Displaced Synergy

Well we packed up our office yesterday so they can put cubicles.  What used to be 3 guys crammed in to the office will now be 4 guys w/cubes shoehorned into the same space.  So we will be adding our IT guy to the happy family of me (the video guy), the web guy, and some guy from kidcity.

Yeah I know it makes no sense to put that group together in the same office, but believe it or not we have a pretty good synergy in there.  Before we added the IT guy the rest of us can be counted as creative producers, that is we make stuff.  For example, the kid city guy does stuff in power point.  Before you scoff some of the stuff he does in powerpoint is cooler the some after effects videos I have seen.  Plus he works with elementary kids... so his stuff has got to be interesting, cool, and fun.  Our web guy has to keep the website on the cutting edge, and really is there a more hostile audience then the internet at-large?  I have to do video content creation, nuf said.  All creative and all require technical/creative tools, and in THIS instance with the kidcity guy, power point IS a technical/creative tool.  Inevitably all creative types hit that brick wall, we get the creative equivalent of writers block.  All of us have had those "I just can't think of what comes next" or "I just can't figure out how to do this" or "how does this look to ya'll?"  So the other guys come take a look make suggestions or encourage, and the results are almost ALWAYS great.  It's amazing what people will suggest when they don't know what you can't do.  Re-read that last sentence and let it sink it cause it's important.  Some times it takes people who aren't invested in the process/result to look for solution and not focus on the problem.  Plus sometimes creatively we get stuck in a rut.   We know we can do more, but we are not only married to the process/result we have, but we have 2.3 kids and a mini van with it.  At that point having someone you respect come up and call you on it, even unintentionally, is not always a bad thing.

I know there have been times they have convicted me.  Those times when what I have is not great, and continuing with it will not make it any better.  Even though I usually know it's bad, I just can't take the thought of starting all over again.  These guys have come up and salvaged many a doomed project for me but saying "what about this..."

So here's to synergy .... and hoping that adding a IT guy doesn't throw it off cosmic alignment of it all!