extrawurst's blog

As mentioned in my last “worth reading” (which was really a ‘worth watching’) my team and I do Video Lunches regularly. This post focuses on that great concept and hopefully leaves you considering it in your team as well. Note that you don’t have to be the lead of your team to be able to do this.

Concept

• Video Lunch happens roughly every two weeks.
• We order in food (perfect for bad weather as well).
• We gather video suggestions in a backlog.
• Everyone can suggest videos.
• We vote upfront for videos from the backlog.
• We eat and watch together.
• Optional: we ask for opinions afterwards to shape a discussion.
• Mandatory: we learn and enjoy :)

Video Lunch Background

For me learning is daily business. I am a believer in live long learning. One great source to learn from is inspiring speakers, udacity lessons, conference talks, TED talks or essentially any other video you think is interesting.  Youtube offers over 500 petabyte in videos, how do I ever watch everything that might be interesting for me? There is simply just so much time, right? That’s why finding additional slots to squeeze in time to learn from these is a win! Our video lunches are a great way to sneak in such time.

“Man is by nature a social animal” (Aristotle)

The social animal I am I get less distracted when watching something when I am not alone. But what is even better is to be able to discuss what you saw afterwards. If you are easily excited like me you want feedback on stuff you are psyched about right away and not wait until someone found the time to watch it, too. Aside from being able to discuss the video and get others perspective on it I usually tend to remember things better when I was able to talk about it. I am a very auditive person so my mind works this way and I memorize more easily.

“Man is largely a creature of habit” (G. Stanley Hall)

When your team reaches a certain size maintaining a healthy team spirit and culture is not as easy anymore as being just two or three people. Naturally sympathy varies and sub groups emerge and tend to stick together because we are creatures of habit. Shared, uniting activities like team events cannot be held every week but concepts like the team lunch are easy for members to buy in and have the benefit of subtle team building on top of the other advantages. You talk to people that otherwise you did not know much about maybe, you learn to respect their opinions and interests.

Benefits Summary

• Time effective utilizing the lunch break
• Uniting bigger teams / team building 
• Knowledge sharing, looking outside the box (breaking habits)
• Discussions lead to better memorizing
• Little management overhead

Of course this is a concept not new but I rarely hear it happening at other teams or companies. I can just suggest to try it out and obviously adjust it accordingly to your teams needs.

Happy watching! 📺