ronin support

If, as many of us suspect, the future for strategists, creative generalists, blah blah blah is as Ronin then it's becoming clear that there are business opportunities in Ronin Support. I'm certainly noticing, as we build OIA, that I'm missing all sorts of social and logistical aspects to employment and wondering how you replace them.

We talk a lot about how the future for creative businesses is similar to the movie studio model - groups of experts coming together for specific projects and dispersing but I suspect we can learn something else from the movie business - location catering. Well, sort of. I walked past this Airstream the other day, it was being used as a catering vehicle and I was thinking how perfect that would be to hire for a ronin project. Imagine you've got a pitch, you're putting a team of people together for it, what could be better than to park this in the client's car-park for the duration of the project (or somewhere else suitable, like where some actual consumers might be) and get the team together right where they need to be, with only temporary, project-based overhead.

(If you're tempted to get into the Airstream Ronin Support business, the marvelous Kathy Sierra tells you all about hers here. And there's more here.)

Then I walked past this new snack bar (opening soon) thats offering 'full conference facilities' in the basement. That'd be perfect for us. And you feel like you're going to see more of this kind of stuff. Places are that already socially oriented, used to coming and going, adding some of the neccesities of the workplace. The free wifi at The Breakfast Club makes a big difference but so do the smiles, the hellos and the feeling of familiarity. If they had a decent photocopier and a big, fast printer I'd never be out of their.

Because it's not just about the logistics, it's also about the conversation. I like our coffee mornings because they're like the good bits of meetings, without the bad bits. You get the banter and fun and news of everyone coming together at the beginning of a meeting, and the chat and advice of the end of one, but without all the crap in the middle. If there were other ways to do that I'd be very happy.

And then there's the brilliant Tower Stationery. Their business has grown up amongst all the little media, production, creative, retail businesses near us. They sell everything you need. Everything. And they're open a lot. And they're friendly. I find myself going out to get an envelope just to have a bit of social interaction.

I know I'm just scraping the surface here. There are all sorts of small business incubators and creative workspaces and all that. I need to investigate that more. But I suspect the missing opportunity is in places that do the logistics and the social-interaction, but without the permanent overhead. Hmm.

Comments

[jon howard]

As a production company as well as an ad agency, putting together short term teams and supporting them is something we do a lot. And interestingly, we have been discussing recently ways to build on this in a not disimilar way to what you're talking about here - how to do the social interaction and support thing in a world of empowered, digitally connected individuals who never actually get to meet other useful people any more (or just people who can bulk bind documents!). Anyway, watch this space. May come to something or may not!

[Stan Lee]

I love the indea of the creative Ronin. Much more interesting than boring old freelance or cliched consultant.

I also suspect that people who didn't understand or appreciate the term Ronin are the sort of people you wouldn't want to spend time with anyway.

Finally, I once worked with a CD who considered himself a creative Ninja. As a Ninja he believed that clients could kill his ideas but they could never kill him.

[neil]

The airstream thing is similar to (but cooler than) an idea Malcolm White (now of Krow) and I discussed when we worked together at Partners. Our idea was to have an old-fashioned caravan that we would park in clients' car parks for the duration of a new biz pitch. The agency pitch team would work out of the caravan for the duration of the pitch; sleeping there when necessary. We thought this would be
a) a cunning bit of headline-worthy PR
b) a good way of creating a hot-house pitch environment that the client could visit every day, hopefully giving us an advantage in the pitch.
Of course, we never actually got around to acquiring the caravan.