So last night’s excursion was actually pretty fun. It turned out that we were going to see Rich Sheridan (menloprez), president of Menlo Innovations. He was talking about his book (Joy, Inc.) and how to build a culture of joy in the workplace. Not, as Gill was hoping, creating a culture. When you build a culture, you get to start from scratch, but often when you’re creating a culture you have to fight against the old culture.
So the presentation was at the Adobe building in SF but was actually presented by the Bay Area Agile Leadership Network. I think it was Gill’s first time at one of their meetups but she did recognize a few people from other meetups in the area. I got to introduce myself as her “plus one” and I finally came up with a good way to describe my work: 60% sitting around researching & planning and 60% climbing ladders & cutting lumber & painting. I don’t know where they got the pizzas that they provided, but I had a slice of a fig and bacon pizza, with balsamic vinaigrette and goat cheese that was just heavenly.
So the crux of Rich’s philosophy was that by creating an atmosphere of joy, where employees and customers came together to actually enjoy the work they were doing, that they could create better work. I was particularly impressed by his description of the technology anthropologists that his teams employ to study how the users work in the real world. And any culture that allows and encourages parents to bring in newborn children must be doing something right. I’m doing a bad job explaining it, but I was far more interested in what he had to say than I thought I would be when I got there. The entire presentation was recorded for later broadcast, but for now Rich put together a little page with some brief introductory materials.