Lone wolves, remote extroverts, detached development thinkers - time for Brainy, Briny Thursday?

Do you miss people? Want to join a remote working 'talk club'? Rules of the game might be inclusion, free thinking (the brain), respectful challenge (the brine)... and no hogging the talking stick?

If you are a remote worker, whether a ‘lone wolf’ free lancer or part of a scattered team, do you ever miss a spontaneous heated debate with just enough planning and structure, but also open ended and exciting. It might rise, expand, and be the wellspring of a great new initiative - or just fizzle out? (Either being fine).

Lone Wolf 1981. No wifi. No streaming service. No Gilmore Girls.

Early morning Brexit Dave

Between 2014 and 2020 I commuted into London 4 days each week. A 90 minute train ride and cycle each way. My regular 0630 train-and-bike buddies were an undercover policeman, a soldier turned boxing banker, a sleeping physicist, and a fintech speculator (‘Brexit Dave’). We did not agree on much, but the debates were exhilarating. The others were combatively sceptical about aid, and the daily challenge made me better at explaining development, governance, anti corruption, political economy and all that. Friendly debates with people holding polar opposite views are a rare treat. They also made fun of my folding ‘clown bike’.

Brainy Thursdays

In my DFID research team we also had friendly debates. Challenge made good ideas better. But our weekly team meetings could get bogged down in management and procedure, so we instigated an extra slot - ‘Brainy Thursday’ to make ‘technical’ discussion more routine and structured. Each week could either be a freestyle conversation; or someone in the team presenting new research for discussion, or a draft paper for feedback and debate; or we would invite interesting researchers to tell us about their work.

Challenge and disagreement were important, but we avoided the ‘academic tradition’ (bleugh!) of tearing chunks out of each other and thinking this was a demonstration of our intellectual brilliance.

Thursday just seemed to be the ideal day - after the start of the week rush, but before the Friday slow down…

Virtually Brainy

Covid lockdown scattered the team, but we kept up the routine online - guest virtual Brainy Thursday speakers included Tom Wain on dignity and development (before he got so famous!) and Ellen Turner on her truly impressive ethnographic research on school violence. The themed Brainy Thursdays worked best, and if there was a paper to read before hand we expected each other to read it. No read? No comment.

Avoiding the void…

I’m now a remote working freelancer / free radical / floating thinker. I am busy reading and writing and plotting (and staring out of the window, saying hello to the face in the tree…

The winter face in the tree. Disappears in summer after being consumed by own eye brows.

…pondering getting a dog and doing a bit of cheeky painting and nipping out for a run and watching 5 minutes of Gilmore Girls¹ when my daughter puts it on during her lunch break).

But some days I have no work calls - no work-related human contact - at all. I miss people and challenge and ideas and debate. I have spoken to others who share this feeling of detachment - whether they are sole agent freelancers, or work in a disbursed team in which contact is business-like, or they may be the only ‘governance nerd’ or ‘evidence geek’ in the team. Don’t get me wrong - home working is brilliant, a privilege, and we are lucky to have the kind of work that allows it.

But there is something missing.

(This is made worse by the death spiral of ‘Kind Twitter’, and a feeling that LinkedIn does not fill the same need - too much ‘lukewarm high-five !’)

Filling a gap

This set me thinking about filling this gap, and instigating a regular, fairly wide ranging governance / inclusion / development / political constraints / anti corruption open house call for kindred spirits who also miss an interesting, semi structured debate. Ground rules are to be negotiated but my starting proposal is

• open and inclusive, but start local (a convenient time for local time zone)

• free thinking (the brain),

• respectful challenge (enough salt; the brine),

• taking turns to prepare a rough plan (freestyle, or themed) and chair each week,

• no hogging the talking stick…

And if we all agree with each other on everything, we have failed.

What do you think?

Tell me? Sign up? (LinkedIn comments?)

(If you are wondering if this is a refuge for lonely former DFID advisers…. not just that! )

Briny, Brainy

1. I started off Team Rory but switched over to Team Lorelei.