Bring yourself to work (in ten minutes of inspiration)
Like a lot of teams, we’ve had to shift the morning ‘nod and coffee-grab in the kitchen’ to a morning Zoom catch-up. The technology and public policy team at TBI has a Zoom call every day, and Thursdays are reserved for ‘10 minutes of inspiration’.
Each week, somebody in the team presents on a topic of their choice. The brief is completely open, and the resulting variety has been amazing. The only hard rule is that vintage word art is compulsory (thanks Rosie).
Being distanced means you learn less about people’s quirks and interests, but we’ve found out so much about each other and our interests, experiences and backgrounds through this (Lucia’s Romanian cardboard cars is my favourite!).
This is a summary of what we’ve come up with so far. We’ll have a few jobs opening in the team over the next month, so hopefully this is also some inspiration to join our inclusive, inquisitive corner!
Feminine pronouns
Rosie kicked off by talking about when and why the feminine pronoun is used. Inspired by a tweet she came across, she told us that using the feminine pronoun to describe countries is something that has always perplexed her, and asked whether referring to a country as ‘her’ or ‘she’ is normal.
Rosie talked about where this phenomenon comes from, and discussed both when and why female pronouns are used. She told us that the female pronoun has been used for countries, boats, cars and even stocks and shares.
Pride flags
In Pride Month Max talked about the history of pride flags and the different LGBT+ identities that are celebrated.
Max talked about the progress flag, specifically designed to reflect the full range of experiences within the LGBT+ community. The progress flag is particularly relevant in light of the Black Live Matter movement and the shocking murder of George Floyd. It serves as a recognition that black LGBT+ lives matter and we must do better.
He also talked about the willing into creation of political symbols like these flags and the importance of symbols for community creating, allyship and organisation. Monica Helms’ 1999 trans flag is a great example of that. There’s also the amazing fact that the original pride flag was meant to have a hot pink stripe but the shortage of fabric at the time forever changed the pattern.
How Netflix built its culture
Some of you might have come across Netflix’s culture deck. Well, Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer have also written a book called No Rules Rules. Benedict shared some insights from the book, around how Netflix’s culture of ‘freedom and responsibility’ has enabled it to become one of the world’s most innovative companies.
We discussed how this might apply to how we work as a team and what we can learn from Netflix. We agreed the answer is quite a lot!
Time, memes + political futures
We’ve had a fair few conversations about fandoms in our team. Inspired by this (as well as a blog by Aaron Z. Lewis), Andrew wanted to go deeper into internet subcultures and think about how they influence media, politics and everything in between.
He talked about how memes get forked reveals how internet cultures — from the mainstream to the crazy esoteric — evolve, and how recommendation engines become active players in culture.
Andrew also talked about the mismatch between new media in creating and capturing this culture, and the need for political narratives to go beyond simply regurgitating the ideas of the past.
Logos: Big tech edition
Chris did a deep dive into big tech company logos.
It was cool to see how logos have evolved as computer graphics have evolved, how they became more embellished and have now generally reverted back to simplicity. It was also interesting to see how old some of these tech companies are. Who knew Nintendo was founded in the 1880s?!
Growing up in the Eastern bloc
Lucia told us her stories from growing up in Romania.
She talked about the famous ‘Trabant’ as well as Romanian proverbs and ‘the pocket rulebook’. She told us that sitting on the corner of a table (often the case — big meals, small spaces) as a girl means you’ll never marry, and of the Romanian obsession with cleaning!
Why millennials love growing stuff
Georgina talked about why millennials like growing stuff (even when we were often pretty rubbish at it). Our team were certainly green fingered.. but beyond making our flat shares look a bit more inviting, what might be behind this phenomena?
We discussed why millennials are so obsessed with plants — is it because they have a desire to look after or own something, when parenthood and owning a house seems so far off? Or is it because it brings us closer to nature? And, if we love plants so much, why do we always kill them?
The NHS clinical negligence bill
I (Hermione) grew up in a medical family so have always been fascinated by the politics of medicine. I was shocked to learn one night during a lockdown dinner with my family that the NHS paid out £2.4 billion for medical negligence claims in 2018–2019 (almost 2% of the total budget). We ended up having a long conversation about the causes and complexities of this at the family dinner table, and I was keen to hear what the team thought.
I talked about the unsustainable rise in the annual cost of claims, and why it can lead to bad medicine. I also talked about how the use of technology in healthcare could help create a fairer system for doctors and patients — but also raises difficult ethical questions.
If a hospital costs £350 million to build (as the Leave campaign told us), we could build about 7 new hospitals with the money that goes towards compensation each year.
Mixed ethnic terminology
Could the mixed ethnic terminology and grouping system used in the UK census be improved?
Roxanne talked about the fact that UK population projections suggest mixed groups are the fastest growing ethnic groups, yet the census only provides four categories for people who identify as mixed heritage. These categories were introduced 20 years ago.
We discussed the ways in which the census categories fail to represent today’s multicultural Britain and how it may be time to rethink the mixed ethnic terminology and grouping system.
Words, Words, Words
Ruby discussed phonesthetics — the study of the beauty associated with the sounds of certain words.
We learned that ‘cellar door’ is an example of one of the most pleasing sounding phrases, how certain criteria need to be met for words to be considered ‘phonaesthetically pleasing’, and then had a great chat about Lord of the Rings.
As we all brace ourselves to head into round 2 of lockdowns, we’re at least looking forward to round 2 of our inspiration presentations.
