Yours Bruly

Having bottomless (and super delicious!) afternoon tea to celebrate one whole year in business was just the bee's knees. 

Over the last few weeks, we've been to a number of meetings in a lot of different places - something you've probably done too. What a coincidence! But whether you're in a restaurant or a board room, how do you know where to sit? What's the proper meeting seating etiquette?

A simple Google search of 'where to sit in a meeting' brings up quite a few articles that tell us which seats are the 'power' seats and which are those you should take if you want to blend in and sit quietly. These positions change depending on the shape of the table and the positions of the chairs but generally heads of tables = heads of...life, conversation, awesomeness...and also meetings. Interesting. 

A Forbes article on the subject cites a company's example of seating people in concentric circles to achieve higher participation rates all around (which they did). Seems that the Knights of the Round Table knew what they were doing. 

But what happens when you're the first in to the room and could choose any chair your little heart desires? Where should you sit? It depends on your purpose, but we've found that when there is more than one Bruster in a meeting, it works very nicely for us to spread out - to sit on opposite sides of a table. Our unconscious (now conscious) reasoning for this is perhaps best explained by a section of the aforementioned Forbes article: "...people may also sit on opposite sides of a conference table and unwittingly divide into an “us” and “them” mentality." 

Well nobody wants that! We always want to invite our fellow meeting attendees to interact with us, to get to know us, to laugh and cry with us. Maybe not the latter but you get the point.

So the lesson we've learned in meetings is for people from different companies to divide (and conquer the meeting with ass-kicking meeting skillz). And if that feels awkward once the other attendees arrive, well you can always get up and change seats.

Nearly every day we pass Pappa Roti on Queensway and nearly every day it gets, at the very least, a mention in the office. Thankfully (for our waistlines, not our happiness), we only indulge once in awhile. The real problem is the number of addictive lunch spots in our area. We're not complaining because believe us, we know what it's like to be limited in our food choices...COUGHBatterseaCOUGH. We just don't want to get fat.

So as an office we joined the local gym and we actually take a full hour of lunch time away from our computers, and that keeps us all smiles. We have a great working environment that fosters health and happiness. Except that nearly every time we leave the comfort of the office we're burdened by having to resist the sweet smell of good ol' Pappa Roti.

Ah well, if we eat too many, we'll just end up like the fat smiling Buddhas in the windows of all the Chinese restaurants nearby. And then we can indulge our cravings for dim sum too. Don't even get us started on dim sum.

We got the chance last Friday to do a screening of an early cut of our upcoming short Acoustic Kitty at the BFI screening rooms. In case we haven't mentioned it yet (we have), it's based on the true story of a scientist at the CIA in 1960s Washington DC developing the technology to implant cats with recording devices so they could be used as spies. Yes it really is a true story.

We had a nearly full house at the first screening we did and like proper test screening planners we were prepared with questionnaires - everybody's favourite. Everyone in attendance was lovely and very helpful, taking the time to fill out the questionnaires, and then we did a second screening for a group of students currently doing the Media Studies A-level.

They laughed more than the grown-up audience (so we like them a lot...and have clearly found our target demographic). Our fabulous award-winning director Jen Sheridan stayed after the screening to answer questions from this group of super bright kids and their teacher told us all they could talk about after the screening was how inspired they were. RESULT!