Great things at our table
Keri Miller • Oct 09, 2020
It's Canadian Thanksgiving so here is a post about being thankful…for a wing, great things and the entire extended “e” team.
Every Tuesday for the last 19 years our entire team has gathered together to connect, to learn and to brainstorm at a full team meeting. Before COVID we used to gather in our boardroom or our Whizbang Rooms in each of our brick and mortar offices in Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto, often with team members joining in virtually from home or while on location, around the world.
Many years ago, I sketched out a boardroom table for our new Calgary head office. It was designed in the shape of an airplane wing, with a wide end and narrow end, to maximize sight lines for our big team meetings. From a seat at the table, your view was of all the people at the table, while forcing your perspective to the screen at the end where our other offices and remote workers, “zoomed in”. We could all see each other and at one time we needed a table add-on because our group had outgrown that giant table. We had grown wings and team members, producing wicked experiences all over the world.
Since March 2020 we have been hosting our team meetings virtually, and often the topics have been somber and sad, distressing and tear filled. They have also been game changing, with brilliant ideas and inter-country connectivity like never before. Our national team has never been so united, we have finally blurred physical lines and no longer differentiate ourselves by our locations. We have been agile and responsive while also doing our very best to be proactive and innovative. While some of our people and all of our locations have changed, one thing has stayed the same from the epic era of the winged table to now.
For 19 years we have started our team meetings with “great things”. A time when every member of our team could say one thing that was great for them, from their work or personal lives, always with the option for a “peppy pass” with no questions asked. This is where we learned about families, hobbies, history and spoke about being grateful for others and our lives. We still do great things each and every week, but now we share screens with photos of our families, projects, impromptu weddings and engagements and even a baby shower. COVID has clipped our wings, but not our spirit.
This Thanksgiving my great thing is that table. It’s symbolic of hope and anticipation for me, a table so large that it came in pieces, as we built the dream team and our brilliant company. It has seen and heard amazing things, hosted heated dialogue and brainstorms, pot-luck lunches, very fun and some very corporate meetings and been the surface in which the best ideas and designs were formulated, with the best people. The “e” that is emblazoned on it is different today, and while we do not sit at it anymore, the feeling of connection is the same…it has always been about all the amazing people that have sat at it, at the narrow or wide ends, virtually or not.
Happy Thanksgiving, Keri
As the person at "e" that has unlimited access to our social media, our website and our blog, I have taken liberties and posted something personal about all the amazing people that have ever been a part of "e", the projects and the business. It's a bit gushy, but I miss you all so much and hope you can share a great thing with those that sit at your table, masked or not, this Thanksgiving. xoxo
A HUGE shout out to Todd at Production Canada and Matt at Proshow that helped create this table, gifting it to us and being a part of the magic created at it.
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