Understory:为什么要投资创意
If the CATLab’s job is to build software solutions for the college, 为什么我们同时拥有开发团队和创意团队? 好吧, 如果最终产品就是一切, Westmont might have chosen to buy a premade solution or hire a team of industry experts. CATLab的独特之处并不在于我们正在建造什么, but how we’re building it—inviting students to gain incredible real-world experience while having a direct impact on the way their school runs. 创意团队的工作就是捕捉这个故事. 回顾过去的三个夏天, here are three of the biggest benefits we’ve seen from our investment in creativity
1. 促进真实性
在CATLab, we’ve found that having a team dedicated to finding and telling the stories of the summer helps people bring their whole selves to work. 劳拉, who has been writing articles for the CATLab for the last three summers, reflected on her ongoing quest to draw out personal reflections from her teammates: “It’s not just, “你在建造什么??’ but, ‘What’s something you’ve really enjoyed about the process?’” 学生s feel like they’re bringing value not just for what they’re accomplishing but for who they are.
例如, 在去年夏天所有ag娱乐官网正义的讨论中, it was the creative team that put together a curriculum to help the group as a whole learn and process together. We created a space each morning for our teammates to step away from work and simply share what they’d been thinking and feeling.
One teammate who’s been consistently committed to sharing his story is our programmer James Lopez. 多次, he’s talked about his journey as a first-generation college student and how his background has been both a challenge and a blessing. “我无法隐藏我的那一部分，”他简单地说. “It’s not detrimental to the work that I’m doing; it’s only an enhancement of what I’m doing.” He sees how his own experiences have informed what he brings into his work: “To believe that those things that I shared—social justice, racial justice—aren’t connected to this would be false because they’re very much connected.” These considerations give him (and the rest of the team) a broader perspective of who they’re developing for. He chooses to put his personal story out there for others to see because it “helps deconstruct norms in the workplace—norms where individuals like me don’t share those sides of their lives.” Sharing his story in the CATLab is James’s way of telling people with similar backgrounds to him: “Hey, 我和你一样. 我不会隐瞒的.”
Don’t be afraid to let your experiences color the way you conduct yourself at work or in the world. 有可能你独特的故事, 你的个人考验, and your particular perspective could resonate with someone and inspire them to share, 太.
2. 激发更深层次的思考
Another important aspect of storytelling is not only recording what’s immediately apparent on the surface, but also digging into the layers underneath that might not otherwise be noticed. A fifteen-minute interview might not seem like 太 much of an interruption to a developer’s schedule; but in that short time, our teammates often find themselves verbally processing insights they might have otherwise overlooked. It’s all 太 easy to believe that learning happens in the moment and to accidentally miss the richness that comes with reflecting on an experience afterward. 换句话说, 小说家和短篇小说作家弗兰纳里·奥康纳曾经说过, “I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.”
有很多方法可以利用创造力来挖掘想法. 写日记是一种流行的做法, but you could also find ways to explore your story through other forms of expression like art or cooking. You could even try seeking out the deeper contemplations of others by preparing thoughtful questions to bring to conversations. Exploring the same idea through multiple means or media is a great way to unearth all facets of it. One of the things James most appreciated about the creative team was that his conversations with them gave him the chance to verbalize the work he was doing, noting that he often had to “translate” his explanations for people with different backgrounds without “dumbing down the solution.”
3. 留下了不朽的遗产
When Zak met with the very first CATLab creative team in May of 2019, 他分享了创意公司的一个片段.这本书的作者是皮克斯的联合创始人埃德·卡特穆尔. 根据后记, Steve Jobs was deeply inspired by the mission of Pixar and “used to say regularly that as brilliant as Apple products were, 最终它们都被扔进了垃圾填埋场. 另一方面，皮克斯电影将永远存在.“同样的道理, although the dashboards and forms and software features are the CATLab’s raison d'être, we know that eventually even the most cutting-edge code needs to be updated.
The creative team makes sure that the CATLab’s work and lessons won’t get forgotten. Even if data gets outdated or apps have to be rewritten, the story will live on. 正是这个故事吸引了新的人才, 这激励了捐赠者, 这让我们想起了我们做这项工作的初衷.
We’ve already begun to see the fruit of our efforts to share the CATLab’s story. 例如, at the end of last summer we compiled all our blog posts into a physical magazine, 然后我们寄给数百人, 从校友到未来的学生. 有几个人直接联系了我们, 分享他们对这个项目的热情, and even mentioned openings for jobs or internships at their companies. A few visited the CATLab and shared their stories through Tech Talks, and one (Jim Semick) even became our first Art | Tech Night speaker! Our content has also been reused and reprinted in other publications, 比如韦斯特蒙特杂志, which shows how our reach in the community is only continuing to grow.
和我们一起学习!