Weekly review (2024-02-25)
I continued talking with various people to think about the company’s long-term plan. Now I think it’s time to stop interviewing people, as I now see where the consensus is. Now it is time to think about the direction. I need to run thought iterations again and again.
I attended a conference in Japan. It is the only conference that I attend regularly, and it’s been more than a decade since I started attending it. Basically, four categories of people come to this - politicians, business people, media/culture/academic people, and social sector people. In the early days, I attended it as a representative of a nonprofit, and now a for-profit.
It may be my prejudice, but I feel that in this sort of conference, some people tend to look down on nonprofit people, seeing them as second-class citizens. I feel it is laughable. Be it non-profit or for-profit, what matters is how hard we work and how much we deliver. There is no essential difference between the two.
As an introvert, I always find it difficult to enjoy these events, but this time I thought about how to make it ok (as I’ve been writing, I started seeing things as a designer, i.e., thinking about how I can improve my experience). Now I have come up with a good survival guide for an introvert:
Define the purpose and the key results from the event
Read the participants list
Make a list of the people to meet and the discussion points for each people
Execute
This time, what I wanted to do were (1) catch up with shareholders, (2) general catch up with friends, (3) discussions related to the long-term strategy, (4) discussions related to education, (5) discussions related to J-Oschis, and (6) try to talk with people whom I wanted to know more.
It worked well. By introducing a clear framework, it became a game of execution (which I am ok at) rather than one of interacting with strangers by consuming mental energy.