Download a PDF of this blog postThanks to our delightful colleague, Rebecca Petzel, we seem to be out of the closet. As much as I enjoyed all of the superlatives in her post, she may have exaggerated a bit in describing us. This has spurred me to share some of my own thoughts on who we are, what we’re doing, and why we’re doing it. This, of course, was all part of Rebecca’s evil plan in the first place.
Rebecca was being tongue-in-cheek when she described Groupaya as “super stealth, super secret.” Either that, or we are the worst people in the world at keeping a secret. We don’t do super stealth, super secret, because we have a strong ethos around openness, transparency, and generosity. All of these things make groups and the world better.
Our intention has always been to be transparent about our planning process as a way of thinking out loud and telling our story. In practice, this isn’t always easy. For one thing, I didn’t want to confuse my clients and peers unnecessarily. Blue Oxen Associates is still around, although I’ll be shutting it down by the end of the year (as I’ll explain in more detail later).
For another thing, we wanted to shave several yaks before we started telling our story in earnest. In order to tell our story, we needed a blog. In order to have a blog, we needed a name. And what’s a good name without a logo?! Etc.
Well, we’re through shaving yaks, and we’re ready to begin sharing in earnest. Our story and our thinking will come out in bits and pieces over the coming weeks. We’ll probably have an “official” launch as well. Maybe.
Even though this is our first pass at talking about ourselves, we did take the occasional video during our planning process. This is our first, a three-minute clip courtesy of Kristin Cobble‘s nine-year old son, who is an actual superhero. We recorded this last December, before we even had a name, and it will give you a taste of how confused we were back then. Enjoy!
We’ve also been on Twitter and Facebook for a while, so follow us there too!