Blog posts tagged as 'weeknotes'

We’re all back in the studio.

The week begins early monday morning with Webb and myself wondering whether we can move the desks around to accomodate some more people. This week feels like a gathering of momentum, a breath before another push, change-down, dig-in.

As the evenings get longer and lighter, and our little room gets fuller – so do the pavements outside the studio with drinkers in the local pub.

Summer is coming.

Constructive Summer, hopefully.

This week Schulze is co-writing seven documents at once, like some kind of crazy prog-rock rick-wakemanesque figure on keyboards. He’s continuing to direct the work overall on Chaco, planning that a bit more after some great leaps with the combined BERG/client team on that last week. He’s also having fun with lawyers, and writing an article for Eye that I’m looking forward to reading. He’s also working a bit with Denise on Barringer.

Denise is in the final pre-press throes of SVK, discussing last details with the printers. She’s also writing a ‘bible” for barry – editorial and design choices that will define it. I keep glimpsing it over her shoulder – it’s full of the sort of care and detail I’d expect from her.

Joe is into the last two week of the current project for Uinta, teleporting between 30,00ft views of the system concept to the detail of individual interactions and aesthetic touches. He’s cranking. I make him a lot of tea.

[I forgot that I put the kettle on when I started writing this and had promised a lot of people in the studio tea. BRB.]

[Ok. Back]

Kari is working on monthly dashboard stuff that she and MW produce to figure out how we’re all doing. She was also chasing our SVK torches around the UK’s customs infrastructure.

And got results!!!

They arrived yesterday.

MW is on Barry planning, meetings, consolidating our project management tools and processes, trying to find us new property, scrutinising our sales and resources pipeline for the coming months. I am making him a lot of tea also.

Timo is Brussels, and joining us occasionally as a little floating head, via Skype. He’s co-writing with Jack, working on some awesome material and video explorations for Chaco, doing some process and planning work.

He’s also thinking about making. We had a conversation at the end of our weekly ‘all-hands’ meeting about better ways of recording and presenting the various experiments we do (that don’t have a direct client or product outcome, we’re always fiddling with something or scratching some itch) without slowing down the work or becoming less nimble about it. There are little curiosities and tests that might be half-formed in our studio that could be public, faster.

MW recalled his lab book from university (he was a physicist, once, after all) as a great quick structure for writing up experiments.

This isn’t it – it’s one of Alexander Shulgin’s – but it’s nice to think of a template or format where things can be methodically and quickly observed and shared.

I just bought one of these.

It’s a weatherproof bird-watching journal, and it’s structured to capture all of the information a bird-watcher would want. What notebooks should we have for material explorations, or for prototyping?

Anyway.

Alex is working on Chaco, Uinta, SVK final bits and bobs – and he’s out this afternoon teaching at the LCC.

Nick’s been meeting some freelance developers, working on a Barry sprint with Denise, looking after SVK online shop work, hardware chatting with andy, and beginning writing a technical spec for some of the Chaco work. Andy’s chatting about documentation with suppliers, Chaco planning/speccing, and thinking about how to use contractors on it.

And finally, I guess, me.

I’ve been helping Joe on Uinta, a bit of writing and thinking for Chaco, and lots of admin stuff for the studio. Mainly that’s been looking at the pipeline with Jack and Matt.

I’m learning more and more (primarily through talking it out with MW) about the ‘biodynamics’ of a small-but-growing studio like ours. Where you need to leave things to grow, and what needs to be encouraged or watched more carefully. Iterating and improving the tools and ways to do that is something that sometimes feels like wasted time when you could be designing or making something, but it’s not.

You have to have macroscopes for these tides and turns in the system you’re embedded in or you can’t see them creeping up on you. It’s good to spend a bit of time on that, so that you can really focus on the quality of the work being produced without too much worry.

Our friend James Wheare built a bit of a macroscope – called twitshift. It sends you your twitters from exactly a year ago.

Exactly a year ago I was congratulating Matt Brown and Tom Armitage on launching Schooloscope.

They’re no longer in the room with us (and Matt Brown’s not even in the same country anymore – it was his first week at Apple this week I think…), so I’ll put my 1st birthday congrats to our awesome alums here…

Lab-books, macroscopes, Shenzen, hardware, people, place.

All in this busy little room. All in week 309.

Lots has happened since I wrote the weeknote I did before. As ever, there is far more going on than I know about.

Timo and I are working pretty solidly on project Chaco. We have lovely guests from Chaco in the studio with lots of early material exploration going on and conceptual unpacking of the things we want to make. We’re recording everything and have unearthed some fantastic early material through video sketching.

Timo and I have also been visiting lawyers to develop a stronger footing in some new areas we’re exploring. We had to go to Hammersmith for one meeting which is bloody miles away. Timo was cross because he ordered a new lens and it hasn’t arrived as expected.

Denise has been chasing down some of the remaining edges of SVK, proofing it, tweaking the last ads, specifying packaging details and such. She is also working on Weminuche. She and I have enjoyed evolving the physical details of the product form. I’m personally enjoying working with her hugely and her experience in service product domain is brilliant, essential stuff.

Joe has continued embedding himself into the studio culture. He’s been applying the fantastic wood chipper of his mind on the service design and UI elements for Uinta. Picking pixels from under his finger nails and aligning the detail in the grit and grain with the high level strategic thinking. It’s terrific.

Nick has been thinking hard on new hires and chasing some of the technical issues ahead of the SVK launch. He’s begun some research into the deep technical darkness involved in project Chaco. He and Timo have been experimenting with some fantastic stuff. Occasionally, as we discuss designs and possibilities, Nick gets a look in his eyes, like he’s going to have to punch physics in the brain. Physics looks back at him like a spoilt four year old teasing a doberman. It’s the best stand off you’ve ever seen.

Andy has been laying out circuit boards and looking to organise contractors for all sorts of hardware developments. He is also winning an enormous game of Gantt Chart Tetris, restructuring the fabric of time to make all eventual awesomeness possible. He also found a secret German supplier for some highly coveted components we need for a Chaco strand.

Alex has been designing an article for a magazine. As ever, he’s deeply involved with tweaking detail in SVK and testing parts of the payment system. He’s also been in meetings on Chaco strands and we expect him to begin designing concepts for that over the next few weeks.

Matthew and Jones have been out the studio this week working with a client in the UK out of London, I hear snippets on the Twitter vine but as far as I can tell all is going well with them both.

I’m enjoying being in the UK for more than three days at a time. Lots of potential is finding traction and leaping forward into some of the largest, most ambitious design work I’ve personally encountered.

It’s a short week in the UK, and so far the sun is shining on the three working days that make up week 307. We have two ill people (get well soon, James and Nick!), and everyone else is busy.

I have on my desk

• Pantone Books
• Alan Moore’s ‘Yuggoth Cultures (and other growths)’
• print proofs
• paper samples
• a mock up of SVK
• the biggest cup of tea in the office

I’ve been working on SVK and Weminuche this week, two very different projects.

SVK is a comic, written by Warren Ellis and drawn by Matt Brooker. BERG are publishing it – and you’ll be able to get hold of it online really soon.

As someone with a past involving magazines, it’s been fascinating to see the way a comic gets put together. I’m used to pre-agreed flatplans, to sending off pages out of sequence to the reader but in the right section order for printing, moving pages about when ads change. A comic is completely different. There’s a script first, roughs at different stages, a story that evolves. The evolution is amazing – as is watching Matt J’s reaction to each new page of artwork. Such a look of sheer delight you’d think he didn’t know what was coming. I’m very excited to see this printed – but I think we might need medical help for Jones.

Weminuche is a lot of fun, although I’m not allowed to talk about it. Between you and I, it currently involves moustaches and the possibility of a soul patch. This is an idea I’ve thrown into the mix, we’ll see if I can make it work. It means I get to look at facial hair on the internet, which is an area of research generally neglected by the Bergians in the past.

Other project work continues. Alex and Joe have been teaming up to work for a client we’ve code-named Uinta. (Is it just me, or do we seem to choose difficult-to-spell project names?) There’s been post it notes, discussion and a lot of progress made recently. Joe (sitting next to me) is currently creating some beautiful mock-ups of a world to come.

Timo, Jack, Matt J and Andy are starting to work for Chaco (another client code name). There’s a couple of projects on the go and ideas have been shared out loud for the past few weeks. It sounds like there’s a real opportunity for delight here, and I can’t wait to see how it all pans out.

Matt W has been catching up with everyone and planning current and future projects. He’s also been thinking about ways we can squeeze more desk space out of the office. It’s not an easy task. Kari has been helping him look for new studio space and generally keeping us all in order.

There’s a partitioned room in the office, which is where Andy is currently hiding. He’s knee deep in bits of physical hardware and says little when you drop in except ‘I think it’s time for ice-cream’.

I think he could be right.

Three of the last four weeks have seen at least part of the BERG team decamping to the States – California, then Oregon, then New York – for client meetings. This week, the most exotic place anyone is traveling for BERG work is Swindon. But mostly we’re all here. Which is nice.

Work on the two newest projects – Uinta and Chaco – is revving up. Matt Jones and Joe, the newest Bergian, have been furiously sketching on Uinta in order to wrap up the ideation phase for a presentation this afternoon. Over in the other room, Timo is doing sketching for Chaco.

Lots of people have their fingers in SVK: testing processes, wrangling adverts, solving problems, chasing quotes, and generally trying to get answers to lots and lots of questions that are still hanging in the air. Alex is doing a tremendous job of making sure we’re remembering what all those questions are that still need answering. We’re learning a whole lot about production, warehousing, promotion and sales – which was a big reason for doing this after all. And we’re kinda making up project management via trial and error as we go.

As I type, Jack, Nick, Denise and Alex have put their heads together to try to answer some more questions and make some more decisions around Weminuche. Elsewhere Andy is updating Gantt charts and chasing manufacturers to get production quotes. This is a long project with a lot of little exciting developments along the way. And as with SVK, there’s lots and lots of learning happening almost daily.

This week it’s Nick’s turn to do interviewing: we’re hoping to add another creative technologist to our midst soon. Project manager interviews are wrapping up this week. And since the addition of two more team members means we’ll be busting out of our lovely little space here on Scrutton Street, Matt Webb has just been out having a look at some potential new space. And I’ve been trawling the internet looking for more options. (My conclusion: there are waaaaay too many websites that promise to help you find office space in London, and the vast majority of them are rubbish. At least for our purposes.) As Matt said on Twitter today, “What I’d really like is someone in East London with a spare massive loft. Anyone?”

Today there were cupcakes to celebrate Matt Jones’ birthday (which is technically tomorrow). I suspect there may be more food later as RIG are hosting a Tupperware party next door. Awesome.

Outside the sky is bright blue and the sun is shining brilliantly. It’s the hottest day of the year so far. I predict, based on the weather forecast, that this week will include plenty of Silicon Carpark lunches and Magnums.

After a fairly quiet start to the week on Monday, it’s suddenly feeling a lot like normal service has resumed. With Matt W, Jack, Matt J and Timo out last week, the rest of us has a quiet, industrious time here. Now we’re back to levels of energy and activity in the room which make this such a unique and brilliant place to work.

Matt Webb is spending a good deal of this week interviewing candidates for our Project Manager role, and he and I have been chatting about the upcoming interviews next week, for the Creative Technologist position. Kari is making the interview process into a wonderfully efficient machine, booking the interview times, and collating all the CVs.

Hiring is a good thing for us right now, and new people will allow us to scale our work, but it brings with it very urgent questions of how we scale physically. Once we’ve filled these two roles, our ratio of staff to desks will tip over one, and somebody will be bumped onto the sofa until we find a new office. Either that, or we go for Plan B, the BERG mezzanine floor!

Speaking of new people, our office is now home to the fantastic Joe Malia, and as I write this, he’s busy getting his neural pathways tuned to the special Schulze wavelength. Schulze and Timo are in NYC for a brief spell of work that will keep them out of the country all week. Denise and Alex are busy working on preparing the shop for SVK, and Denise is also spending time on Weminuche, absorbing all of the unspoken potential of the project, and sketching beautiful pixels to capture and express them.

Andy spent some time at the National Electronics Week in Birmingham this week, and if we had a sweepstake for “person most likely to be wielding a soldering iron”, he’d win by a very comfortable margin. Back at his desk, he’s been pouring over schematics for circuit boards and helping me wire up various development boards together, also for the Weminuche project.

Last, but by no means least, Matt Jones is kicking off the studio portion of project Uinta with Joe, and is also giving the closing keynote on the first day of UX London 2011. This is week 305!

In another file on my laptop I’ve got the notes I was intending to write here. They’re all about how to structure risk in projects in order to leave the maximum room for unintended invention.

Whatever. I’m in no state to finish them. I’ve been eight timezones away for the past week with Matt J, Jack and Timo (who has joined us as a creative director!), I just flew back in, and my head feels like it’s full of bees.

I don’t know if you’ve ever played the game Canabalt. You should, it’s fun. That’s what the week has been like. Wake up early, read new resumes for the project manager position and decide whether to interview or not. Up, shower, downstairs. Drink coffee, respond to latest changes in a contract being negotiated, write a response to a media request, arrange meetings for next week, finalise another contract. Finish coffee, off to workshops, back, catch up on emails from the day, out for dinner, bed.

While we were on the road, Timo and Jack launched Suwappu with Dentsu London, our first gig as official “consultant inventors.” And toys too! Sweet.

So with so many people away it was quiet in the studio. Nick tells me it was industrious, and that’s the truth. I spent my first hour back in today being shown what’s been going on. Ads for the comic, testing the online shop and fulfilment, continuing mini breakthroughs and prototyping in our own new product development, etc. Lots!

It’s very sunny here too. A good Spring day in London.

I’ll see more at 4pm at Friday demos. Between that and Tuesday All Hands, there’s a nice rhythm to the week.

I’m not sure when we’ll all be back in the studio at the same time again. I think Jack may be off to New York next week, to kick off an engagement that will see us through the next six months or so. But we also have someone new starting on Monday, and then these two positions we’re just starting interviews for, and then, gosh, we’re out of desks. I don’t really want to move, but it does mean, on top of everything else going on, I’m now also looking around for new premises. Somewhere in Shoreditch with a bit of character, a bit of room to grow, a quiet room, a meeting room, and a space to run workshops and make films. I’m getting on the estate agent train. Do let me know if you have any ideas or serendipitous opportunities.

I’m looking forward to travel pausing for a bit, and having everyone back in the same room. There have been lots of changes recently, and the Room – which in my head I’ve started capitalising, Room not room – is nothing if not a culture – a particular stance to design and the world, and shared values – a way to work which is beautiful, popular and inventive – and a network of people in which ideas transmit, roll round and mutate, and come back in new forms and hit you in the back of the head. The Room is what it’s all about. It’s a broth that requires more investment than we’ve been giving it recently. So, yeah, that.

It’s the end of week 304 folks.

^ roland.TB-303.schem-3 by rafael_mizrahi

My first time doing weeknotes, I’m terrified. Here we go.

It’s Matthew Irvine Brown’s last week at BERG. We’re going to give him a proper send off at the end of the week, but before that he’s working on getting Denise up to speed with what’s been going on, and making sure all of the bolts are tight on the things he’s been leading. We’ll miss him a lot.

Which leads us into Denise‘s first inclusion in weeknotes. She’s been spending a lot of time learning about Weminuche with Matt Brown and Nick, and has also been getting stuck into some awesome things SVK related and getting up to speed of where we are. She’s also been out of the office with Jack looking at good things that we can’t talk about (yet).

Matt Jones has been working with Jack on new project Uinta, doing a bit of behind the scenes planning for SVK, and helping me out with Dimensions 2. He’s off to far away lands next week with Jack. It’s very quiet when he’s not in the office.

Jack is working with Timo on a couple of projects, speaking to lawyers and is away doing workshops with Matt Jones next week.

Timo is working on Haitsu. We’ve had a few sneak peeks and it’s fantastic. He’s also been sketching some things for Chaco.

Darling, Nick and Andy have been locked in Statham for most of the week, cranking hard on Weminuche and showing us incredible things for Friday demos that make us smile a lot. Nick’s also been working with Timo on Haitsu. We’ve been communicating with them by sticking post it notes on the windows.

I’m continuing work on Dimensions 2, getting a bundle of things together for Friday. I’m also keeping an eye on SVK things with Denise and Matt Jones as they start to come together.

Kari is working her usual magic, keeping the office ticking and making the stuff behind the scenes work. She’s also been working on the logistics of SVK for when that launches.

Finally, Matt Webb is out and about for a lot of the week talking to people and making things happen, and hiring people! (We’re looking for people to join us, if you hadn’t seen it before).

That’s week 303. A lot of exciting things going on, and a lot of change.

It’s a nice day today.

I’m sitting in the small back room of the BERG office. Four of us (Nick, Matt B, Andy and I) have set up shop in here to get stuck into Weminuche for a little while. It’s a room to get immersed in the project – the walls, whiteboards and desks are covered in thoughts and experiments.

On Monday there was a clean, empty desk where Tom usually is. He’s gone to be a games designer, a beautiful fit. But already we have a new human to boost the studio back up to a cosy over-capacity. Denise is new BERG! (Proper welcome post coming soon). Denise is one of the many people I knew of and admired long before I met them or had any career of my own, but have never told. We went to have a welcome lunch in the sun today.

Matt J and Jack are away doing boss things in far away places. Instagram tells me they are still eating.

Matt Brown, as well as drawing things for me to make, as well as lining everything up for the SVK launch, is mind melding with Denise before his life is packed into boxes and flown to Cupertino.

Alex is taking the work the two of us have done on Dimensions 2 and moving it to the next level, along with other SVK bits and bobs.

Kari is handling all this arrival and departure of staff, smoothly as ever.

Andy is working on things that I can’t figure out how to describe without breaking secrets. He’s also breaking keyboards.

I was unconvinced about week 302 when it started – I couldn’t find a single good thing about the number 302, there was a bit of unwell hanging in the air and I got a rubbish hair cut. But now the windows are wide open, the weather is perfect, Scrutton Street feels homely and we have a Denise! It’s a nice day today.

It’s my turn on the blog rota this week, which means I get to do weeknotes!

We usually start our Tuesday 10am weekly standup with both a) theme music (this week was Hoyt Curtin‘s rousing theme music for “Battle Of The Planets”) and b) a fact about the week number.

301 is:

…the sum of three consecutive primes (97 + 101 + 103), happy number in base 10, and a HTTP status code, indicating the content has been moved and the change is permanent (permanent redirect).

This week, we are both a happy number – but also going through some permanent change.

It’s Tom’s last week with us before he heads to the golden lands of games design, and we’re going to be sending him off in style at the end of it.

For now though, BERG Employee #1 is documenting all of the awesome work he’s done in the last two years and change. He’s also working on the website and e-commerce system for SVK, and setting up some maintenance dashboards behind the scenes for Schooloscope.

Matt Brown is cranking on Barringer. As we garner more knowledge about how we’re going to make it, that’s leading us into more confident exploration of its aesthetics.

Matt’s been pulling together beautiful moodboards, references, material samples and examples under the umbrella of what he calls “New British Modern“.

I’ll bet we’ll be talking more about “NBM” here soon. The voice and surface of the product is almost there – it’s tantalising. He’s also working to support Alex on Dimensions2 and SVK this week.

Alex is wrangling ad production for SVK, and working hard on getting the interaction design and visual direction of Dimensions2 together for an end-to-end demo for tomorrow at a client workshop.

Dimensions2 is a slightly different beast to the original “HowBigReally.com” prototype – and it’s revealing nice new corners and opportunities as Alex gets deeper into the detail of both the visuals and the cracking bits of code-sketching that James is doing alongside him.

James is also creating some more end-to-end demos in code for Weminuche this week. Looking forward to Friday Demos on that one.

Jack has a bunch of meetings with potential new clients, but his studio time is divided between work with Timo bringing Haitsu home, and sketching with me and Timo on work for a new project: Chaco.

Which means, wonderfully – that Timo is in the studio with us this week!

Andy is busy with supplier meetings and research on Barringer. Nick is consulting on Chaco, Haitsu and working with James on Barringer. Matt W. is talking with accountants about R&D and lawyers about IP – as well as attending various new business meetings with Jack and myself. Kari is keeping the machinery of the studio going with process, prodding and peerless music selections.

I’m helping out with Dimensions2, SVK, going to a few meetings and typing – always typing… But – very excited about starting to sketch a little on Chaco. It’s in the very early stages but it involves working again with a favourite immaterial of mine – SpaceTime…

There. I think that’s everything! Busy times.

The content has been moved and the change is permanent. 301.

Three hundred weeks!

Everybody likes a number ending in zeroes.

Matt J and Jack are still in New York, where they’ve been teaching at the School of Visual Arts. They return tomorrow morning, landing straight back into the thick of things at the studio. (Well, they land at the airport really. They’re not falling out of the sky back into their seats, though it’s an amusing thought).

Matt W is also away, talking at FITC Amsterdam. He’ll be back on Thursday, I think.

Everyone else is here, and busy.

I’m working on Schooloscope this week – scraping new Ofsted inspections, little bits of maintenance. I’ve also been working around SVK – firming up the infrastructure around selling things. That’s coming together nicely out of several disparate pieces.

Alex is hard at work on various different design elements relating to SVK – working with advertisers, promoting the product, designing websites to sell it. Important stuff.

Nick’s darting around between a selection of technical prototypes, as well as ongoing work on Weminuche. Every now and then he waves people over to his desk to show us some magic working; every time we wander over, he shows us magic.

A box of fruit arrived this afternoon, which is all down to James. This scheme – wherein various people through Brig put a pound in an envelope, and we get a box of fruit delivered a week, has been christened Fruit Club; Alex even designed a logo. I am enjoying the fruits of Fruit Club as I type.

Workwise, James is attacking both Dimensions and Weminuche this week – the former likely heading towards a nice demo on Friday.

(We’ve started doing Friday demos – sometime in the middle of the afternoon, anyone who, on Monday said they’d have something to demo, shows it to whoever’s around. We usually all try to cram around monitors, or break out the projector; it’s really exciting to see work you’ve not been involved with emerging. James and I will definitely be showing things this week; there might be more Weminuche to show, too).

Matt B is mainly focused on Barringer, but he’s also got some fingers in SVK this week – including hitting “go” on some exciting buttons.

Last week, Kari was inside mass of dense accounting and reporting work, which has now been complete, and we await the results of it. This week, she’s writing a bit, keeping on top of admin, and keeping track of the flows of information and work, in and out of the company.

I went over to the studio doors just now, to check the list Kari maintains of what everyone’s doing – she updates it every Tuesday after our standups. At the top is the week number – and this week, 300 is in a different colour, a larger size.

Which made me smile.