Lessons from a Lonely Fellow

This is a personal reflection essay. If you’re interested in more information about my actual TAPP Fellowship project - Sexual Censorship on Social Media - check out my blog or instagram, or register for my final presentation. 

Necessity is the mother of invention. This has proven true many ways over the past year, but for the purposes of this post it could be rephrased as “the pandemic is the mother of remote connection strategies.”  

I never expected to be doing this Fellowship remotely, but I did, and it was hard.  

And lonely.  

I like people.  

I like working with people.  

In fact, I find working on my own rather demotivating, but there I was facing down 9 months of a fellowship with 6 folks on the other side of a screen.  

Deciding to make the best of a bad situation, I came up with a bunch of schemes for ways to replace those missing coffee runs and “oh you’re going to this talk too? Let’s sit together”s.  

Coffee Roulette 

A spreadsheet is generated with random pairings of people each week for as many weeks as it takes to get through everyone.  

You contact your partner for the week and figure out a time for a virtual coffee to give you some of that otherwise-rare 1:1 time. (or you can add a bit more structure, and schedule a specific weekly time for the conversations to happen) 

Setup difficulty: moderate 
Moderator required: no 
Primary value: 1:1 connections 

Competition Brackets 

Inspired by a tweet I saw once, I built a system for a tournament of nonsense arguments. You generate a list of 16 similar things and throw them in a march-madness style bracket, then have a group call (lasting 1.5-2 hours) and debate them in pairs until you crown a winner.  

This will make much more sense if you just look at the resulting bracket from our “PIE FIGHT” meeting: 

Because the debate has no consequences, it gets silly and heated and fun and you learn a lot about each other.  

Even if the wrong choice wins in the end. (strawberry rhubarb forever!!!) 

Moderator duties: 

1. Generate the list and build the spreadsheet 

2. Screen-share the sheet with the group during the meeting 

3. Keep debate flowing and call for votes (usually one preliminary, then debate, then one final vote) 

4. Record votes and advance sheet (pictures optional but encouraged - move them up as items win) 

Setup difficulty: moderate to intense, depending on how deep you wanna get 
Moderator required: yes 
Primary value: entertainment, team bonding 

Weekly standups 

Before I was a Fellow I was a Product Manager, so this one should come as no surprise. Even if you’re not working on the same thing, it can be incredibly helpful to have a set time when you all get together and talk about what you’re doing. This helps with accountability, and provides an opportunity for people to offer help or realize they’re working on similar things and working together.  

Bonus points for bringing in members of the Fellowship staff to listen and give updates as well, that way everyone stays in the know with what’s happening. 

Setup difficulty: low 
Moderator required: yes 
Primary value: work synergy 

Regular group working time 

This is not a new idea, but it is a good one - set aside some chunks of time where everyone can dial in and work individually on things. It adds just a hint of structure, and also gives you an audience for those random funny things that you come across in your reading.  

Setup difficulty: low 
Moderator required: no 
Primary value: productivity, community 

Caveats: All of these have slowed down over time. Nothing is “required” it’s all just helpful, and as the Fellowship draws to a close this kind of thing seems less important as we all work towards our individual culminations. None of them have come close to what we could have had were we in person - but it was way better than nothing.  

If you enjoyed this, come watch my final presentation! It has absolutely nothing to do with this topic, but you’ll get to see my moderation skills in action. ;)