I had coffee with a friend this week who has just started working at a new co-working space.
His job is to be the community manager, responsible for recruiting 15-20 people to become regular members at a “creative cafe” in Copenhagen.
We got chatting about how the job came about – and the benefits of being “out in the world” vs working on problems in isolation.
Ask and you shall find
I was with him a month ago when we got speaking about what he was going to do next to work wise. He’d been working on some ad hoc freelance gigs for a few months and fancied something more routine.
We spoke about his strengths, and the idea of something that involved working with people “in person” struck out, perhaps drawing on his enjoyment of helping creative people turn their passion into profession.
A couple of minutes later he spotted someone else he knew, went and spoke to her and relayed what he was thinking about a new role.
She said that, by chance, a friend of hers was opening a co-working space/ cafe and was looking for someone to manage it.
My friend got connected with the owner and a couple of weeks later got started on the role.
An idea in others’ minds
When something is mentioned to you, there’s a timeframe whereby you’ll naturally start recognising that thing more.
This is called the Baader-Meinhof principle and seems fairly logical, to me at least.
An extension of this is the literature on the law of attraction.
From my understanding, the philosophy is that if you focus on something then it’s more likely that it’ll come true as “the world conspires to help you”.
I’m slightly more skeptical of the “hidden forces” behind it but can feel fairly comfortable in the idea that sharing ideas and getting input from others will increase the likelihood of them coming to fruition.
Go out and talk to people
My main take away from the chat is the power of talking with other people about the challenges/ ideas you’re working on.
Even if it feels fairly oblique things often come about from these chance conversations and, if there’s something specific/ tangible that would help you, then others are more likely to do so if they know what you’re after.
If you’ve had any interesting experiences or outcomes that have come from chance conversations, do let me know!
In other news…
It seems that Copenhagen is out of burrata.
For NYE dinner I was tasked with sourcing the Italian cheese for starter, and on the 30th December went to the fancy local supermarket to get some.
Alas, they don’t, and have never, stocked it. “Try the specialist cheese shop”, I was advised.
An artisanal cheese man around the corner didn’t either and I then took to Google Maps to search others, cycling around the city for most of the 30-31st.
Through a combination of 8 shops, I was able to purchase three burratas, with all but two saying they were completely out of stock (I bought the last from them).
The issue seems to be both demand and supply.
On the demand side, burrata was apparently popular for lots of people having NYE dinner (“you’re the 100th person who’s asked”).
Interestingly, supply was problematic too. As it’s made from fresh cheese curds burrata has a week-long shelf life. In the preceding 7 days, most of the Italian cheesemakers were off for Christmas and so none of the creamy cheese could be made.
All’s well that ends well, but nevertheless an interesting little market failure for the end of the year.
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