Shakeup at the Rainbow Bar
What was the moment? When we knew the web started to change? When we started to transform along with it?
In the warehouse downtown, the unsung heroes worked away at building the web with utopic vision. Days passed into years. Their scrappy thrive operated in a world scarcely recognized today: before Facebook and Google, but where Apples sheathed transparent teal plastic whirred aplenty. And discarded PC towers started to pile in a corner.
Clients evolved. Their sapling online brochureware grew encased in ever-growing tree-ring layers. A game of skin and reskin, where the bones of rainbow bars and grey slate panels grew covered in the fleshy pulp of proper navigation. Animated gifs stripped away like outgrown tree bark, replaced with a new layer of Flash. Increasingly advanced design gobbled higher internet speeds, and grew yet another tree ring. The widest tree ring to form so far?: dynamic functionality.
The builders themselves evolved in their warehouse… sprouting new thinking like hydras. Talk started anew online: an eruption that never stopped. AOL AIM gave way to ICQ, opening up a whole world of users known by only numbers and aliases. Communities sprung up, where in-depth and satisfying discussion bloomed around topics of common interest. Search revealed the breadth and depth of unifying facts and productive exchange available online, without monopolistic narrowing.
This unique and fleeting moment was Web 2.0. When the foundation shook at the Rainbow Bar, and at increasing internet velocity, “Home” as we knew it approached its crumbling death.
It set the stage for a future breed, that would split the trees open and upturn their roots: Social Media. Where communities toppled in the MySpace and Facebook celebration of self. This future held not just an evolution of technology, but of the people themselves, and their behavior.
Ways of working during “Web 2.0” evolved as well. For a time, web agencies reveled in “team building” activities, and the warehouse dwellers were no different. Every Friday, a game of “Pass The Ball” filled the afternoon. The premise was simple: say how you’re feeling and pass the ball. Sometimes, players were asked to answer other similarly innocuous questions. And got paid to do it.
The problem?: it became an oh-so-repetitive distraction from bringing our utopian internet vision to life.
For a few weeks, Bone asked: “Could we do something different this week?” He even suggested a few team building activities with reasonable legs. But somehow every week, Boss did not change. He had firm ideas of what was “right”: a vision of an elevated way to run his web agency.
And so, the game proceeded as it had for months prior… the ball passed once again.
But today would be different. Just as Web 2.0 stood transforming the internet as we knew it, Bone stood against the 285th ball pass. He slammed the perky beach wall into the floor, where it enjoyed a pretty good bounce.
“This is stupid!,” Bone shouted. “I’m not playing anymore!” With that, he stomped out of the room.
With a head of steam, then Presto followed. “And I said, don’t call me Presto anymore!,” his words spat at Boss, and out he went.
Their words hung in the air in the now-awkward emptying space. It was… team building gone bad. The group never expected to witness such an outburst for, in effect, being paid to do nothing but toss a ball. But some remained driven by a higher Web purpose, and this frivolous time waster was not for them.
For those who remained in the room, the ball-pass continued with complacency… Let’s get it over with.
Yet in ways as broad as Web 2.0 itself, and as nuanced as your coworker next in line for the ball pass, transformation remained clear and accelerating.
Lessons Learned: Listen to your people when they have ideas. Or at least, get creative and change it up on your own, before your “team building” morphs into a dumpster fire.
For those still building and experiencing the changing web… just wait. We’re still Shaking Up the Rainbow Bar, and maybe there are still a few utopian moments left for that ‘ol Web of ours.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.
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