Let The Scoring Matrix Decide Your Fate!
The time had come to step things up a gear and commit to an idea which would shape the future direction of the group. But first, we needed feeding. Mark’s Café.....
How to sum up this deliciously wholesome venue near our work. Well, we invested a lot of money, put on a few extra pounds and on a daily basis had terrible post-lunch meeting blues after filling our bellies with incredible sandwiches and sugary treats. This place provided the fuel needed for this project to thrive and boy did we love it. Definitively check it out if you are in the local North Street area (Bristol).
So, where did we get to? 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:
Now, as you can see above, most if not all of the ideas came from blue-sky thinking. The vast majority of the ideas are wacky or potentially unobtainable without the correct skill sets and financial backing. This is why the ideas were then added into a scoring matrix which would consider the best suited idea for us right now. However, that’s not to say we do not re-run this list back through the scoring matrix in the future. Who knows, we may have more time, space, skills and financial backing to create a game or a phone app that encouraged bettering the planet through the mechanism of play. How freaking cool would that be!
Now one particular idea kept coming back up as the front runner, which was to write a set of children’s books. If the books were written such that we could possibly make or link sustainable products from them (bringing a smile to Jon’s face), the project could have an interactive website with potential podcast and other technology links in the future (making Matt beam a smile) and that could be educational and interactive with schools and the community (pleasing Nick) then it could possibly be the best fitting project for our trio EVER!!!
There was one small issue with this idea though..... Engineers are supposed to be good with numbers not necessarily creative writing. How the hell were we going to write a series of fun children’s books with absolutely no skills or experience?! Oh and we forgot to mention that we decided to make the text rhyme as well :S
We put our trust in our scoring matrix (the numbers don’t lie) and a decision was made. Matt loved the idea, Jon enjoyed the thought of sustainable products link to the stories and Nick (the realist amongst the group) was uncertain. Despite this apprehension, a few more beers coupled with some extreme belly laughter moments and we came around to the idea.
That was that. Our adventure had begun walking towards the unknown :)
If you are keen to jump forward two years to see how our ideas have come to life, visit our Instagram page here: https://www.instagram.com/stop_dropping_litter/
