Sit with the Kids

Ah, the holidays. I've always loved getting together with my extended family this time of year, even though we quickly expanded beyond our ability to all sit at the same table. This meant that we had the adults' table and the kids' table. And truth be told, you always had the most fun and heard the most amazing conversations at the kids' table.

I recently found myself in a somewhat analogous situation. A client with whom I'd been working, Disaboom.com, offered me a job that was simply too good to turn down. They're building an information and community portal for people with disabilities and those whose lives are touched by disability. I was asked to come on board as the Director of Content to help build out the information, articles, guides, etc. for the site.

Since I adored the guy I was working for, had worked enough with the team to know they were smart, dedicated, and good people to work with, and they were willing to let me continue my non-Disaboom, LIS-focused work, I happily took the plunge. But then the big question hit: where should I sit?

Now, this all gets back to the idea that before I take a job, I always put together an agenda that hits four things:

I figure out the answers, and then those are my goals for the duration of any job or project. I try to make sure that as a project/job progresses, I stay cognizant of those goals while also honoring the primary goal of doing a bang-up job for my client or employer. In the case of Disaboom, one of the biggest reasons I took the job was that I wanted to immerse myself in a Web 2.0, e-commerce-driven online resource to see how it worked. I wanted to learn how to port my Web 1.0, non-profit information skills and experience into an entirely new arena.

Which gets us to — where should I sit? We have, as do most start-ups, a bunch of guys who are serial entrepreneurs and know financing and investment deals cold. But then we also have a terrific group of kids in their twenties who know the most incredibly cool stuff — and are always, generously, willing to share what they know without making you feel like an idiot or a relic from another era. (That would be the last century...?) So, after hanging out with them a bit, I realized that if I really wanted to immerse myself in the Web 2.0 mindset, I needed to sit with the kids.

And so I do. I'm in a cubicle that connects to others, where we can holler over the divider to each other, careen across to each other's desks on our rolling chairs to look at something interesting on someone's computer, or have an impromptu gathering in the middle of our space to knock around ideas and figure out how to make them go live. I'm learning about building online communities, blogs, forums, video feeds, online advertising models, viral marketing, and all sorts of other aspects of for-profit Web 2.0 development that I would probably learn much more slowly, if at all, if I were hunkered down in an office (the adults' table) rather than sitting in an open, accessible cubicle.

I'm still getting used to the lack of privacy, but find it's more than compensated for by getting to hear the ongoing, fascinating, and often hysterical conversations among co-workers who are my son's age. Movies, books, blogs, politics, snowboarding, love lives, philosophy — there is nothing quite so entertaining as young adults living their lives at a full-tilt boogie.

So the biggest thing I've learned on this job? Given the opportunity, I will always look for ways to work with smart, excited, passionate kids — they let me learn from them without belittling me, and I let them know how much I respect and appreciate their knowledge. They see life from a completely different vantage point, and yet they still seem to value what I've learned during my career in the business world (or at least they're kind enough to indicate so!). It's a safe environment for admitting what each of us doesn't know, because we're all learning together, from each other.

And quite frankly, I've never had quite so much fun. Think I'll be sitting at the kids' table this Thanksgiving....