Part of me wanted to entitle this post “Branding is Ugly”, but research and data can be quite beautiful. Also, the collaboration and breakthrough moments involved are quite beautiful as well, so I decided against it for these nerdy reasons. Essentially, though, I’ve realized that the perception of branding is that it encompasses logos, colors, swag, and websites—lots of pretty things. I think this has to do with how we talk about it and what we show as proof of work completed—the tangible, tip of the iceberg deliverables.

Months ago, at Wiggle Work, we were inspired by Sarah Gebauer’s months-long daily blog publishing. So impressed and energized by this work that we decided in a whiteboard session it might be fun to attempt this ourselves. We planned in January and aimed for a February kickoff. And so, happy February, and welcome to the Wiggle Work Winter Writing Workshop.

Inspired by Matt Stein’s sharing of Rafał Pastuszak’s work, I’m now offering more easily available video call chats. Part of the preparations involved generating a list of example topics. So, while I’m open to chatting about whatever’s stuck on your mind, there are some things I get especially energetic about, and perhaps we have that in common–what a beautiful thing when that happens.

The people at Wiggle Work, aka Wigglers, are what make it so special. Our cozy little Discord community is currently at 62 members. 60% are developers or engineers, 17% are designers, and the remaining professions are around marketing, content creation, project management, executive roles, operations, and leadership coaching. There’s an overwhelming amount of remote work experience here, with most folks fitting in the over ten-year range.

For last week’s Why Wiggle Work I gave a mini tour of our Discord channels. Today, I wanted to share a look at our specific events. These are always some of the trickier aspects of navigating an online community. There are different time zones, different work schedules, and it can be challenging to get people’s attention to let them know what’s going on. But, when it works out it’s absolutely delightful and goes a long way in establishing proper bonds.

I’m aiming to publish Some Super Short blog posts on Wiggle Work Wednesdays revolving around Why Wiggle Work–why you should join us and why people are sticking around. I usually stick with Mastodon posts around this topic on Wednesdays, but I think it would be helpful to be able to provide a bit more insight. Choosing a community, after all, is a big decision that shouldn’t be taken lightly.