Last Friday, we were either in the air or attending a conference, so this week’s weeknote is a fortnightly note.
We learnt that the number 143 is a short hand code for “I love you”, 1 character in I, 4 characters in LOVE and 3 in YOU. Quickly followed by 144, 144 is a dozen dozen more commonly called a gross. It is also the number of square inches in a square foot. You gotta love the imperial system of measurement. Continuing on the space theme, 144 Vibilia is a C-type asteroid in the main asteroid belt. Discovered in 1875, it is estimated to be around 131 km in diameter. 144 is also the call number of the Tupolev Tu-144, the world’s first super sonic commercial jetliner. It only managed a few commercial flights, but is a marker in aviation history.
The last two weeks have been a whirl-wind of projects and adventure. Vísar officially launched their high-school student survey to 13 of the possible 35 Icelandic high-schools. The survey will run for 1 month, so future weeknotes will have updates. This is running on the new software which we spent the last 9 months developing. Which means lots and lots of little fixes and changes now that things have launched. We’ve learnt plenty and made vast improvements over the older system. Instead of taking an afternoon to calculate all the survey results, we managed to get the time down to around 20 minutes. After further improvements, we think it is now closer to 5 minutes. Everyone is very happy with the progress. The next big hurdle is when the survey is completed to present the results to the customers.
On the business front, we had several leads this week. Some very interesting projects and people we’ve talked too. As a team we’ve also started to coalesce around the types of products and services we want to offer and to whom. It isn’t a radical shift to what we are doing now, but making it more explicit on the website, in our marketing material and tone of voice.
Newsfoo13
We were also invited to participate in Newsfoo, a journalistic meet-up with unstructured sessions and discussions. It is in Phoenix, Arizona. Some of the team went out on Thursday week 143 and came back tuesday week 144. The discussions were amazing and we’ll fold a lot back into our thinking and products. From crowdsourcing to newsletters and everything in-between, so much knowledge was shared we’re really happy we attended. A separate post specifically about the event is being drafted there was so much good stuff.
Bric-à-brac
In week 143, Iceland Airwaves music festival ended. Some of the team we share and office with took this amazing Northern Lights Timelapse over Harpa, the concert venue.
This is a work by Janet Echelman. It is called Her Secret is Patience and is on display in central Phoenix. It is an amazingly massive net outdoor sculpture. Her portfolio is full of these amazing shapes and designs from all around the world.