Pixar

I came across this video the other day of a tour of Pixar's studios. It's pretty awesome. They have as incredible of a workplace as I would expect from a masterful movie company.



A few things I enjoyed about it:

1. I love how they try to recreate the experience in person before they try to do it animated. Like bringing in actual dancers in order to study how they move or how they constructed a garbage bin and made the animators climb through it so that they could know what it felt like. Which is brilliant because when they created that scene they were no longer guessing what it would be like but actually recreating their own experience.

2. The attention to detail is mind blowing. I shouldn't be too surprised since they are incredibly thorough and never miss a minor detail. But it was still remarkable to see all the little things they insist on doing which surely improve the overall quality.

3. Finally, the workplace. Is there a cooler place to work? That building is fantastic. The setup is genius with the massive communal area. I think I'm just most impressed by how it caters so much to the employee and fostering a workplace and a community where the ideas can thrive and the employee can really excel.

I love the comment made about how people see the workplace and think that employees might have a hard time staying on task. But they actually have the opposite problem of employees working too much. It's almost the complete opposite of your standard business model or standard workplace. Normally bosses do have to act like parents and make sure employees are always on task, which usually creates a stressful and not very pleasant workplace.

Pixar is debunking the standard workplace model mindset and has managed to create an ideal work environment where their employees enjoy working. Granted, I think the reason they are able to do so is because of their product. It's an extremely high quality product and one which most people could easily support. When you have a quality product, you don't really have to convince your employees that they are doing worthwhile work and that they should enjoy what they are doing. If the product is quality, the employee will want to contribute to it, and if the employee wants to do something, they will "work" harder because it doesn't really come across as work.

One last thing, I think many companies have quality products and have a great work environment, but it's impressive that Pixar is able to do it on such a large scale. I think lots of small start-up companies are able to do what Pixar has done and have a non-traditional work place, but it seems like as companies grow, they eventually go more towards the corporate model and traditional workplace.

Pixar has grown from 30 to 1200 employees yet it still comes across as a small tight-knit unit with only 10 employees where everyone is happy. Granted, I'm basing this entire opinion and observation off their movies and a 5 minute video. But I don't know how one wouldn't like that workplace and I'm pretty sure that getting a job at Pixar is probably pretty difficult, so the observation can't be too far off.

Musical Win

Winston is here. I'm already dreaming of him as a world class athlete or scholar. Yet, I'm also thinking that he may be destined for music because of the early music connections.

Although his name is Winston, we mostly call him Win. While he was in the womb, Nellie and I went to an Arcade Fire concert. He wasn't named after Win Butler - the lead singer of Arcade Fire - but I will neither confirm nor deny if he lept in the womb when Win Butler took the stage at the start of the concert. It did also happen to be the only concert we went to while she was pregnant.



Beck was also in the running for his name. In the end, I think it's better we went with Win and Arcade Fire. Beck is awesome and has incredible music, but if we named him Beck I would have felt compelled to play Beck songs for him as often as possible. That would be great once he was a little older and I could play any song in the Beck music library; but while he is young I would have wanted to play softer and mellower songs for him. Which pretty much leaves Sea Change as my only option. Sure, it's a great album, but he probably would have grown up extremely depressed and completely sour and pessimistic about love.

Not to say there isn't anything by Beck to play for him. I already played Sunday Morning for him the other day. One of these days I'll learn more lullabys so I can be the one to sing to him. In the meantime, this is as good as any and seemed to keep him happy.



One last musical note (pun intended), I realized just the other day that he was born at 12:51 p.m. I can't believe I didn't make the Strokes connection sooner. He could have come sooner or hung out in the hot tub a little longer before making his appearance. But he knew his daddy was a Strokes fan and would appreciate the 12:51 arrival. It's especially symbolic considering the Strokes recently announced their 2011 concert tour, their first tour since 2006, and also the year of Win's birth. No doubt our first father/son outing will be to their show.



I'm sure there are many more musical connections. I'll keep you updated as they are revealed.