Thursday, March 8, 2018

On The Names Of Things

Being at a startup, I get a small-but-not-insignificant chance to influence how things develop, and a chance like that cropped up recently at my office in Seattle.

"What should we name our conference rooms?" my boss asked everyone.

There are two conference rooms in our office, and there are -- so far -- only eight of us on the team. I chimed in a couple of times, but none of my suggestions stuck, despite how excellent they were.

Instead, the team settled on the names of astronomical deities, or some such nonsense. The chosen names were meant to convey the size differences between the corresponding conference rooms, one tiny and the other less so.

Not very imaginative. That was a few weeks ago.

This week, for some reason, has been heavy on meetings for me, and while we were about to convene in one of these conference rooms, I said, "We should have named the rooms 'Ugh and Oy'".

My boss said, "No, we need to be more positive."

Clearly he doesn't feel the same as I do about meetings.