A good night out is a good night out.
Not much more needs to be said.
Day 211: Office Party
Category: Work
Day 210: Surrounded By Water
A city is always better with some element of water, be it the sea, a lake or a river. There are some cities that are nice despite not having any. But not many.
Considering I don’t want a boat, and very rarely even swim in the sea, I really can’t tell you why I find it so important.
It just is.
Day 209: Getting #$!% Done
Company meet-ups can be a great place to pull your head out of the daily rat race and deal with things you never have time to solve.
This year we tested “speed dating” – two teams at a time, 30 minutes. Task: solve one problem in every meeting.
Surprisingly useful.
Day 208: Dinners
It’s a pity how rarely you actually go to any of the cool spots in Helsinki in your day-to-day life.
Foreign visitors are always a great excuse.
Day 207: Work Week
Since its founding, our company has been pretty diverse, even for a startup. I remember when we hit 45 employees, we had people of 19 nationalities living in 14 countries (and 49% women).
I love it, but it comes with its challenges. And, to be fair, any company culture benefits when colleagues occassionally meet face-to-face.
So once a year, we bring managers and a few experts together. We still keep it casual.
Good for business, tough on photography projects!
Day 206: A Great Steak
The older I get, the less likely I am to order a steak in a restaurant. It’s heavy. And often quite boring.
But a really, really good steak?
Still the food of gods.
Day 140: Fire Drill
The only thing fire drills really teach us is to finish our lunch and pack our bags before evacuating.
Day 138: Summer in the City
Walking meetings are the best kind of meetings. You end up having very different 1:1s while walking around the neighborhood than you do sitting in front of your laptop.
Every time I do one, I decide to do them more often.
Then I don’t.
Day 131: Different Office
We are in the process of building a separate little building at the summer cottage that, for now, will house a few rooms with proper desks and office chairs. At least for the time being, it is affectionately known as the “Teams Pavilion”.
It’s not quite finished yet, so this week I was still working from the boathouse. It may look rustic and cosy, but after a few hours your back starts complaining. Even so, I think it is a much better place for meetings than the main house, with the girls running around and Stuart workshopping in the next room.
Little back pain is a small price to pay for spending the evenings at the summer cottage. And the girls love spending the days with their mummi.
Day 121: Conference with a Drop of Gin
The main conference day.
It was pouring down the whole day, so I did not miss much by sitting inside and trying to learn something new.
I came to get more practical ideas of advanced AI in ecommerce. It’s a good thing that this is what I wanted. Every presentation focused on the topic, whether the title said so or not.
The weird thing about AI is that I have yet to meet a person who does not feel behind the curve. Cowork launched four months ago, and already everyone feels they have missed the boat.
Or, this is what I tell myself – while quietly feeling I have missed the boat.
A trip to gin distillery helped.
