We have Studio Day 4 times a year. It’s a chance for us all to come together for a mixture of lightning talks, workshops, games, lunch, plus lots of chit-chat and catching up. Studio Day 15, was a doozy – organised by Simon, Emma, Claire, Sean and Ian.
We’ve used lots of locations in Cambridge: the Fitzwilliam Museum, Kettle’s Yard, and The Brewhouse to name a few. The location this time was The Aedwen Room at Ely Museum. We arrived following a very picturesque walk from the train station via the cathedral.
First things first
Cake was eaten, updates were given on families and pets, reviews were shared on the Netflix series we are currently enjoying, and musings were made about how nice it would be to be pushed around in a Victorian Bath Chair (an interesting distraction in our museum meeting room!).
Jamie battled with the trains to arrive two hours late. After setting off from Nottingham, which should have been a direct train to Ely in 90 minutes, the train went round in a circle to arrive back at Nottingham an hour later only to then set out for Ely again. A bizarre, incredibly frustrating, and very British way to travel by train.
We welcomed our new PHP developer Zuzana to the team. Zuzana has been a friend of the studio for many years and we are delighted that she’ll be bringing her fantastic PHP skills and experience to the studio.
Big breath in for the balloon game
The first game pitted one side of the room against the other. It was a case of which team could blow up the most balloons in 5 minutes. The upside of this game was that our meeting room now had a party feel to it!
Thoughts for the future
Emma led a session on how we use research and development time in the studio and how this can be used to support personal development. We discussed the best ways to manage time, research focus, and outputs to drive business improvement and personal goals.
In teams, we brainstormed areas of focus for future R&D time – and we now have an amazingly long and exciting wish list, especially around sustainable web practices. Watch this space!
Let’s go bargain hunting. Yes!
After a delicious lunch at the Ely Turkish Restaurant, it was time for another game. We split into pairs and headed down to the Waterside Antiques Centre. Each pair had £5 to spend on an item with a link to Studio 24.
My favourite was Ian and Isaac’s ‘Design Unit Optimisation’ – two tiny cups for coffee and Claire and Zuzana’s metal spider to remind us we all work on the web!
Is there something I should know?
We’ve been building a culture of feedback at the studio, which is an ongoing learning process for us all. Before Studio Day, Sean conducted research into how we all feel about getting and receiving feedback.
We agreed that feedback is something we all want because it helps us learn and improve, so it was good to explore how we can be more comfortable with giving feedback to each other.
Jelly bean budgets
Ian introduced us to Maud: CEO of a new jelly bean factory. Maud is overseeing the building of a new factory in a local community.
In teams of 3, we were given the requirements via the project brief and outcomes from the community research. Each requirement costs a certain number of jelly beans. We had to allocate our budget of 60 jelly beans to try and meet the client and the community requirements as best we could. Not easy!
Certain spanners were thrown in such as Maud overruling our decisions, which meant jelly beans were lost and reallocation of remaining beans was needed. Difficult decisions had to be made over which requirements to keep and which to scrap!
Although a light-hearted exercise, there was reflection afterwards on how we use budgets for our projects and how those difficult decisions are made.
Happiness at work
And finally, Claire, one of our mental health first aiders, talked about Stress Awareness Month. Claire reminded us of the importance of managing stress and how to look after ourselves and others in our team.
Clearly, the train company took note as Jamie had a stress-free return to Nottingham. Phew! And that concluded Studio Day 15!
