Continuity Update for March 21

"I put the stickers where???" Taylor is having a double-rainbow moment.

As someone put it today, the realness of the move has us "feeling all the feels." That means feelings of exaltation for all that open space and natural light! And feeling all that nervousness over working in free floating open spaces. (Just the reality test of choosing where your phone is going to be placed prompted some of us to realize, 'Oh wow, this is actually happening, isn't it?!")

A reminder on where we are in this project: 

• most of the new construction is being finished and turned over to use in the coming weeks
• we will all cozy up together in that new space for the next 5-6 months
• the 'old' building will be renovated during that time
• this fall, everyone will resettle into our new permanent spaces

With that in mind, we ask you to embrace an attitude of trying things out in the next five months: how your desk feels, how shared spaces are used, even - dare I say it - where your beloved white board is located. Try it out, see how it feels, and we can make adjustments as we go. 

What we want to avoid is making permanent and expensive decisions without the benefit of having gotten acquainted with the new digs. That means some things may be incomplete and not yet ideal for awhile, but it also means we have the chance to make the space work for us the way we want it to.

Daily scrum, starting Monday!
There are innumerable details that each person needs to learn about how the new space works, and absorbing that information will really only matter to you when you yourself are on the verging of moving your desk. We get that.

There are also a lot details that will be changing on a daily basis as construction wraps up, which means the information you got one day might be updated the next.

Here's how this works:

• Every day, Laurie and Brian will hold a 15-minute informational scrum for staff at 1:15 p.m. in the Green Room.
• The first 5 min will be really brief updates on functional changes to the space (emphasis on 'need to know' not 'nice to know')
• The last 10 minutes will be Q & A from staff ('Where do I find..?', 'How do I...?', 'When can we...?' -- again, emphasis on immediate functionality)
• We will post a brief wrap-up of each day's scrum to the blog - this is especially for staff who couldn't make it, particularly morning broadcast teams. 

Ongoing attendance is optional but we ask that you please go to the scrum the day before your move. Otherwise, stay connected by dropping into the scrum or reading the fast-take each afternoon on the blog. 

The idea is that you will have a reliable place to get and ask for information, and that Laurie doesn't have to answer the same question 17 times all day long. Questions will come up that are bigger in scope or can't be quickly answered; we will capture those questions and ask the Continuity Group to deliver answers through the blog.

We plan to provide this daily scrum until it doesn't seem needed anymore. Approximately in January, 2019.

"What Am I Looking At?" 

You are looking at fossilized marine animals that lived 480 million years ago in the ancient ocean that is now Vermont. Over tens of millions of years, the Chazy Reef formation in the Champlain Islands teemed with gastropods, cephalopods, brachiopods, crinoids, bryozoa, stromatolites, stromatoporoids, sponges, algae and corals. Whew!

This polished slab of rock was quarried in Alburgh and now forms an interior wall in our new lobby.

New meeting rooms
There are three upstairs meeting rooms and several downstairs meeting rooms and heads down spaces. They are in various states of completion, and not quite ready for prime time. Operate on this principle: assume that a meeting room isn't usable until it's been announced as "Ready!" and added to Zimbra calendar.

Speaking of pets...
Last week, Anonymous asked, "Will there be a pet policy for the new building?" An excellent question, and a fraught one. Some people really love the option of bringing a pet to work, and some people really dislike the practice. We've practiced diligent avoidance of this topic for a long time, and this question points out we should probably get to work on creating a policy.

The Continuity Group was relieved to relieve itself of responsibility for creating that policy; Brian is going to raise it for the Leadership and Management teams to consider. But we did settle on an interim rule:

Until a policy can be established, no pets are allowed in the new building. (Please post your strongly worded reactions below.) 

Full of Goodwill
Are you accumulating new batches of things that you don't need, but could be useful to someone else? We aren't planning another donation swap-and-drop zone, but we really, really encourage you to organize your own drop-offs of gently used items at Goodwill. Jonathan and Franny are eager to help you do this! We all really regret the idea of using landfills for stuff that still has a useful life. Goodwill on Shelburne Road has a drive-thru drop-off that makes this super easy, and coworkers may have ideas of other favorite charities that accept donations.

And, if you're still thinning out your desk possessions, Mindy Kaling has your back: