Team lunch at Kagges Sillcafé in Gamla stan. So much herring and other good food! Half the team are newly relocated to Sweden and I think some of them found the herring and the gravlax rather weird, but were too polite to say anything about it.

Board game night at work (Urb-it, not tretton37). I brought a bunch of games and we ended up playing Robo Rally, Dixit and Dream On. Robo Rally was chaotic because everyone was distracted. We played a bit, then someone got a phone call, then we played some more, then the food arrived, then we played more… Towards the end of the night we picked Dream On, which people were quite sceptical about because of how simplistic it sounded. And they played like Adrian did when we first got the game: throwing out cards more or less randomly, aiming to get as many cards played as possible. Which led to a miserable but entertaining failure when it came to remembering the cards afterwards.

We have a pretty sweet office with lovely views and a very central location. But because I’m only there once a week, I have none of my personal equipment in place – everything I want, I carry with me. Computer of course, but also charger, mouse, mouse pad, web cam and speaker. And indoor shoes – I really don’t understand how other people’s feet can cope with 20-degree swings in temperature in the same pair of shoes. And knitting. It’s a fair amount to lug along every time. I could try and make do without some of it, like I make do with whatever cheapo keyboard I find, but I don’t want to.

A full-day workshop at work, about “brave conversations”, i.e. conversations that are difficult but that you choose to have anyway, such as giving people feedback. Lots of introspection and interesting discussions.

Today was a very Christmas-themed day.

From shortly after lunch I was helping prepare for the Urb-it Christmas-ish dinner – fetching and carrying and shopping and setting the table etc. In the afternoon I walked over to tretton37 for a Lucia gathering with singing and glögg and lussebullar etc. Then back to Urb-it for the dinner itself.

I’m still amazed by the luck that put the two companies within a hundred metres of each other. I’m glad I didn’t have to choose between the two parties – and it was incredibly convenient I could use the tretton37 office for storing the party materials, because we only had access to the Urb-it office from midday. I had so much stuff – tableware and decorations and snacks and what not.

Urb-it today feels somewhat like the tretton37 Stockholm office felt like when I joined in 2017: small-scale and DIY. We ordered our own food. Someone brought a speaker from home for the party music, while someone else brought table runners, and a hotplate for the glögg, and so on. tretton37 has grown and become more professional: we have people who fix these kinds of things so the rest of us don’t have to. But the home-made spirit is still there – the singers were a self-organized group from among ourselves. I hope we manage to keep it.

tretton37 Christmas party at Riddarsalen (Münchenbryggeriet). Good food, good company.

After dinner a group of us played a game where we randomly guessed things about the person sitting next to us, based on nothing but gut feeling and prejudice. I guessed, among other things, that Ben to my right would be an overly cautious driver (and was spot on) and that Farnam to my left collects something weird (and was completely off since he turned out to be strongly against collecting anything). It was a lot of fun.

The people around me guessed that I am particular about some/many things in my life, but not about travel destinations, that I would be happy to travel just about anywhere. Yes, I said, but isn’t everyone like that? Apparently not – people can be very picky about wanting to travel to their bucket list places but definitely not want to go to some-other-place. I really would be happy to travel just about anywhere as long as I don’t have to worry about my health and life – Colombia would definitely be on my no-go list, for example.

It also came out that I am a private person, and that I give a serious impression regardless of what lies underneath. And I do. I keep the private and professional spheres quite separated, and make sure to make a professional impression at work. I don’t even really know why. I’ve done it as long as I can remember, and it is second nature by now. I think I expect people to not take me seriously unless I make them. And I think I expect/fear negative reactions if I let my private self come to the fore, so I keep it safely hidden.

tretton37 weekend conference, day two. This morning’s activity was a co-op puzzle game/challenge. We got large floor puzzles to assemble, and the finished picture contained clues for the next step. I joined in the puzzle assembly but my head was too tired today for any kind of intellectual challenge.

The final result was a code to a website, and our prize was the revelation that we will have a global conference in May. The global Knowabunga is an annual tradition but we’ve skipped the last two because of covid. Now there is hope that we won’t skip a third one.

Knowabunga conference weekend with tretton37, and in 10 minutes I’m about to hold a talk (about getting started with containers in Azure).

I enjoy this, but I’m not exactly sure why and how. The preparation part is a bit of a slog. Right before the talk I’m always nervous, in particular about taking too little time, or too much. I enjoy it while I’m up there, though. And I also really enjoy people coming up to me afterwards and telling me I did a good job.

Fridays in the tretton37 office mean afternoon fika.

There are so many new faces! The Stockholm office has grown a lot in the past few years, and many of the people who were hired during the covid restrictions I’ve never had a chance to meet yet.