Here at KL Communications, we consider ourselves the ideation experts, but perhaps nowhere are our capabilities more on display than when we plan parties here in our San Diego office. What started with a simple concept based on someone’s favorite office snack has become an opportunity to unabashedly celebrate each staff member’s quirks—and hopefully embarrass them—all in the name of birthday revelry.
In CrowdWeaving®, we emphasize curation over moderation. If moderation is the act of presiding over a meeting or discussion, then Sean’s last birthday was an exercise in curation. We filtered information about a few of his favorite things (Paul Rudd, chocolate-covered gummy bears) and synthesized it into a couple hours of good-natured teasing.
When we talk about ideation, we say that “everyone is creative” on at least one of four levels: creating, making, adapting, and doing. For the Katy Perry party thrown for my last birthday (yes, that’s a thing) … which not only celebrated my love for everyone’s favorite chanteuse, but also my devotion to all things artificially cherry flavored, Courtney created the concept, Marvin made the playlist and other accompanying A/V, Sean did a surprisingly good job buying decorations with only minimal instruction to get something “girly”, and Misty did her best to transform our conference room into a makeshift disco.
For Misty’s big day, we threw a tasteful old Hollywood glamour–themed fete, complete with a red carpet, and for Courtney’s fall bash we invoked Bavaria with an Oktoberfest (Marvin sure got the short end of the stick with that first Pop Tart party). While those were well executed and everyone enjoyed themselves, I believe this picture of me in a blue wig proves another point we often make about innovation: Great ideas aren’t always the most popular ideas. Maybe it actually proves the inverse—the point is, passion from a smaller group sometimes carries the day, which is why this picture is now on the internet.
