The Stories Unfold
By the Friday’s session, both Matt and Jon had taken the premise of Nick’s story concept and thought about their own. Each adapted the concept to create their own versions to ensure consistency, such that we could build a lasting brand around a character who wanted to solve some environmental problems. Think Dora the Explorer model.
Story Time
Later that week Nick contacted the guys on a late Tuesday evening explaining that he had a million-dollar idea… What if we had a character who found out by their parents that bees were missing and went on a journey to figure out why. Initial thoughts were that pesticides and chemicals were tarnishing the lands and that bees were being massacred by mass agricultural industries, however this seemed a little harsh for a children’s story. Think of the children of course!
Putting Pen to Paper
We still loved working with sharpies at the pub as our new working office environment. It really suited us. So, Nick put in a request to his boss Jon, to see if this could be a full-time flexible working arrangement for the team in the future, on the grounds for improved mental health; he then escalated the request to his boss Matt. Sadly, we are still waiting on Matt to report back to see if the request was a success (classic senior management for you)
The Realisation - Children’s Books……
Can you imagine our faces! Actually, please pause for a second and reflect on that image. Better still, imagine your own reaction if you had spent 6 weeks planning what you intended to take forward as a project/business for years to come, and the answer was indeed to write children’s books. To some of you reading this blog it could be a dream come true for you, but for us, it could not have been more alien. Here you have three engineers who all favour Maths, cars and bikes, with English literacy trailing far behind on that list of likes and desires.
Let The Scoring Matrix Decide Your Fate!
We had now spent 6 weeks or so coming together on Friday afternoons dedicated to doing something different. We had mapped out our talents, aligned our future values, brainstormed our common interests and set some important objectives for the future. It was now time to come up with some ideas which can be then scored and pursued. Now quite frankly, when we set the target to come up with 10 ideas each, the thought was quite daunting. But on the day the energy started flowing and we came up with some absolute crackers. Have a read for yourselves:
Year 1… Ideas with Beers
We drank many a beer in this here watering hole and we can safely say it was our favourite workspace to date! It is amazing how ideas flow when you are with friends, being creative and with a jar or two inside your belly. However, there is definitely a happy medium for ultimate creativity to take place. Perhaps there is a mathematical formula somewhere on the internet and if you find it please email us, we would love to take a look. So, we generally found that during our first drink our enthusiasm and planning skills leapt out, but into our second there was always a loll (possibly food related). Between two and three was our prime time for having fun, being creative and just enjoying the process. However, anymore than that was game over, good night, do not pass go, do not collect £200!
Year 1…
It’s October 2018 and the world hasn’t heard of COVID19. Our story begins....
Starting from a blank canvas with not a single idea between us other than entrusting each other to embark on this journey together; we sat down with sheets of paper, multiple coloured pens (sharpies are essential), sticky notes, sandwiches and a pint of beer each – Nick’s round.
Who are these guys???
If you have made it this far through our website, you have obviously heard about us or have seen one of our posts on social media. So thank you for exploring your curiosity to get here. If you have merely stumbled upon our page by accident, we are the3engineers, nice to meet you.