Agenceum Update
Posted on November 7, 2009 in Agenceum
It’s been less than a week since we’ve launched Agenceum. We’re operating in stealth mode, quietly getting up to speed and organizing our resources. And yes, I’m using the “royal we”; it’s just me here. But I’ve decided to add a few more frills to this experiment:
- This is turning into a kind of learning simulation, sort of like my own version of the Kobayashi Maru training scenario from the Star Trek movies. There’s the slight tinge of doom, certainly, to this entire enterprise…run an open agency and be successful? That sounds crazy. At the same time, the Kobayashi Maru scenario was not designed to be winnable; it was designed to test the character of future commanders. And so, this is a kind of character test for me. And of course, there’s always the chance that I could beat the no-win scenario. That’s probably why Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan is one of my favorite movies.
- As a simulation, this blog now becomes the company intranet. It’s going to be ugly, but hopefully useful and informational. Agenceum is the agency I might have founded if I were 19 years old and full of optimism, and actually knew what the hell I was doing. So, I’m using what I know: WordPress! We’ll figure out the rest as we go along.
- As a company intranet, the Agenceum blog is now going to have postings from various “departments”. This should be pretty fun because I’ll get to write a story at the same time I’m documenting best practices (or at least the practices Agenceum has).
So now it’s really getting interesting, blurring the lines between fantasy and reality. Hee hee.
4 Comments
Hi David,
I think “royal we” sucks, especially when you’re writing a blog post which is something personal anyway.
I think you should drop it and go back to using I; it’s pretty weird reading things like “we looked at a Git daemon, then we decided to use GitHub, then we did this that and the other”.
But hey, that’s just our opinion – what do we know :)
Hey Richard,
It feels weird to me too, but this is a weird kind of blog. I have two thoughts on this:
When I use “we”, I’m actually pretending that I’m a whole department. It’s kind of fun to imagine.
When I use “I”, then it sounds like I’m talking about myself a whole lot. And that seems more self-centered than I’d want this blog to be.
But perhaps you’re right. If this is a personal blog, then I would favor transparency and use “I”.
For now, I’m going to go with the “we” approach. It’s probably wrong to call it the “royal we”; it’s more like the “including-the-reader we”, if any readers are inclined to imagine themselves being part of the Agenceum startup. It also has a more team-centered sound.
Grammarians, whaddya think?
Who is your target market? Our lawyer wrote as “I am enclosing a bill…” with the draft of our wills. I’d only use “we” when you are working as a team, although in the past “we” was used by small companies competing with larger companies.
At least you’re not referring to yourself in the third person, like one of my clients does: “Mr. Name has 30 years experience in…”
“We” is (or rather was, because I’ve dropped it) targeted at readers of this blog who can (or could) pretend they’re dropping in on the inside chatter of my mystery agency between departments. The design department, for example, would probably say, “we did this” at the staff meeting, so I thought it would be appropriate.
So the “we” wasn’t targeted at an OUTSIDE market; it was targeted at internal pretend-staff.
Makes sense? No? Good thing I dropped it :-)