Nerd Parties

· WCS,blog,marketing

As mentioned here, my COVID induced epiphanies have led me to wonder what to do next with this blog. 

 

Because as much as I like talking about myself, that no longer seems to be a unique trait; everyone's doing it. And that makes me not want to do it. Besides, I'm way better at pompous self-promotion in person. 

 

I'd like this blog thing to be helpful - which is surprising given how good I am at being distracting. In fact, I'm so good at annoying people that at school - every single one of my teachers complimented me (and told mum about) my ability to distract others. 

 

But since we aren't in school anymore and reading this at work means you need a semi-legitimate excuse to tell your boss. We need to come up with something here; we need a project. 

 

We need something that makes us "knowledge workers" feel less like indicator stalks. Very helpful but rarely used well. 

 

Some ideas come to mind: writing my kid's books about logistics (the chronicles of Larry Lemon the Lion that Learns about Logistics). Solving a corporate mystery. Or maybe building a knowledge warehouse?! 

 

Okay, clearly, I don't have any good project ideas. I don't even know what a Knowledge Warehouse is - I just made that up as I typed it. And Larry Lemon - and his Extended Universe of Edu-tainment - is definitely on my to-do list, but that is a selfish endeavour. I want all the credit, glory, and inevitable decline. 

 

I also had the idea to get your help with the impossible. Something else I started working on years ago but never finished. Something so implausible that it's laughable. A book about business systems that doesn't suck. 

 

All of these ideas, though, seem half baked. Not fully formed. The scene isn't set to give them the most likely chance of success, and when you're in a situation like this, there's only one thing that can be done. When you have no idea what to do when you can't work something out - have a break - have a party. 

 

Not like a raging slosh fest that leaves everyone feeling hungover for three days. A nerd party. An ideathon. 

 

I've done one of these before, so I totally pretty much know what I'm doing... 

 

An ideathon is what you do when you have a problem and want to quickly figure out the solution. We won't do that here because time isn't a problem right now, and even more pressing - we don't have a problem. 

 

This party - probably more appropriate to call it a campaign - will have to be online. Since that's a thing now. Personally, I don't like online events. I think they suck, and I don't really buy into the whole "new working hybrid revolution". 

 

I believe when it comes to discussing ideas and developing them - the underlying premise of this party - doing so online will never be as good as doing it in person. But hey, let's try and prove me wrong. 

 

We can start with one of the seeming benefits of working remotely - the few that there are: bringing together a diverse pool of participants, or in the case of 'party-goers'. 

 

What would typically happen when throwing an event is that most people who show up are linked pretty closely to the organizers, with a few brave exceptions. 

 

We can get over that and bring together nerds from all over. Not only nerds but annoying people and marketers, and salesmen so cheesy you'd think they work for Bega. 

 

Having all of these people together and working on an idea helps is a discussion for next time.