Series 2 - Episode 1 - Resolution
Went to London the other day. 7.30am train from Brighton. 20 minutes late. Standard. Maybe it was always true that we were all distributed - and I was just living a jammy zone 2 lifestyle - but since lockdowns it feels like, even though the ambience and serendipity you get in London is still there when I’m there, 80% of people aren’t around 80% of the time. Including me. Sure, last week I still randomly bumped into my sister-in-law in a coffee shop while I was catching up with Kuba, had lunch with Will, saw someone I’ve DM’d on Instagram while I was having lunch. Just doesn’t feel the same when those plans or serendipities don’t pile on top of each other every single day of the week. Makes for a good year when you get a streak.
Anyway. It’s not a coincidence that I started writing this the day after Look mum no hands! announced they were closing down.
We have people working on ff.studio projects in Brighton, London, Madrid, Manchester and Porto. So it’s not that we have office ambience, who wants a cup of tea, who’s chatting at whose desk and is it good or interesting enough chat to go and join in on. Slack, let’s be realistic, still encourages 1:1 or many:many conversations, rather than 2:do I wanna go hang out with them? And the extra interaction layer in “Shall we chat, here’s a Google Meet link I just made, see you there” in our Signal groups worked well enough, for a bit, but it’s not like anyone else can see you hanging out and decide to come join you (“made you a tea. What’s going on?”). So we’ve been trying out an ff.studio Discord, our own private neighbourhood as Matt Webb would put it. Feels like the closest we’ve got to ambient interaction in a remote world so far (pop into a voice channel just to say hey). Especially now that Twitter’s become quite so dry. Come and hang out if you want to. The joy of the work is the people. This ain’t the down, it’s the upbeat.
This is series 2, now. The other thing we did last week was start a company. Two directors, equal shareholdings. Soundcheck over. Anyone got any work?
AG