Learning as we go – New blog section incoming

GIF - Whale

whale, hello there

what are we discussing today?

As Our Millennials Today has progressed quite a bit since its initial launch in 2020, I wanted to open a new section diving deeper into its genesis, organisation and learnings.

Here is the first article of the series. Its aim is to walk you through the project.

a personal need for reassurance

In november 2018, Our Millennials Today came to life. At first, it was just a random website and an instagram account, fuelled by my CMS curiosity and love for social media. Of course, my will to start a collection of students & young graduates testimonies underlay – and still does as of today.

Strange times 2018. I had just wrapped up my creative residency at thecamp in July with a little project showcase at Dour Festival and trip to Montreal in May. This sudden inactivity put me through quite a bad patch. Indeed, after realising I learned more about innovation, management and design in 6 months than I had in 2 years in a business school, I seriously considered dropping out. After informing my parents of this decision, I went back home, sat on my bed to reflect on the meaning of education and life altogether. During this period, I remember turning down 2 jobs in one month without any valid reason apart from “I need to pause”. I was so lost it felt a bit like I was freewheeling life. 

👉  The first article about Our Millennials Today in 2018  

👉   The first testimony published on Our Millennials Today

I did think I was about to discover the meaning of life. The bad news is: I didn’t. So I decided to pick-up courses in my BS school after 3 months of me being away.  

On the other hand, this being lost had encouraged me to spend time with friends, acquaintances, and random people to talk about vocational orientation. My goal was then to understand how they navigated through orientation to find out what they were meant and going for. But after talking to them, I realised no one – or very few of them – actually knew what they were doing in life.

 

When I grasped this, I decided to share this epiphany to the world. That’s when I created Our Millennials Today’s original website, an instagram (and a quickly aborted podcast test). I gained some followers. Had some nice interactions on the net, but never really communicated about it. It’s only in 2020 that I created a newsletter and chatted with those who would end up joining me.

which ended up speaking to other people

When I published my newsletter (french speaking only) in 2020, I confess that my only goal was to create a space where I could write about a topic that passionates me without any real wish to be read. To be really blunt, my real objective was to send the link to my Substack to one of my BS school teacher so that s·he would validate the project as my master’s thesis – this is how lazy I am 🤷🏽‍♀️.

But I guess life decided differently. In 3 months top (from October to December), the team has grown from 1 to 5 people. Between November and December, we created a podcast (in french – 400+ listenings in dec 2020), a webinar (in french – 4 occurrences for 55 people) and gained some new newsletter suscribers without too much communication (french – 50 suscribers).

how-to: orchestrating a team and remaining coherent?

At first, I was quite happy and thought of all the things I set aside to focus on my strength – writing instead of podcasting. But now I realise that the real challenge is coming: organising a team, keeping our branding coherent all throughout our development while keeping producing content ; especially when the project emerged from a personal need/brand. As always, I got caught into a whirlwind of sprinting enthusiasm and forgot about long-term. So now I’m getting ready for the marathon, hoping to being able to keep it up.

 

We have some next step wishes, but I’m unable to clearly see where we’re going. As usual I guess we’ll see the path clear up as we go. To keep track of it, I decided I’d communicate here about what/how I learn about the journey. In this section we will then talk branding, managing and project development. I’ll share my readings, professional encounters and questions that are project related.

I’m not a pro, but I’m eager to learn (and finally go back to writing in english which I’ve dearly missed). I keep repeating how “doing is the way to learn”. Maybe it’s time I apply this advice to myself. 

As usual I’m very keen on getting your feedback: feel free to reach out and share your impressions / tips / questions with me 🤸‍♀️

See you soon 🐋

Tags: No tags

Add a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *