration habits that we believe will persist well beyond this crisis. We are committed to continuing to build the tools that keep them connected and productive—through COVID-19 and beyond.

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2ZbCDYQ via Blogger https://ift.tt/3eCov1m

[quicksilverconnoisseur]

HOWEVER, yes it would be very interesting indeed should Hannibal ever stumble across one of Will’s exes, and I can’t say for certain what would happen! A lot would depend upon the context and, while Hannibal would never see anyone like Kyle as a threat, well. This is *his Will* XD Ooh, could I request this as a very cheeky ask? Please? Pretty please? Pretty please with Hannibal's home grown cherry tomatoes on top?! :D

I’m sorry this took so long!! Thanks for the prompt, this was a good one to write :)

On ao3 here and a follow-up to Riding in Cars with Boys

*

Will cursed under his breath. There was a line at the collection desk already. He’d hoped to beat the rush but it seemed the rush had already beaten him.

He joined the end and glanced apologetically at Hannibal. Hannibal gave him a small smile in return and then drifted over to browse the stacks. Your reservation is the most important, he'd said, when Will had got the message to say his book has finally come up for collection. It was on the reserve list for his anomalistic psychology class - there was only a 24 hour window for him to pick it up before it would be assigned to the next person.

One person walked off with a teetering pile of books, and the line moved forward a step.

They had plans; they usually always did now. On Tuesdays, Hannibal’s last appointment left at four. Will would go to his office after class, and study there until Hannibal was ready to leave. It was much nicer than the library, and the couches far more comfortable.

The girl at the front of the line was having a heated discussion with the librarian. She kept jabbing her finger at the print-out in her hand. The librarian just looked tired. The final semester of the year was always especially tense. Will was looking forward to the summer, and he was not alone.

Another librarian came over and hurriedly opened another counter. Everyone shuffled along a bit more, with palpable hope that the line would now speed up.

Tonight Hannibal had reserved an early table at a new restaurant across town - one he’d promised was casual and contemporary. Will expected that meant no tablecloths and servers with smiles starched to match their spotless white aprons. He was getting frighteningly used to dining out. Once a week Hannibal seemed more than willing to swap his pleasure at cooking for the pleasure of being seen in public with Will. Will had the distinct impression he was sending a message, both to Will and to others still unknown.

He looked behind him but Hannibal seemed to have disappeared into the quiet buzz of the library. Will pictured him sitting patiently, neat and still, next to some college kid with a can of Red Bull and an impending deadline. It seemed unlikely and yet he must’ve found somewhere to wait. A little too late, it occurred to Will that he could also be described as some college kid. Perhaps Hannibal’s peers already did.

The line seemed to have stalled again. The guy in front of him was heavy-set and carried a bulky sports bag across his shoulder. Will had to lean round him to see what was happening at the front.

“Hey, Will!” someone said, from the other side of the heavy-set guy. A familiar someone. “Haven’t seen you around for a while?”

“Kyle?” Will couldn’t help a little secretive smile, especially once he remembered what that last ‘while’ had been like, a few months ago. “No, uh, I’ve been sort of busy.”

Kyle grinned and looked Will up and down in a manner which was not subtle. They’d seen each other a few times, before it had slowed into a casual and friendly agreement. A very fun casual and friendly agreement.

The line moved up once more, and Kyle moved along with Will. “You got any plans later? Seems like fate to bump into you like this.”

“Yeah,” Will said. “I do, sorry.”

True to fashion, Kyle wasn’t remotely daunted. “How about the weekend, then? I was supposed to be going to Steve’s brother’s party but he cancelled on me, the traitor. I don’t see why flu should get in the way of a good time.” He stepped a little closer and brushed Will’s sleeve with his fingers. “Though maybe we can have a better time together?”

Will opened his mouth to speak, but then the heavy-set guy moved off and Will found himself at the front of the line.

“Hold on,” he said to Kyle, and gave his name to the librarian. She tapped it into the computer then ducked under the counter and brought out his book. While she checked it out, he turned back to Kyle. “I’m seeing someone,” he said. “More than seeing someone, actually. It’s kinda serious.”

Almost as if he’d been summoned, Hannibal appeared behind Kyle. Will caught his eye, and smiled. Kyle noticed, and followed Will’s gaze over his shoulder. When he spotted Hannibal, he took a very noticeable step away from Will.

Hannibal, naturally, was the epitome of graciousness. He held out his hand and Kyle shook it. Will collected his book and all three of them rounded the counter to make room for the next person in line.

“Hannibal, this is Kyle,” Will said. “Kyle, Hannibal. My boyfriend.”

“A pleasure to meet you,” Hannibal said. “But I’m afraid you must both excuse me. A patient just tried to call and I must call them back. Whenever you’re ready, Will, I will be in the car.”

He left with a benign smile and a slight but unmistakable touch to Will's elbow. Will watched him walk towards the sliding doors, straight-backed and striking.

Kyle stared after him too, a little stunned. After a moment, he said, “That was some suit.”

Conscious of frowning librarians, Will stifled his laughter. “Yeah, um, he’s unusual.”

“Like you.” Kyle tilted his head in thought, and nodded sagely. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Does it?” Will said. They both started walking, in the direction of the exit and their approaching goodbye. Will could feel it shrouding their conversation already. “I guess maybe so.”

Kyle was grinning again. “You really like him, don’t you? I can tell.” They stopped by the doors, where the sunlight pooled onto the dusty floor. “He likes you a lot, that’s for sure. There was a moment there where I was sure he was thinking about snapping my neck, but was just too polite to go through with it.”

“Yours would be a tough neck to break,” Will said. “It’s the football helmet. Too heavy. Builds up muscle.”

Kyle laughed, and Will felt an unexpected pang of regret. They weren’t breaking up, because they’d never really been together, but Kyle was good-natured and kind and it was still sad to know they’d never see each other again. They had no reason to, now.

“You’d better go,” Kyle said, still smiling. “I’ll see you around, Will.”

Will leaned in and kissed his cheek. “See you around,” he agreed.

The Bentley - there was only one, of course - was parked at the edge of the lot. Hannibal was behind the wheel, conspicuously not on the phone and listening to opera instead. Possibly Wagner. Will couldn’t be certain but it was bombastic enough.

“Dealt with your patient emergency, then?” Will opened the door and put his bag and book on the back seat. “Must be nice being a doctor - you’ve always got a ready-made excuse to leave.”

“I simply wanted to avoid any awkwardness and let you say your goodbyes.”

Will climbed in beside Hannibal and fastened his seatbelt. “Hannibal,” he said. “Are you jealous?”

“Not jealous, no,” Hannibal replied. “But I do find myself feeling extraordinarily possessive. It’s not a flattering thing to admit to.”

“There’s not much for you to feel possessive about,” Will said. “We had a thing, it was fun. That was all. I hadn’t seen him for ages and he didn’t know about you and then, when he did... Well, he was pleased for me, I think.” Will shrugged. “He’s a nice guy under the jock stuff.”

“I have no doubt of it,” Hannibal said. “You wouldn’t suffer anything less.”

“The night I met him I threatened to punch him,” said Will.

Hannibal turned his head sharply, a flash of angry concern escaping from under his calm veneer. Will was torn between a laugh and climbing into his lap for the hot reassurance of kisses. He settled for pulling Hannibal’s hand into his own, and pressing it to his cheek. Hannibal sighed, and stroked the hair back from Will’s face.

“You are like quicksilver,” he said. “At times it’s hard to see how I can hold on to you. It may not always bring out the best in me.”

Will kissed his palm. “Is it enough to know I want you to hold on to me? Because I do.”

Hannibal thumbed gently over Will’s cheek. His smile warmed his eyes, crinkling the skin at their corners. “It is enough, yes.”

He reached for the ignition, waking the engine. “Did you punch him, or did you only threaten to?”

Will gave him a flat, disbelieving look. “Could you try not to sound so hopeful about it?”

“I’m curious,” Hannibal said. “About what drew him to your attention.”

“I’ll tell you about it over dinner,” said Will. “And then afterwards, you can practice holding on to me some more.”

Hannibal laughed and pulled smoothly out of the lot, towards the table which waited for them on the other side of town.

*

http://archiveofourown.org/works/9802556/chapters/26365134

[scottmaxwell360-blog]

Process Journal: Ideation (individual)

PROMPT: Reflect on the methods and techniques that your group used to come up with ideas to address the problem you defined in the previous unit and summarise those activities in a new post in your process journal. What ideas were the outcome of your group brainstorming exercise? What were some of the standout ideas and discussion-points that came out of the debriefing session?

Since our team members reside in different states we chose to brainstorm remotely using a variety of technologies. We started the process by refining our problem statement via a Google document (see link below). Next, we set up the meeting schedule and agenda for the following week and agreed to each do independent ideation before our next group meeting. We identified our idea generating question as:

How do we improve access to, and the quality of, education for school-age kids?

For our initial individual ideation we used Asana ideation software (see link below). This is a graphic text-based software that helps users visualize their ideas and compare with others, similar to the sticky note exercises we performed at USC residential. I found this method of sharing ideas to work really well for a virtual setting. As a visual learner, it helped me better assign the broad set of ideas under specific category headers such as technology platforms, learning modules (curriculum), building awareness, potential business partnerships, etc. No idea was too extreme to suggest.

Once we identified our individual ideas, we met as a group to discuss each concept and give additional context for how it can be applied to the problem. We gave ourselves a one-hour time limit to run through all of the ideas on the board.

As we collectively built our Asana idea board it was clear that our group was still somewhat in the divergent stage in terms of identifying the problem to be solved. Some group members focused more on the idea of a world peace curriculum for school-age children that can be taught in virtual or pop-up classrooms. I think this is an interesting idea, in theory, but I’m not sure that our group has the skills to design and implement a broad curriculum within the next five weeks prior to presentation. One interesting idea that came up during this part of the discussion was the concept of pop-up classroom tents. These pop-up tents would be mobile classrooms that can be quickly set up as temporary learning centers in almost any location such as the site of a natural disaster, event space, or a rural area that lacks a brick and mortar school. This could be a relatively low-cost solution to expand access to education for children in underserved communities (taking into consideration things like climate, geographic locations, accessibility issues, etc.).

My ideas for the Asana board generally focused on smaller initiatives such as teaching incarcerated juveniles a technical life skill such as coding or creative design skills -- minimizing the chances they would return to incarceration as adults. With more than 53,000 incarcerated youth just in the U.S., this represents a huge opportunity to have a positive impact on global peace. Recidivism rates for youth under 18 in the three years after an arrest are often as high as 75 percent which clearly can have a big impact on peace within a community. We could start by implementing this type of program in the local community and potentially expand globally over time. The more I researched this topic, the more I saw a need for improved access to quality education for incarcerated youth and a big opportunity for a business project. However, as I presented my ideas, I had to remind myself that we were still in the ideation stage and not ready to select a solution yet.

During our debrief, it was clear that we still hadn’t narrowed down our target audience beyond “school-age children”. Until we further narrow our target audience to something more specific such as “primary school children k-5”, or “incarcerated youth ages 12-18”, our ideation still seems to be approaching “solving world peace through education” with broad strokes.

Finally, we created a favorites column and each added our preferred ideas from the group. Within this column, there are several ideas that could be combined into one solution. Some ideas were combined into a single entry under favorites. For example, coding and designing learning curriculum is combined with world peace computer game. The idea is that young coders/designers contribute back to the cause of world peace by developing a game that teaches and inspires social change. Several members also agreed on the need for stronger mentorship within the education of school-age children.

The group agreed we each needed to take a few days to reflect on these new ideas and do our research before identifying our proposed solution later this week. In the meantime, we also voted/liked ideas listed under favorites. Now the challenge becomes narrowing our target audience and determining which concepts can be designed for implementation within the next five weeks before our presentation.

Links:

Google doc - Revised Problem Statement: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i-nEqoJOqDF_gLSlbrkXawQQ2Tf4VRUL0k5fCpUuX60/edit?usp=sharing

Asana software - Group + Individual Ideation: https://app.asana.com/0/1115484694172083/board

[statusquoergo]

I HAVE! A LOT ACTUALLY! Harvey helping Mike picking up a suit for the wedding at Renes. And like he eould look at Mike trying one and just knows... like not realizing he loves him, but accepting, embracing it. He would just get lost in his thoughts for a moment and Mike would go like "Harvey? What do you think?" and... i'll leave to you to continue. Happy ending pleaseee

Read on AO3

It’s a long drive over to Rene’s.

Actuallyit’s not, not even close, but Harvey lost his sense of temporal recognitionsometime during the brief drive from his condo to Mike and Rachel’s place; onceMike slides into the backseat beside him with a giddy little bounce, bitingdown on a perfectly innocent smile, the next fifteen minutes somehow bothstretch out to three hours and condense to approximately zero seconds. ThenMike grins at Harvey and opens the car door again, and Harvey thinks he pausesfor a second or two before he gets out (which would be confusing if true), butat this point it’s impossible to know for sure (so it doesn’t mean anything).

Mike has the good graces to hold the shop door open andallow Harvey to enter first; Harvey gifts him a gracious little quirk of hislips, and Rene is upon them the moment door snicks shut.

“Harvey,” he dotes, stepping forward with his handsclasped behind his back. “Come to discuss a new palette for the upcomingseason?”

“Not today,” Harvey says with as much authority as he canmuster, given the circumstances. “Rene, you remember Mike Ross.”

“But of course,” Rene says smoothly, turning hisattention to Mike with far more respect than he probably did when they firstmet. The man knows good taste; he can see how far Mike’s come. (Harvey smilesproudly.)

“Interested in opening your own account, Mister Ross?”

Mike laughs clumsily; to his credit, Rene seemsunaffected.

“I don’t think so,” Mike tries to recover. “I’m gettingmarried, actually, and I figured if I wanted to look my best, I needed to…go tothe best.”

Good boy.

The polite deference in Rene’s smile softens his featuresfor only a moment before it’s time to get down to business. Ushering Mike tothe fitting area, hidden away in the back behind a subtle corner, Rene beginsflicking through a rack of sample suits, commenting a little snidely that themeasurements he has on file from Mike’s last fitting are surely outdated, butat least the fabric will hang better this time around that he’s not such alittle slip of a thing.

Mike doesn’t look even remotely offended, craning hisneck to survey the samples for himself, and Harvey marvels silently at how wellhe’s begun to fit into this world. It’s no wonder, of course; he’s alwaysbelonged here.

Abruptly, Rene stops muttering under his breath and pullsthree suits from the rack; holding a decent brown one up in front of Mike, hefurrows his brow and then scowls briefly, putting it back and taking a darkerblue in its stead. Harvey nods his approval at the swap, not that anyone’spaying attention.

“In this order,” Rene directs, handing the suits to Mikeone by one. “Come along, Mister Ross,”he presses when Mike only holds them nervously, “I am a busy man.”

Mike nods and looks around for a chair or something tolay the two remaining suits on in the meantime; when Harvey offers his arms, hesmiles widely in relief and hands them over.

Harvey steps back to wait.

“Glen plaid,”Rene says as Mike buttons the jacket of the first suit, a nice neutral greynumber that reminds Harvey of Roger Thornhill. “Pay no mind to the fit, this isobviously a mere trial run, but you strike me as a man who has a healthyrespect for something with a bit of history behind it.”

Gripping the lapels, Mike turns slowly and looks backover his shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of himself in the mirror. His lipsare parted slightly, his eyes focused but just a touch narrowed, and Harvey hasno trouble understanding his thoughts; he likes it but doesn’t love it, andhe’s afraid to upset Rene by disagreeing with his taste. Mike is right—the suitis a nice shade, and the cut will work well on him once it’s fitted properly,but there’s something too somber about it for the occasion, toobusiness-formal. This should be a happy day, the happiest of Mike’s life, andhis suit ought to reflect that.

For a minute there, Harvey remembers Mike’s splittingsmile, his child-like wonder when he’d passed on that simple message, You got in, and reminds himself thatMike’s happiness is the most important thing. (That’s why we’re here, afterall.)

Rene must see Mike’s hesitancy too, because he shakes hishead and gestures for Mike to remove the ensemble.

“Not a soul will appreciate it in context,” headmonishes, “this won’t do at all. Go on now, the notch lapel.”

Mike looks blankly at Harvey, who has the good sense topass over the other grey suit; this one is darker and without pattern, andHarvey hopes to god it fits Mike to a T because he has nothing but respect forRene’s eye for color and tailoring, but Harvey’s been present for enough ofMike’s five-year fashion odyssey to know that the strong shoulders and higharmholes will flatter Mike’s figure perfectly, and that dark grey makes theboy’s eyes light up like a night sky full of stars.

Well that’s a hell of a thing to notice.

The whole journey has been quite the adventure, hasn’tit.

From the very first day, dumping his plastic bags of potall over Harvey’s meeting room at the Chilton, Mike has put a spark in Harveythat he’s been missing since… He isn’t even sure how to finish the thought. Itprobably hasn’t been missing “since” anything, whatever it is that Mike adds tohis life; it’s all Mike, irreplaceable and incontrovertible. His cockinessthat’s been tempered with practice and defeat into a more dignifiedself-confidence, but never quite lost its edge; his enthusiasm for life that’sonly grown the more he’s seen of the intricacies of the world outside his ownexperiences; his determination in the face of overwhelming odds to protect thethings and the people he holds dear, to always do the right thing, or the wrongthing for the right reasons…

There has never been a man quite like Michael James Ross.

“Harvey?”

Harvey looks up at Mike on the fitting stage.

Whatever happens, from now on to whenever, he’ll probablylove him ‘til the end of time.

Mike twists his spine and then tries to stand upstraight, smoothing down front panels and raising his chest with some dignity.

“So?”

Handing the remaining blue suit back to Rene to return tothe rack, Harvey crosses his arms over his chest. Yeah; this is the one,alright. It’ll run up some kind of bill—he estimates about five thousand, giveor take—but it’s worth it.

“What do you think?” Mike presses a little nervously atHarvey’s lack of response.

Here we are, at the end of the line.

Just give me a second, kid.

This’ll take some getting used to.

It takes a little more than a second, but Harvey smilesand nods, small enough that Mike has to pay attention to catch it; he will,Harvey knows he will, knows it in the grin that breaks out on his face inresponse, the comfort with which he puts his hands in the trouser pockets, therelief in his relaxing posture. The sparkle in his eyes, like a night full ofstars.

Rene’s assistant appears out of thin air to take Mike’smeasurements quickly and efficiently, and Harvey slips his credit card to Reneduring a particularly distracted moment; Mike catches him all the same andHarvey raises his hand to stem any potential protests.

“Don’t worry about it,” he insists. “All part of beingthe best man.”

Mike is about to say something anyway before he thinksbetter of it. His face falls, just a touch, like he’s worried about something;Harvey hopes it isn’t the money. Whatever the final tally comes to, it’ll beworth it to see that smile on Mike’s face again as he stands in front ofHarvey’s windows, maybe on the balcony if it’s a nice day, backlit by the citythey both call home, on the happiest day of his life.

Yeah.

Mike steps down off the stage, shrugging out of thejacket.

“So, Harvey,” he says as he finishes putting his own trousersback on. “What’s wrong?”

Harvey stares, momentarily at a loss—surely he isn’t sotransparent—and then smiles as though the question is absurd.

“Nothing,” he says, the weakest of defenses. “Nothing’swrong.”

“So I know that’s not true,” Mike replies, unbuttoninghis cuffs to roll up his sleeves. “But how long is this gonna take? Ballpark.”

Harvey shakes his head; they’re not discussing this now.Not ever, but especially not now.

“Nothing’s wrong, Mike, don’t worry about it.”

“Harvey.”

God dammit.

Shrugging, Harvey tries to come up with something thatwon’t sound too self-incriminating. (Thisisn’t about you.)

“You’ve come pretty far,” he says. “I’m proud of you,kid.”

For a minute, Mike’s face is completely blank; he looksat Harvey like he doesn’t know quite what to make of him, like he’s just beengiven some important information that he isn’t sure how he’s meant to react to.Then it clears, and the pit in Harvey’s stomach lightens.

“It took almost six years,” he teases; “I was this closeto giving up, but here we are: Harvey Specter has feelings.”

This again.

This is safer ground; this, they know how to do.

“Don’t go spreading that around,” Harvey warns, raisinghis eyebrows, and Mike laughs.

“It’s on the record now,” he says, “no take-backs; can Iget it in writing, I’d like to have it notarized.”

“Not gonna happen.”

Mike laughs again, but it trails off weakly; his eyes dima shade or two, and though he’s still smiling, some of the luster is gone.They’re not kidding around anymore, and it was wrong to pretend.

Rene steps forward with his hands behind his back and anauthoritative coolness to his expression.

“Four weeks,” he dictates. “You will be notified upon thesuit’s completion and we’ll expect you to retrieve it in a timely manner.”

Mike blinks.

“Oh—thanks,” he fumbles. “Thank you.”

Rene nods, eyeing them for a moment before he turns tothe back of the shop and disappears. Harvey pats imaginary dust from histhighs.

Mike looks at the tie racks.

“Shouldn’t I be happier?” he asks idly, and Harveyfrowns.

“What’s wrong?”

Mike sighs.

“Nothing,” he says. “That’s the thing, nothing’s wrongand I’m getting married to a wonderful woman and I got into the Bar and all mydreams are coming true and I should be…happier, right?”

Harvey steps into Mike’s eyeline and thinks about puttinghis hand on his arm (but he doesn’t).

“Is everything okay?”

“Yes,” Mikeinsists, “everything is perfect, butI…I dunno. Something’s…missing, or something.”

He looks into Harvey’s eyes then, and Harvey’s definitelyimagining it this time, but it’s almost as though he finds a little of whathe’s looking for (whatever it is).

“Are youhappy?”

Oh, Mike, don’t ask me that.

Harvey does clap his hand down on Mike’s shoulder now, affirming and steadying and trying to remind them (himself) what’s real,what’s important.

“I’m happy for you,” he says. “Like you said, you’regetting everything you want, and…I’m proud of you. I am.”

“You don’t think I’m settling?”

If that isn’t straight out of left field. Harvey shiftsback, just a bit, and drops his hand.

“I thought you and Rachel were happy together,” he says,because this isn’t about the job, can’t be about the job (not when Mike is backwhere he belongs). “Did she say something?”

Mike laughs under his breath. “No, but you kind of did.”

Shit, shit, shit—

Harvey tries to convey skeptical derision, hoping none ofthe panic shows through. He didn’t say anything, did he? (When?) No, definitelyno. (Did he?)

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s not what you said,” Mike clarifies, “but—just now,when I was trying on the suits, you had this… I don’t know how to describe it.This expression.” He shakes his head with a little smile and directs his nextcommentary out the storefront windows. “My grandmother used to get itsometimes, when she’d given me something that had been hard to find, or hardfor her to get; like she was happy I was happy, like all her sacrifices hadbeen worth it because I was getting something I really wanted, something thatwas important to me.”

Harvey’s answering smile is tight-lipped and narrow; heand Edith would have been good friends, he’s pretty sure. He’s sorry he didn’thave the chance to get to know her.

There’s a hardness to Mike’s stare when he turns back toHarvey, a set determination that Harvey doesn’t know what to do with.

“Am I missing out on something I don’t have to be?”

Harvey’s been in this game long enough to know when anopportunity isn’t going to come around again. All the signs are there; thesingularity of the surrounding circumstances, the trepidation of the otherparty, the risk inherent in taking the plunge, in saying “Yes,” the knowledgethat there’s no turning back once he does.

It’s a yes-or-no question, man.

Harvey steels himself and holds onto the tightness in hischest.

“Mike,” he says. “If there’s anything more I can do tomake you happy; you got it.”

It’s as much admission as he’s capable of giving at thismoment. Mike searches his face with those skylight eyes of his; he knows thesame, knows that they’re about to dive over the edge of a cliff without knowinghow long the fall will last.

His smile is small and uncertain, but that’s okay. (I’mscared, too.)

There’s just enough of a lead-in for Harvey to back awayif he really wants, but that would be ridiculous; then Mike’s hands holdhis head steady as he leans in and damn, the boy knows how to kiss.

Harvey brings his arm up around Mike’s shoulders, drawinghim in, holding him close, and it feels terribly sensationalist even though itreally isn’t; they’re behind a row of mannequins decked out to the nines, andanyway, no one spares them a single glance, no one gives a fuck; no oneunderstands how tremendous this is, how abruptly the world has been tipped onits axis. Righted.

Harvey opens his eyes a moment before they part; Mikekeeps his closed for a moment after as he drops his hands away.

“Uh-oh,” he says quietly, but he’s smiling as he does.

Harvey rubs his thumb up and down over Mike’s shoulder.

“You’ve got about a month before your suit’s ready,” hemurmurs, and Mike nods.

“Kind of sucks that it happened this way,” he says. Thecorner of Harvey’s mouth quirks in a little smirk.

“What can I say,” he offers, “I was tired of waiting.”

Mike bursts out laughing, raising his hand to Harvey’sneck and leaving it there as he looks away, regaining his bearings.

“Oh, god, I love you,” he says carelessly; Harvey waitsfor the retraction, the “oh shit” moment after he hears himself, but it nevercomes. They’re bigger than those stupid clichés, anyway.

“I’m following your lead here,” Harvey informs him,because this is fun and all, but there’s the real world out there with its realworld consequences waiting for the chance to eat them alive. Mike nods, his jawclenching surreptitiously.

“I’ll do you proud,” he replies.

Harvey kisses him again, quickly.

Nodoubt about that.

—

Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant), the protagonist of North by Northwest (1959), iconically wears a grey Glen plaid suit.

This is a black version of the suit Mike ends up buying. (More accurately, it’s this, but in that picture it’s just draped over a chair.)

[thessalian]

Thess vs Working Hours

Well, today marks yet another chapter in ‘this place lives to screw me’.

First of all, we had a ‘training session’, for which I had to turn up a half-hour early (I shared my Tube car with a school group of seven-year-olds with no concept of how to behave on public transport, so that was a tiny slice of hell). Turns out the ‘training’ was all about what this place actually does - how the spine works and how it goes wrong and what people do to fix it. You know, all the stuff I actually picked up in context from letters. So I ended up running half the training because the lecture was being given by Scatterbrain, whose first language is not English and who has a tendency to repeat himself.

At least New Practice Manager is not making me go to any more of those. I think I made the point that really, that is not a kind of training that I actually need, even a tiny bit.

Anyway, afterwards we had a one-to-one meeting, wherein she told me how much I was valued and how great my contribution is and how clearly I’m an awesome secretary ... just before informing me that she wants to change my hours. Not even to the same hours every day, either - she wants me to come in from 2pm-6:30pm on some days and 11am-3:30pm on others. Apparently when things get crazy on some days, she wants me there in the morning and can’t justify my being there late in the evenings.

...Okay, here are a few points:

1) I am here in the late evening so that I can cover any last minute bookings. And there are always LOTS of last-minute bookings. I mean, there are often two or three per theatre prep day that a consultant has dumped onto the clinic, on top of the ones they actually arrange on the day. That’s going to leave the secretaries scrambling first thing in the morning on theatre days when they really shouldn’t have to. That is why I was okayed for these hours in the first place.

2) I am here in the late evening to get shit done. None of what I do actually impacts the workload of the other secretaries (though what they do, or rather don’t, impacts mine). I type, I book theatre slots with admissions, I do theatre prep, I make up discharge packs. Having me there in the morning is not going to help with anyone’s workload unless they’re planning on changing my duties as well. Which ... fuck that, they are not going to do. If they’d wanted me as a full-on secretary, they should have kept me as a full-time secretary, not crammed me into an office to be forgotten about. I just want to be left alone to get the job done.

3) Having to swap my working hours on a daily basis deprives me of routine and turns my sleeping patterns into a living nightmare. And that means that my migraines are going to flare up like a bitch. I’ve been managing on a baseline level of pain for awhile now and the only time I needed to have time off since, like, December was a half-day the other week when my sinuses were so inflamed that my face literally puffed up. I can work through a lot. I cannot work through migraine.

The thing is, I’m not sure if this is something that I can argue against, or whether it’s a fait accompli come April. I did bring up the health issues, but what I basically got was, “I can’t make decisions based on your health”. Apparently my hours, which until now have got everything done, are a bad business decision. And the only people’s words she has for that are a) Head Consultant, who doesn’t understand a bloody thing about what goes on at the admin level by choice, and b) the lead Office Managerial person who has set foot in this office maybe once in the last six months and has no idea what goes on in here. So really, if there’s any remote chance that I could change some people’s ways of thinking, maybe this can be avoided. But I doubt it. If health concerns aren’t enough to get anything more than an “I understand that BUT” (in that tone that indicates that clearly she doesn’t understand that in the least), then I’m probably going to have my hours bounce around, screw with my sleep patterns, trigger no end of migraines and leave me a total wreck.

Yes, I am so very valued. So very valued that the few remaining perks of this job are being stripped away from me for the convenience of everyone else, despite the fact that I cannot see how this is remotely convenient for anyone else unless I take on YET MORE OF OTHER PEOPLE’S WORK.

Also apparently I have to document a ten-minute walk as a break even if I get in ten minutes early or work ten minutes late to compensate for it.

Fuuuuuuck.

[dippedanddripped]

KYLE

NG

NEW YORK

NICO

JOE

FRESHGOODS

& ALEX

JAMES

How do you stay creative during a pandemic? For answers, we turned to four culture makers across the US—New York Nico, Kyle Ng, Joe Freshgoods, and Alex James — on how they meet the demands of staying productive in our new reality. We’ve equipped each of them with a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold2 5G, a revolutionary smartphone that allows them to stay creative, whether doing everything in one place, or out on the go hunting for inspiration. Perfectly designed for the creative life, the Z Fold2 is three devices in one: folded closed like a regular smartphone, open flat like a tablet, or laid on a surface like a mini-laptop. It’s four machines, if you include its camera, with its impressive depth of field and hands-free shooting. Each of the culture makers we selected were tasked with taking photographs and screenshots that give us a glimpse of their creative process, what inspires them, and how to balance between work and play. The results we got back were surprisingly intimate, quirky, unexpectedly funny, and humane. Take a peek into their lives below.

NEW YORK NICO

SHOT ON A SAMSUNG GALAXY Z FOLD2

DOWNTOWN NEW YORK

(JUN — AUG 2020)DOWNTOWN NEW YORKDOWNTOWN NEW YORKTIGER HOOD, A STREET GOLFER WHO HITS MILK CARTONS THROUGHOUT THE STREET; OR THE GREEN LADY OF BROOKLYN, WHO ONLY DRESSES IN GREEN. THESE ARE JUST TWO OF THE FASCINATING INDIVIDUALS THAT NEW YORK NICO, A DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER, HAS CAPTURED ON HIS

INSTAGRAM

ACCOUNT.

Having grown up in Union Square and gone to school in the Village, he’s dedicated his project to capturing all the indispensable local characters who make up the quirky flavor of the ever-changing NYC. So when Covid hit the city, claiming the lives of tens of thousands and forcing countless others out of their homes, Nico immediately went to work to help save a part of the city that was vanishing before his eyes. Catapulting off of the viral success of his Instagram — which has 472k followers, attracting attention from the New York Times and celebrities like Alec Baldwin and Chloe Sevingy—Nico launched contests such as Best New York Mask, Best New York Photo, and Best New York T-Shirt, that raised nearly $300,000 for charities such as God's Love We Deliver, Color of Change, and The Campaign Against Hunger. Since the pandemic, Nico launched the #MomNPopDrop hashtag for quirky and iconic small businesses that were struggling to stay open. He started with Army & Navy Bag on Houston Street by going down to the store and taking a photo of its owner. Then for the next week or so, lines began forming outside his shop. “When I saw the response to that, I was like, holy shit. These posts are making a huge impact,” he said to Elle. For Highsnobiety, Nico photographed, as an extension of his practice, various scenes in the daily life of New York City: dog-walking in the streets, vendors, business owners. An ATV driven by a Chucky doll. All photos were shot on the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold2 5G, which was convenient enough to take with him for unexpected moments on the go that, with a clunkier machine, he would have missed just seconds later. And what moments these were — a testament to what keeps New York strong, the New York that he loves, which he believes will survive the pandemic.

KYLE NG

SHOT ON A SAMSUNG GALAXY Z FOLD2

DOWNTOWN NEW YORK

(JUN — AUG 2020)DOWNTOWN NEW YORKDOWNTOWN NEW YORKKYLE NG IS A CONNOISSEUR OF THE T-SHIRT. “IT’S LIKE A BILLBOARD FOR WHO YOU ARE,” HE SAID IN SSENSE. HE’S THE FOUNDER OF BRAIN DEAD, A STREETWEAR BRAND RUN BY A LOS ANGELES-BASED CREATIVE COLLECTIVE OF ARTISTS AND DESIGNERS, WHO FEATURED IN OUR JULY EDITION OF

THE NEXT 20

.

“The best t-shirts are ones with an approach, a perspective, and a culture already around it,” he went on. Simultaneously, the t-shirt for Ng is a signal of individuality that defines itself as part of a collective and a cultural context. This year, when the Black Lives Matter protests began in Minneapolis and spread around the world, Ng had the idea of making none other than a t-shirt to both commemorate the moment, and raise money for the Movement for Black Lives. He contacted Dev Hynes of Blood Orange, and designed a shirt in two hours, putting it for sale the next day. It made $500,000. Ng did what he does best: putting the times in a graphic. Brain Dead is celebrated for immersing itself in the cultures of post-punk, skateboarding, and underground comics. Comfortable with collaborating, Ng has worked with brands such as The North Face, Levi’s, and even Shake Shack. Yet as international as his brand’s reach is, he is still attuned to LA at the local level. As a research practice, Brain Dead works with the people involved in a particular culture, which makes fashion and community organizing one and the same. With the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold2 5G’s “flex mode,” Ng is able to toggle through multiple windows at once, in the smartphone’s tablet mode, and compare designs and photos. It’s a boon for his Covid-era productivity, where sales (perhaps unusually) have been up 120%. For Highsnobiety, Ng photographed himself and his collaborators with the Z Fold2 in and around his studio, where he recently worked on a series of t-shirts inspired by horror movies for Halloween. Other scenes are more quotidian: journeys looking for mushrooms at the market, his dog. Perhaps most iconic of the moment, one photograph shows his mail-in ballot with the “I Voted” sticker an image emblematic of the brand itself and some of its core values.

ALEX JAMES

SHOT ON A SAMSUNG GALAXY Z FOLD2

DOWNTOWN NEW YORK

(JUN — AUG 2020)DOWNTOWN NEW YORKDOWNTOWN NEW YORK“ROCK ISN’T A TREND FOR ME NOR MY BRAND. I DON’T WEAR A SLAYER OR MOTÖRHEAD T-SHIRT BECAUSE I THINK THEY LOOK COOL, I WEAR THEM BECAUSE I’VE BEEN THRASHING TO THAT MUSIC IN MY BEDROOM LONG BEFORE THESE LAMES WERE AROUND,” SAYS ALEX JAMES, THE OWNER OF PLEASURES.

It’s a streetwear brand known for its DIY aesthetics drawn from music subcultures like metal and new wave, and has attracted the likes of The Weeknd, Kylie Jenner, A$AP Rocky, and Kim Jones. Growing up in the suburbs of New Jersey to working class parents, James came of age during the ‘80s and ‘90s, immersing himself in the music scene of New York that would hail this period the last of its kind, before the Internet and Giulani killed the underground. This was an era defined by Sonic Youth, CBGB’s, Chloe Sevigny in Kids. The last bastion of Gen-X culture. PLEASURES, which was launched in 2015, began as a way of making affordable clothing inspired by vintage band merch. Yet as laconic as he is about his design choices, James cares a lot about accessibility. “PLEASURES is an inclusive brand. We want to include everyone and not alienate our consumer,” he said in GOAT. This harkens back to his younger years spent rummaging through thrift stores and estate sales for clothes, and hanging out all day at record shops. Hence the touch of nostalgia in PLEASURES’ designs. The culture that it represents is of a recent past that might be seen as dead if people like James weren’t dedicated to preserving it. “Rock was around first and will be here forever,” he says. For Highsnobiety, James shot surprisingly intimate photos with the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold2 5G of scenes from his home life. Some of the smartphone’s features, like its hands-free shooting (all you have to do is wave at the camera and it’ll take a picture) allows for users to appear in portraits with others in front of the camera, like James does with his child. Other shots show scenes from his home, like his intricately woven carpet, or a bouquet of flowers. It’s a reminder that some of the most inspiring scenes in daily life are those closest to you.

JOE FRESHGOODS

SHOT ON A SAMSUNG GALAXY Z FOLD2

DOWNTOWN NEW YORK

(JUN — AUG 2020)DOWNTOWN NEW YORKDOWNTOWN NEW YORKIT WAS A BAD SITUATION THAT TURNED INTO A GOOD ONE. IN 2018, JOE FRESHGOODS — THE DESIGNER WHO CO-OWNS THE FAT TIGER WORKSHOP STORE IN CHICAGO—HAD A CONTRACT WITH ADIDAS TO RELEASE TWO SNEAKERS AND AN APPAREL COLLECTION, BUT THE DEAL FELL THROUGH LAST MINUTE.

The clothes were already made, so Freshgoods, who was able to retrieve the dead stock, went ahead and put it for sale for a 40 percent markdown at a drive-through fundraiser for public schools in Chicago. His hope was to raise money for the laptops, tablets, and headphones kids need for remote learning during quarantine. His dedication to Chicago runs deep. When Freshgoods drops a t-shirt at a pop-up in the city, lines stretch to over 90 minutes to cop them. It goes back to when he used to sell his own branded t-shirts secretly while he was working for the Chicago streetwear shop Leaders. People trust him because he’s committed to the city. Since the pandemic, he introduced Community Goods, a charitable brand that raises funds for small Black-owned businesses in Chicago and The Greater Chicago Food Depository. While working at Leaders, he met Chance The Rapper, whom he considers an old friend. In 2017, Chance went on to wear one of Freshgoods’ hoodies when accepting the award for Best Rap Performance. (It reads “Thank you.”) The exposure catapulted Freshgoods to a new national platform—raking in collaborations with McDonald’s, Nike, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Chicago Bears—yet he has stayed true to his Chicago roots. Shot entirely with the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold2 5G, Freshgoods’ photos for Highsnobiety give us a look into his creative studio. The smartphone’s hands-free shooting also makes it even easier to take self-portraits, with having your arm awkwardly jutting to the corner of the picture. More shots show scenes from the Fat Tiger Workshop, and all its swag and splendor. It’s a space he co-owns with Terrell Jones and Desmond Owusu, and has been a stalwart in the local community. “We’re a community store,” he said in The Fader. “We’re like a barber shop.”

[suzanneshannon]

Connecting the Dots

Two plans: one for design, one for culture.

What I’ve found is that the DNA between both dynamics must be inextricable from one another. Creating with compassion in an environment fueled by compassion means we never lose sight of what it’s all about: people. Beyond functioning in this manner because “it’s the right thing to do,” quality of work, loyalty internally (team) and externally (users), and product innovation are all benefits to reap.

Earlier we talked through the concept of “simplicity” and its application to creation and environment. Now, let’s revisit a few other examples of healthy benchmarks from a creative culture as we’ve discussed in this book:

Slowing down / pausing with intent

Everyone has a seat at the table

The New Day One

In taking a focused look at these facets, their correlation to HCD is readily apparent:

Culture: Slowing down / pausing with intent Design: Discovery / observation

The Swedish concept of fika transcends a mere “coffee break.” It’s about slowing down, the act of pausing during a typical day and making time to have a dialogue with someone (though a good cup of coffee is a vital part). I ensure this time is not only a known quantity within my team’s creative culture, but that it’s protected and actively utilized.

Instead of getting a product manager’s Powerpoint wireframe in your inbox with a request to “make it look nice” or a client’s request to crank out a design for their approval by EOD, we must slow down to understand the people who will be interacting with our design (and the design’s potential impact on others, the environment and community in which it will be used, and so on). Rushing to get something done to tick an account manager’s client-appeasement box at the expense of the human experience is to sacrifice empathy, quality, and any prospect of innovation.

Culture: Everyone has a seat at the table Design: Inclusion

As the very definition of cultural transparency, Nick Sarillo’s pizza parlors tack their full financial statements to a wall, daily, for all employees to see. Everyone’s hourly wage is listed on a nearby whiteboard, with the means to make more money articulated in tandem (training in more areas of business = increased hourly wage). Many managers have worked their way up in this manner, and offer training to other employees who wish to advance by taking on more responsibility. This is about collaboration yielding success to both the employee and the business, the sharing of information, and access for all; key dynamics of an inclusive culture.

Inclusion in the design process enables us, as creators, to recognize our own personal biases. By identifying the exclusion in our work, we humbly set aside our assumptions; connecting with people from diverse communities, building empathy, will expand our product’s reach (access). Via engaging humans throughout our design process, listening to them, and usability testing iteratively, objective solutions that yield innovation follow suit.

Culture: The New Day One Design: Ethnography

The New Day One concept evolves an employee’s first day from formulaic and sterile into directly personal and custom. Via the “Inspiration” portion of the day and venturing away from the office, we gain insight into a new team member as an individual that transcends what folio work can yield. What physical aspects of their selected location have impacted who they are? How did it inspire their way of creating, or approaching problems? Understanding the impact of spatial dynamics on an individual is vital toward an individualistic, yet ultimately holistic, view.

Ethnographic research provides an environmental context to human interaction that a video-conference interview could never yield. Through direct observation, ethnography is the qualitative study of human beings in their native environment. Is the individual sitting in a high-traffic area in an office, causing frequent distraction from their work? Are they a field worker primarily utilizing a mobile device in direct sunlight, yielding paramountcolor contrast needs? By making research truly human, we gain an understanding of how those we observe see the world and how they ultimately engage with it.

For the Greater Good

Greater Good Studio (GGS) is a social impact-focused human- centered design firm co-founded by Sara Cantor Aye and George Aye. Their business is located within the Logan Share, a co- working space they also founded in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood.

I reached out to the Studio to ask if I could stop by their space and observe a “morning in the life” view of their process: culture and design, organically, as both unfolded. Without hesitation, Sara (a former Northwestern University instructor) extended me an offer to join the team for observation. After signing a non- disclosure agreement, we agreed on a date for my visit.

When I arrived on a Monday morning, George (formerly of IDEO) greeted me with a cup of coffee and walked me up the stairs into the naturally well-lit Logan Share space. I noticed the open seating in the co-working section was already nearly full, as he gave me a tour of the “configuration by human need and intent”-based layout and active-project areas. On long single sheets of cardboard suspended by custom-built fasteners, entire lifecycles of project- centric human-centered design artifacts were on display. Once a project is deployed, George explained, the cardboard is detached and saved for forthcoming iteration, with fresh sheets re-fastened to form the partitions of a new project space thereafter.

The six core steps of the Studio’s HCD process manifest themselves in the following way:

Framing Defining questions to answer and people to engage

Research Learning from people about their needs and values

Synthesis Finding patterns of behavior and areas of opportunity

Concepting Creating a high volume of new ideas

Prototyping Making tangible mock-ups and gathering feedback

Piloting Testing solutions in real time with real people

As a team, GGS functions via a working method called ROWE (Results Only Work Environment), a concept leveraged from Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson’s book Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It: The Results-Only Revolution. Taken from an article on the Studio’s blog, they describe the practice within GGS like this:

“The basic principle behind ROWE is that staff doesn’t need to be supervised, when given the tools, clear expectations, and deadlines people will not only do their work, but do it better than if they were trying to fit into a mold. Within GGS, this practice is exercised by very diligent calendar management, clear deadlines, expectations on deliverables, and Cookie Rewards (little treats we give each other if we have to move something on the calendar).”

Once a month the entire team pauses for a five-hour, non-client project block of time called “internal day.” This time is reserved for studio-centric things: team members sharing learnings from conferences they’ve attended, how to improve internal practices, past project debriefs, etc. It’s the act of pausing with intent, in full effect.

Sara arrived a few minutes into my tour of the space, and the GGS team’s “BD charrette” was the first employee gathering (remote and in-person) of the morning. “BD” stands for “business development,” and in a cozy seating area, everyone had a seat at the table in all senses of the phrase. Sara and George ran through the status of a current request for proposal, then each team member had the opportunity to voice their opinion about whether the RFP should be pursued based on how it aligned with GGS’s (and their employees’) personal, values. Everyone was heard; every voice was respected.

The dialogue eventually shifted to another potential new client, this time with GGS at the presentation stage. Again, everyone at the table gave their feedback on Sara and George’s presentation plan of attack and, again, every team member’s voice carried equal value and weight. The studio-wide inclusion in the business owners’ decision making was genuine, effortless, and natural.

Forty-five minutes later, the group made a physical transition to a few nearby couches; less than a three-foot walk, as I eyed it. I inquired about the very minor spatial change for this next leg of the meeting and was told, “There’s a difference in purpose, so we transition to a different space.” Each member of the team then took their turn describing their weekend in three words:

“Sunshine, beach, baking.”

I got my turn as well. Changing the energy on those couches, from new business to being focused on the individual, made for a palpable climate change. In a few words everyone had a sense of what their teammates got up to over the weekend, eliciting smiles and planting the seeds for future dialogues throughout the pauses- with-intent over the rest of the day.

Next: “validations.” In this final portion of the meeting (pre- project status), anyone who wanted to articulate their appreciation for a team member over the previous week did so. One person recognized their co-worker for their selfless collaboration, taking time from their own project work to help theirs get client-ready on time. Similar-but-unique “thanks” emerged from varied people; no one was required to speak up, but everyone did.

After project updates I sat with Sara for a one-on-one to chat over coffee. I asked her about the synergies between their HCD process and how she interacts with her team in the office:

“I think where it’s actually become more intentional and obvious has been with our staff who are not trained designers. Operations folks, or our community manager, etc. I’ve had to say, ‘I want you to be a designer about this’ (whatever ‘this’ is). ‘We are your users, you’re trying to get us to do our timesheets, or clean up the kitchen, etc. Observe. Talk to people. Figure out our motivations. Summarize everything you’ve learned, and then have ideas.’

As a designer, I am constantly designing at every level. I’m designing deliverables in many cases for clients, or coaching our teams to design deliverables. I’m also designing process by which we work by writing proposals, scoping, etc. And at the highest level, I’m designing our company. I’m designing our culture based on our customs and traditions and policies (the hard and the soft) every day. My users are not hypothetical, they’re actual people.”

When All is Not Good

Sara went on to cite how her previous work experience shaped the leader she is today:

“I think a lot of my design choices are based in (unhealthy dynamics) with prior employers. Where decisions were not made transparently, everything financial was completely opaque. Lots of lack of trust with other employees. It’s been so critical that I’ve had bad experiences so I can now clearly say: let’s not do that.”

The tactics, mindsets, organizational shifts, and operational flexibility discussed in this book are predicated upon a simple truth: a company presently supports and operates as a creative culture, or it’s genuinely willing to evolve to become one. Along the way, I’ve been primarily speaking to those who are in a position to help implement change; even at a small scale. But what about when you’re not in a position to be heard, or the position to help facilitate change?

Reality isn’t always unicorns and rainbows. Bad experiences can impact us all. For example, the fabric of a company’s creative culture can become irreparably frayed thanks to management changes, acquisition, or it can lack sustainability. Whether these circumstances reveal themselves over years or overnight, your passion and evolution should never be their casualty.

Sometimes, creating within an environment that’s the best fit for your growth and passions means finding a new opportunity.

Connecting the Dots published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

[nehakukreti]

2 years of digital transformation in 2 months

2 years of digital transformation in 2 months

This week, CEO Satya Nadella delivered office.com/setup’s quarterly earnings report to Wall Street—our first in the era of COVID-19. On the call, Satya shared some new numbers: In April, we saw more than 200 million office.com/setup Teams meeting participants in a single day, generating more than 4.1 billion meeting minutes. Also, Teams now has more than 75 million daily active users, and two-thirds of them have shared, collaborated, or interacted with files on Teams as well. As Satya put it, “We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months. From remote teamwork and learning to sales and customer service, to critical cloud infrastructure and security—we are working alongside customers every day to help them adapt and stay open for business in a world of remote everything.”

To keep their teams connected in this world of remote everything, our customers need more than meetings or chat alone. Teams combine meetings, calls, chat, and collaboration into a single tool that preserves context and keeps everyone up to speed. Below, I dig into the role that Teams are playing to keep the world working and share customer stories about how Teams enable their work. But first, a bit more about those numbers.

About the numbers

Satya shared three important types of numbers in his call: daily meeting participants, daily meeting minutes, and daily active users. We see different vendors use these metrics in different ways, but we’re the only ones on the market that can release all three. The reason for that is simple: office.com/setup Teams are the only solution that offers chat, calls, meetings, and collaboration in one.

So how do we define each? Our daily meeting participants number is the aggregate number of people joining a meeting in a day—so if someone participates in five meetings in a day, they would be counted five times. Meanwhile, we measure daily meeting minutes by adding together the total time people spend in Teams meetings within a 24-hour period. For example, if two people are in the same 10-minute meeting, we count that as 20 meeting minutes. Finally, we define daily active users (DAU) as the count of unique users performing an intentional action in a 24-hour period in any of the office.com/setup Teams clients—desktop, mobile, or web. Intentional actions include sending or replying to a chat, joining a meeting, or opening a file in Teams. We don’t count passive actions like an autoboot, minimizing a screen, or closing the app. We also don’t count Skype Consumer or Skype for Business usage, since that’s a completely different app. Our DAU numbers are de-duped, meaning we only count each user once.

Powering the world’s work

Across education, government, healthcare, and business, office.com/setup Teams are powering collaboration for organizations of all sizes while meeting the highest standards of security and privacy. Around the world, more than 183,000 educational institutions use Teams. In the United Arab Emirates alone, over 350,000 students are relying on Teams for remote learning. On the business side, 20 organizations have more than 100,000 active users on Teams, including Continental AG, Ernst & Young, Pfizer, and SAP. Just last week, Accenture became the first organization to surpass half a million users, and we expanded our partnership with the NFL. We even collaborated with the League to help bring the first-ever virtual NFL Draft to life with Teams!

And after weeks of learning, working and living this way, we’re all developing new habits. Some COVID-19-era habits will prove temporal—I know many parents who can’t wait for the return of in-person play dates, for instance. But we believe the habits we see in Teams are more durable and will persist well beyond the current crisis. Data from regions like China and South Korea, where many people have returned to the office, but continue Teams habits they developed while working apart, back this up. For example, a report out this month showed more than two times the number of new Teams users each day in China compared to the end of January. And the number of daily active Teams users in China also continued to grow week over week.

In this era of remote everything, we have seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months. Teams are enabling this accelerated transformation by giving people a single tool to chat, call, meet, and collaborate. With Teams as their hub for teamwork, our customers are discovering new collaboration habits that we believe will persist well beyond this crisis. We are committed to continuing to build the tools that keep them connected and productive—through COVID-19 and beyond.

from Blogger http://quicksolvocom.blogspot.com/2020/06/2-years-of-digital-transformation-in-2.html

[aurelliocheek]

Company Culture in Times of Chaos

Here at Liftoff, culture is at the forefront of who we are, what we do, and why we do it. When our world shifted to fully working remotely, we had to quickly adapt and guarantee that our company culture did not skip a beat.

We have always prioritized giving team members flexibility with their work arrangements, so the transition to a company-wide work-from-home policy went smoothly for our employees. We were able to continue accommodating technical setups, logistics, and other day-to-day matters. Within the first few weeks of this transition, Liftoff also provided a stipend to address any additional barriers (e.g. home office set up, meals, etc.) to ensure employees were well taken care of.

It goes without saying that Liftoff has continued to make employee engagement a priority, and we have been able to adapt our strategies from one that is focused heavily on in-person interactions to physically distant yet fully engaging virtual interactions. So, here are our four key takeaways from these past few months.

1. Adapting quickly is key, and it’s never too late to start

When we initially started transitioning to work-from-home in response to the pandemic, we had one question at the top of our minds: How can we support the team even if we are not physically together? So many of our events and opportunities to engage with the team had relied on interacting with one another in person: we shared tasty meals and delicious treats together, we participated in in-office events, and spent time with each other at offsites. 

In response to that question, we created a dedicated page on our company intranet where we consolidated multiple online resources for employees within the first week of working remotely, ranging from support for mental health and wellness, to home office setup tips, lists of virtual events, professional development opportunities, and even fun things to do outside of work hours. We also enabled our team managers and ‘Culturenauts’ (culture ambassadors across our different functions) to continue planning virtual team initiatives including game nights, workout sessions, happy hours, care packages, and virtual lunches.

We soon faced a new challenge where adaptation was essential as we further onboarded multiple new hires virtually. We overcame this problem by innovating on existing processes and practices to ensure that they felt as welcomed and supported as they would have in-person. Even now that we are over three months in, we have continued to think ahead and innovate on new ideas. As the situation pans out differently in the various regions of the world, we look forward towards returning to the office with what a new reality might look like post-pandemic.

2. Flexibility is important in a global team

There are many different cultural considerations to be made when managing a team across the globe. This plays out not only in personal work styles, but also the efficacy of our efforts to meet each regional team’s needs.

For example, we launched a global effort to provide the team with monthly care packages across all 7 countries that we have offices in worldwide. This required a great deal of coordination and research on local vendors, but also consideration of each local context. Thankfully, our leadership team was understanding and responsive to the different nuances of each country and enabled us to continue to support our different teams in this way.

Prior to the shift to fully remote work during this period, our global teams had existing various touchpoints with each other, even across our different functions. Our London, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo, and South Korea offices would meet virtually once a month to catch up on latest updates and share knowledge. Meetings with key stakeholders and senior leadership that normally take place in our HQ offices would also be held at EMEA or APAC-friendly times so that the respective global teams could join in and contribute. Thanks to these initial foundations, these practices have continued smoothly even as we have shifted their formats to virtual meetings.

“We will emerge from this period stronger, wiser and more connected as a global society. Resilience will be at the forefront of every strategy, yet it is agility that will ensure competitiveness, and an ability to respond to the unexpected. To achieve this, businesses will have to re-evaluate where they must be strong and where they must be flexible.” – Mohit Joshi (source)

3. Leadership buy-in is essential

We know that these are difficult times and each business is facing their own unique set of challenges. As different leadership teams tackle both new and existing priorities and problems, one core consideration our People Operations team has had to make is how we can understand which priorities are at the forefront of our business, and how we can adapt and support them accordingly. This included providing leadership-specific resources on managing teams remotely, as well as encouraging our company value of ‘Courage to Change’ by incorporating virtual stand ups, check ins, and 1:1’s to maintain a sense of continued connection within teams.

When it comes to company-wide engagement efforts, we have been actively tailoring these initiatives to the current sentiments of our teams by creating spaces to get a pulse of where individuals are at through surveys, polls, and direct feedback from managers. This helps to ensure that our people programs and culture-related efforts are in line with what leaders and managers at Liftoff are seeking out for their teams and direct reports.

4. Small gestures can go a long way

During this time, we made the effort to send our team gifts such as snacks, gift cards, and even DIY plant pods to remind them that we are always committed to encouraging employee wellness and engagement; through this, we also intentionally supported local businesses and non-profit organizations that some of these businesses are donating a portion of their profits to. The team was extremely grateful and it served as a timely morale booster for many of them, which brought us great joy and satisfaction to see as well. Another recent initiative that Mark, our CEO, shared was a company-wide day off to ensure that team members were taking time to disconnect and recharge. Gestures like these spark a sense of gratitude amongst team members, which is an important trait to focus on cultivating to ensure the success of distributed workers.

Another way that we have encouraged and modeled gratitude is by giving back to the communities around us, through our Liftoff Gives program worldwide. From direct company donations to our employee gift matching initiative, we continue to pursue opportunities that support the communities and front-liners who need the most help during this uncertain time. Since March, 25% of our employees have donated to various charitable organizations, supporting relief efforts around Covid-19 and more recently to fight racial injustice. 

As the conversation shifts from “how are we going to tackle the challenges of remote work?” to “what does the future of our office culture look like, given current circumstances?”, it is important for us to reflect on some of the learnings from this season in order to further adapt and gradually acclimate back to the office environment when we eventually return. This global ‘work from home experiment’ has revealed many strengths and shortcomings of a fully remote workforce, and we have the potential to emerge with strong takeaways and lessons that can allow us to sustainably scale our Liftoff culture globally across our 7 different offices.

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Company Culture in Times of Chaos published first on https://leolarsonblog.tumblr.com/