‘Crowdsourcing’ Themed Dress Days…

May 28th, 2009 • Comments Miscellany

The running joke in the office today is that it’s Tie Thursdays – a little bit of an inside joke between one of my partners and I, as I had to wear a tie for another event today and he didn’t want to feel left out. Thus, we’re both sporting ties. We’ve also joked about having Fedora Fridays, although we’ve not quite pulled that one off yet. With two alliterative themed dress days, I figured that wasn’t quite enough, and jokingly opened up suggestions via Facebook and Twitter as to ideas for the other days of the week.

The rather extensive list below is what I received from my network. Note: none of these are my idea. If you do plan on adopting any of these, let me know – I’d love to see pictures from a few of the suggestions!

Monday:
Monocle Mondays (love it!)
Mumu Mondays (suggested twice)
Macho Mondays
Margarita Mondays (”when you come in still smelling like booze from the weekend”)
Moccasin Mondays

Tuesday:
Tie Tuesdays (suggested twice)
Tunic Tuesdays (I may just adopt this one…)
Tank-top Tuesdays
Twenties Tuesdays (”where everyone dresses like they’re from the 1920s)
Temporary Tattoo Tuesdays
Bikini Tuesdays (doesn’t follow the theme, but would scar my officemates! I like it.)
Trance Tuesdays

Wednesday:
Wellington Wednesdays
Wanghanger Wednesdays (uh… don’t ask.)
Commando Wednesdays (I think my partner Verne already follows this… just sayin’)
Wacky Wednesdays
Wife-beater Wednesdays (the clothing item, natch)

Thursday:
Thong Thursdays (suggested four times. Seriously.)
Tie Thursdays

Friday:
Fedora Fridays
Fondle-the-New-Girl Fridays (again, don’t ask. Thanks, Ben!)
Formal Fridays (suiting up is a bare minimum)

Saturday/Sunday:
Sweater-vest Saturdays (this would be good if Andrew Louis worked out of here; he and I would have it covered)
Snuggie Sundays

Good times. Any other suggestions? Leave them in the comments!

I Hear Following Your Business Plan is Important…

May 27th, 2009 • Comments Planning

Recently, I’ve been involved in doing a lot of business planning, due to a merger of forces that I was involved in. (More on that in the near future.) It’s been a really interesting exercise to be involved in, taking both conventional and unconventional paths with it, and soliciting people’s advice on what it is that I should be doing. This certainly isn’t the first business I’ve started, or had to plan for, so I’d like to think I’ve got some idea of what to do. That said, one of the best parts of this process was putting together the business plan and goals for revenue targets, and what we’d like our growth to be.

And that got me thinking. Watching friends, acquaintances, strangers, and even enemies build and run companies in the past and present has allowed me to see successes, failures, and those that live in that grey area between success and failure. There does seem to be a commonality that exists between the failures: either their business plan wasn’t solid in the first place, or they moved away from what it is they were supposed to be doing.

Defining the core functions of your business is an integral part of that business, as is ensuring that you aren’t getting away from these core functions – at least, not without solid reasons. If you are moving away from them, that means you should be asking yourself whether these changes will make your business MORE successful. If you’re making changes that will cause your business to remain stagnant, (or even worse, become less successful), why are you doing them? It seems like an obvious question, but it’s one that I don’t see asked enough, it seems – at least in my network of people.

In order to track your success and whether change is necessary, establishing success metrics is important. That’s my current task; I’ll offer more thoughts on this later. Otherwise, remember: planning exists for a reason. If you’re not going to follow your plan, you wasted your time doing it in the first place – and are likely wasting your time doing whatever it is you’re doing instead.

Those are my (pretty simple) thoughts; what do you think?

Quick Thoughts on the Twitter Community’s Reaction to Sunday’s Events

May 11th, 2009 • Comments Communities

If you’re from Toronto, unless you are living under a rock, you’re well aware of the Tamil protests that have been taking place over the last month or so. Last night, things escalated with the protesters physically closing the Gardiner until just after midnight. I’m not going to touch the nature of the protest, or the pros and cons against what it is that they did. (I think Torontoist has an interesting piece on a for and against here, although the two sides aren’t directly arguing against each other.)

To me, the interesting part was watching our community react to it. For once, possibly for the first time since I started using Twitter heavily, I finally saw real interactions taking place. People who usually spend a lot of time supporting each others ideas were suddenly placed at odds – and what’s more, they interacted and argued with each others’ viewpoints in a rational manner. Yes, there were a few ad hominem attacks, but by and large, these were well thought out, well-structured debates. I’m so used to the Toronto Twitter community being a bastion of support that I was initially shocked – but as the conversations continued, not only did I find that I joined in, but that I suddenly felt that I knew more about those that were participating. People’s public personas were dropped in favour of real personal opinions – and it was a great thing. If we had more interactions like this, not only would we help educate others and ourselves on issues which we may not understand, but we would also advance ideas and theories to levels where they could be successful. As I’ve said previously, not every idea is a good one (duh), and most can benefit from feedback and reshaping. Why do we seem afraid to do that?

Last night was a polarizing issue that demonstrated the power that we have to do this; let’s not wait for the next polarizing issue to come our way to have these real interactions again. Nobody benefits from a lovefest.