tl;dr 024
The one where we're back babe.
Guten Morgen! Willkommen! Did you have a good schlafen? We did. And now we’re back…
…with more Deutsch– it’s the hottest language at the agency right now. Who knew an International team means operating across different timezones, continents AND languages? At least two each. Here are some key terms that transcend the language barrier: “maf” (maths), “Chief Migration Officer” (a person who loves their job), “nerds” (Developers) (sorry HR), “Call Qantas” (troubleshooting), etc. So much culture. We love to see it.
Read our 24th TL;DR for more. Alles Gute zum Geburtstag Zoe!
#graphic-design-is-my-passion
Love + Money recently added another Dan to the team. This one’s the Bis and graphic-design-is-his-passion. Truly. He has feelings:
I recently found myself rewatching a childhood classic, Labyrinth, about a sixteen-year-old girl called Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) who is given thirteen hours to solve a labyrinth and rescue her baby brother Toby from goblins after her wish for him to be taken away is granted by the Goblin King, Jareth (David Bowie). Tangents aside, I’m not actually here to talk about the wondrous plot, though seemingly it appears I might like to pick this up another time, and frankly David Bowie in grey tights really steals the show, but there is one scene in particular where ancient film making techniques miss the mark.
Cue the Muppet Dance.
I love a good green screen as much as the next goblin, thought what I actually love more is a bad one. So how did we end up here?
Let me shed some light on key chroming. Historically, film makers would block the light on certain areas of the film negatives to create a mask. The mask exposed different elements onto the same frame creating a single copy, similar to a double exposure, if you will. This was a manual and the effects, not always profound but certainly charismatic of an era. Not sure what the hell I just talked about? Watch the Labyrinth.
Want to learn more? Visit Captain Disillusion.
#code-city
That’s right, code-city has undergone a rebrand or just a name change? Either way, it’s been replaced with a raft of other internal channels; #devs-up, #rubberduck and probably another one I’m not invited to (it’s Adnaan by the way), and while I’d never turn down the chance to talk smack on nerds (developers, see above), they’ve actually been doing some cute shit recently.
A rundown, #rubber-duck is now a safe space for non-nerds to ask questions. We’ve found that while a deep knowledge of development isn’t crucial to everyone, it is important that we understand the benefits of the technical decisions we make, so that we in turn can share the confidence our devs have in our digital products and services. It’s also a great place to find analogies. Cheers Dog.
The newly named #devs-up is where our development workflow is entirely visible to the team. For example, every time we push a build now, a status is shared with the team. Every time a repo is updated, nerds have a chance to ask a friend to quality assure their work and Gino to assert his position as ‘coolest nerd’. Good luck bud.
What've we noticed after rehoming the dev team on Slack? Well if you’re an avid reader, it means there’s more engagement (and therefore more content for this newsletter), and it allows for everyone to have a place in conversations about technology. And that is something we 👏 love 👏 to 👏 see 👏.
#vibe
Shout out to Jacqui, vibe qween who couldn’t be here to bring vibe this week. In her absence we’ve reverted to reluctant vibe king, anonymous to let ya’ll know what the heck has been going on. Em promises $0.24 cents for whomever successfully guesses correctly who this is in the comments. We digress…
We’ve focused vibe recently on getting to 10,000 followers on Instagram, in part because of the clout but mainly so we can do those fun swipey-up IG stories, not that you really need them these days, Teezo Touchdown’s post-it stories are a good example of connecting IG to the rest of the ‘net. You can follow us here, but no pressure. We don’t need you. We hit that glorious number last week thanks to Joe Mac’s mummy.
We forgot that Sting and Shaggy collaborated on an album. Then we remembered. Please enjoy.
#processes-and-platforms
The following is documentation about process by the qween of process herself Emily McKelvie. Please enjoy:
The most important thing you should know about Love + Money is this: it’s already probably written down somewhere. My boss, Charl Laubscher, once famously told me ‘you can accuse me of a lot of things, but you can’t accuse me of not writing shit down’. I say famously, but it was actually in a monthly 1:1 and no one else was there. I come back to this quote often, though. There’s something in it.
We have a lot of processes, we have countless philosophies. There’s no shortage of information. The challenge isn’t a lack of process, it’s in the ingraining of those processes. We pride ourselves on our ability to be efficient and a little scrappy (proper start up style). We’re focused on iteration, and I know I know ‘change is the only constant’ but when you’re trying to run an efficient business, it would be helpful to do the same thing, like, even 3 times just so people remember it? A little bit of repetition never hurt anyone.
Still, it’s 2022 and we are #alwaysiterating. So we need a new plan of attack. If we know that we want to constantly improve processes, then they’re going to constantly change, and so we can’t really rely on memory. There’s too much to take in. So what do we rely on next?
Checklists.
We’re experimenting with creating a series of checklists for our team. We have systems that drive efficiency. Now we want to create simple prompts that drive consistent interaction with those systems. We want to remove as much thinking as possible in order to Make Room for Magic™. We’re trying a Coda library of checklists, with a weekly survey to measure their effectiveness.
As is always at Love + Money. This is one huge experiment. And it’s mine to lead this quarter, so stay tuned. Also, you can let my boss, Charl Laubscher, know that I finally read those chapters.
tl;dr ayyy, what a hoot. Sorry we’ve been MIA, we missed you too. Won’t be too long until our next piece of #content so make sure you don’t miss it, that’d be embarrassing for all of us. So go on, like share and subscribe!
Actually just share. One CTA, best practice.
tl;dr
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