The happenings this week:

• We deliver the goods tomorrow; wrapping up a crazily-quick project (with an availability-caused interregnum) with a session tomorrow. Excited to share our analysis and resulting implications with the team and see where they take them.
• At the end of last week a purchase order magically emerged from a corporate sourcing machine and today we start kicking off a large project. There’s so many known unknowns, I totally expect this to be a meeting about a meeting more than anything, but that’s where we have to start in order to bring clarity to the murk. Many projects start this way, but this seems even more so (our clients didn’t know we were getting the purchase order any more than we did, for example).
• We had three new War Stories last week and I hope to be getting more this week!
• Ten Years Gone: On All This ChittahChattah in June, 2002 a minor rock legend dies, a still-unanswered set of questions about what the heck a belt-buckle actually is.
• What we’re consuming: Surf Spot, John Scalzi, Spalding Gray.

Here’s what’s going on for us this week

• We made rapid progress through our data last week to produce a final deliverable for our client. Due to some scheduling challenges, we won’t actually talk through what this means for them in terms of new opportunities until next week. So this week, the project is in a holding pattern. We lose a bit of momentum this way, but there’s nothing we can do about it.
• Up next? For the past 6 weeks we’ve been making slow but steady progress on a new project that should take us to some interesting business and industrial environments across the US. The client team is super engaged and understandably taking a lot of time to align on the details, having never done this sort of work before. Meanwhile, we’re crawling our way through the corporate processes, finding ourselves assigned vendor numbers, and other trappings of the way that sourcing works. I hope for this week to be the one that officially moves us towards the next steps, but it’s entirely out of my hands.
• We’ll be publishing some fieldwork War Stories this week. I’ve got one in hand as of this writing and another promised to me. As this archive continues to grow, we welcome your contribution!
• We’re gathering applications for our open positions. Interested in working with us? Let us know!
• Tamara is in Hot’lanta to speak at CPSI, connecting the insights from research to ideation.
• I’m speaking in Cupertino this Wednesday for the San Francisco ACM, talking about improv, creativity, and design. This event is free, open to the public, and I’m told there is going to be food. Come on out!
• I’m working with Kelly and Alison at gotomedia to finalize our Barcelona WebVisions workshop (use reg code PORTIGAL to save 40%). It promises to be an interesting synthesis of our complementary approaches and best practices.
• Early this week, I’ll turn over the next revision of my book manuscript, now with all the figures detailed. It’s been a flurry of activity tracking down original files (in some cases, original paper documents) and numbering and cataloging them.
• I’m excited about meeting some new people this week, possible colleagues and collaborators that I’ll be having lunches and introductory phone calls with.
• Check out my pictures from Lisbon and UXLX!
• Ten Years Gone: On All This ChittahChattah in June, 2002: umbrage over MCI (remember them?) sales scumbaggery, appreciation for an early archive of Internet humor.
• What we’re consuming: the LEO at Wise Sons Jewish Delicatessen, Chum-chum the bored bear, The Other F Word, and Big Train

Here’s the latest on our end

• Infrastructure? Who needs it! After last week’s challenges (resolution still pending) on the water for our kitchen, today PG&E finally made good on their repeated promise to only offer intermittent power throughout the day. So we’re in and out, in cafes, and waiting hopefully for full service to return.
• We’re taking last week’s flurry of Bay Area and Sacramento interviews and very rapidly turning that into a deliverable. We’re committed to finishing up this week (which is about as rapid as we’ve ever done something like this, admittedly with a bit of trepidation) but it looks like our client has some scheduling gremlins emerging at the last minute.
• It’s San Francisco Design Week, a time to hang out at other firms, talking to our friends, and eating-and-drinking from their free and sumptuous spreads. Maybe we’ll see you around (we’ll be the ones with our mouths full).
• We’re hiring!
• I’m in some near-final stages with the book, focusing on the images, a lot of which I’m crowdsourcing from other research folks. Hooray, community!
• Do you have a fieldwork War Story? Please share it with us!
• We’re moving ahead on upcoming talks at CPSI, San Francisco/Bay Area ACM, and WebVisions Barcelona.
• What we’re consuming: Stanley Park Noble Pilsner, Crunchie Bar, Hyperbole TV.

Here’s what’s going on with us!

• It’s fieldwork week once again. Between Bay Area and Sacramento, we’ll be meeting with people to talk about the tools they use to plan and manage their investments. Surprises await.
• Conference planning for CPSI and WebVisions Barcelona, both coming right up.
• Portigal is hiring!
• Tell us your fieldwork War Stories!
• 10 Years Gone: On ChittahChattah, ten years ago this month, Kiss Kondoms, truisms in online discourse.
• What we’re consuming: Paris is Burning, San Francisco Rock Project, Six Sigma Ranch, The Catalyst

Here’s what’s going on for the team this week

• Wanna work with us? We’re hiring!
• New project! As soon as we wrap one project, we’re off to the races with another one. This is a super quick effort, and so today we’re on site with our client team, trying to get a handle on what they know, what they’re trying to do, and what they’ll need to know to do that. Throw in a mess of logistics and you’ve got a kickoff meeting!
• We’re collaborating with a new prospective client, doing longer-term project planning for a larger endeavor we’re all hoping to launch soon.
• Tamara is digging into the planning of her CPSI workshop and Steve is working with Kelly Goto to plan their WebVisions workshop.
• 10 Years Gone: On ChittahChattah, ten years ago this month, a cookie recipe and an improv milestone.
• What we’re consuming: The Cult, manchego, painting, Draw Something.

It’s one of those weeks where everyone comes back together after being away. Digging out of email, setting up meetings that have been on pause, and following up all those things that you pushed off several weeks ago, knowing there was impending travel.

• What happened at UX Lx? What happened at the Phoenix Design Summit? We’ll be scrambling to find an opportunity to catch each other up on our travels, eatings, networkings, and work. Look for some blog posts as we share some bits and pieces.
• It’s deliverable time. We’re putting the final touches on the findings from our gamer research and meeting with the team later this week to discuss the implications for their products.
• What’s up next? As one project wraps, another kajillion are in various states of emergence. We’re writing proposals, revisiting year-old proposals, meeting with new prospects, going through corporate vendor approval processes.
• We’ll be at the IXDA-SF event (“Designers with drinks”) later this week. Will you?

What we’re consuming: Game of Thrones, Phoenix Mountain Preserve, Ribadouro, Man or Muppet.

Monday is well underway and the week is filling up with meetings and work sessions! Away we go!

• Last week we kicked off a super-rapid project. We didn’t know we were doing the project at the beginning of the week and by the end of the week we had started recruiting research participants. This week we’re lining up our participants and figuring out what we’ll do in the field.
• I’m calling it “collaborative listening” – thanks to our officemate Olly, we’re experimenting with some networked speakers that lets us all listen to music together instead of individually over headphones. This will mean sorting out some social norms around volume, phone calls, and musical tastes. But so far, so good (oh yeah, because we’re listening to my music right now!)…
• We’re hosting our first event later this week. We’ve invited a small number of folks for a discussion and will be sharing more once it’s all over. But we’re actively discussing our catering options right now!
• More conference submissions to prepare, more conference acceptances to announce, and more conference presentations to start getting together!
• This week we’ve begun reaching out to potential new teammates, partners, and collaborators. We don’t know where we’ll end up but the journey is sure to be an informative one.
• What we’re consuming: A Visit From The Goon Squad, The Firestarter Sessions, Pizzeria Delfina

We were here last week, working hard on exactly the same things we were working hard on the week before, so while we could have simply done a copy-paste-post, we took a week off from This-Week-@ing. But it’s Monday again and we’re back, baby!

• We’re editing (and more to the point – rendering) video, getting our decks in a row, all to wrap up an in-depth and exciting study. We’ll be following up this week’s presentation with a creative workshop as well
• I’m getting the final slides together for my upcoming webinar, Championing Contextual Research in Your Organization. This is some new material that I’m very excited about. Have you signed up yet?
• Party time! Excellent! I’ll be checking out the book launch party for Mike Monteiro’s Design Is a Job
• I’m sitting on a pile of helpful, challenging, provocative, and encouraging notes from reviewers who are helping me with my book; it’s time to start editing and rewriting!
• Conference proposals to go out, acceptance (or not) for other conference proposals to come back, article outline to be shopped around, article copy to be crafted
• What we’re consuming: Imagine: How Creativity Works, The Taste of Others

You can tell just how busy things are by the dearth of non-This Week postings here.

• We’ve synthesized, organized, and otherwise pummeled our data into a story. Now comes telling that story!
• For one client, we’re creating the final presentation, honing ideas, getting feedback, finessing the wording.
• With another client, we’re nailing down the core of the story and thinking ahead to editing video.
• I’ll be sharing some stories and pictures from a wonderful trip to Austin.
• What we’re consuming: Waco Brothers, Cosentino Winery Cigarzin.

This week we continue to swim through an ocean of data from two concurrent projects.

• Tamara and Julie are still poring over transcripts from New York and LA. We are looking forward to hosting our clients for another co-analysis session this week..
• We are making sense of the transcripts and spreadsheets of data from our second project. Next up- outlining the key findings and drafting the presentation!
• Steve is down in Austin for SXSW Interactive and a little vacation time. We look forward to getting the rundown when he returns.
• What we’re consuming: Global Home, dim sum, homemade fortune cookies