[07.12.21] Alec's Weekly Update #31
"All we do is take what we’re given and make no amends" - Structures
Halló vinur!
A new hello 😮! According to Google this means “Hello friend” in Icelandic. If you remember from last weeks update, I’m out in Iceland! The ZipSchool team is on the tail end of our second team trip. Wrapping everything up with a team hackathon!
Today, I have a few short thoughts I wanted to share. Will pick this back up fully this coming Sunday 🙂.
Hype ZipSchool Moments
I think it’s pretty safe to assume that the coolest part of this week has been taking a flight over to Iceland to work out of for a week. Not sure how many companies actually do this, but I’m pretty excited about the thought of continuing this type of travel. The entire goal is to have a change of scenery and get some “creative juices” flowing as it’s commonly referred to. Even more importantly for me, I realized there are two big things that these trips are really good at doing:
Building team connections on different levels
Starting organic conversation around ideas about ZipSchool influenced by the environment
I have had 1:1 talks with Farza, Emily, and David about completely different things. Each time getting to understand their background and perspective on the world. I can now better understand where their ideas and thoughts are rooted from. At a small team level, I feel like this makes a lot of sense! Though - if I had 100 people that work with me, I would love to have that same sort of connection. Hopefully one day!
While we do work on ZipSchool during these trips we also give ourselves time to experience the area we are in. I believe this gives us a cool way to discover the place we are staying, but also have time to have organic conversations about ZipSchool and anything that comes to mind. The whole team has been having some really cool convos around different things we think can be improved while taking an hour hike to some natural hot springs. Ya - it’s a vibe.
Final note here - the next 48 hours we are all doing a company hackathon! It’s a time for us to be creative on ZipSchool or something else. The goals - learn something cool, build something cool, and come out confident in a new skill. If you have been following this newsletter for a bit, you’ll probably notice that I have brought up hackathons here and there. I have found that hackathons are the best way to learn and be really excited about growing a new skill. Glad we are all excited about doing this at ZipSchool 🚀.
Personal Development
SO ICELAND. This place is pretty sick 🤘. We are staying close to a town called Reykjavik and have been exploring a lot of the outer areas as well. Now, I want to talk about these places, but I want to leave that for next week’s newsletter once we get back into the states!
For now, the things you definitely need to know about Iceland are:
During the summer, the sun DOES. NOT. SET. 🌞
There are active volcanoes spewing lava at this exact moment in time 🌋
I have decided the food here is really good 🍣
I don’t have enough time with this newsletter to get into everything we have done thus far, BUT next newsletter I’ll go a lot more in depth about my travels out here!
Music Of The Week
This is probably my smallest playlist yet, but it still has some really amazing jams. This one song “Contraband” by Make Them Suffer is still a top favorite of mine. Been hitting this song hard every week. Enjoy the tunes and make sure to tell me your favorite!
Thanks for checking in this week and excited to give you all the deets about our time in Iceland next week!
Salute y Saludes.
Alec