The Office of Letters and Light Blog

An interview with Grant Faulkner, OLL’s new Executive Director!

On January 9, the OLL-iverse changed in a very important way. Our new Executive Director, Grant Faulkner, arrived at 3354 Adeline for his first day on the job. I sat down with Grant at his excellently appointed desk and we chatted about him, his life and loves, and what he’s most looking forward to now that he is OLL’s fearless leader. Here’s what he had to say.

Tell us a bit about yourself.

I tend to drop a lot of things, but I’m really good at catching them. I drive my car with a mug of coffee in one hand and a thumb on the steering wheel while singing to songs on the radio. Sometimes I’m also eating a bagel and asking my kids if they did their homework. I bring numerous books, journals, and pens on plane flights and stack them on my tray as if I’m engaged in a serious research project, but then end up reading Vanity Fair.

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The Office of Mittens and Brrr

Here in the Bay Area, we’re having a quite beautiful, quite temperate winter.

But in the OLL office, we cannot get out of an ongoing cold wave. Try as we might, even with the heater pumping, we’re just not feeling the warmth. I blame our high ceilings and big windows—nice the rest of the year, but they provide insufficient structure for maximum toastiness. At least one of us has even taken to wearing a Snuggie at the coldest points in the day. (It’s a leftover merchandise sample… Did we ever tell you that we thought about making NaNoWriMo Snuggies?)

Many of you live in colder parts of the world, and we thought you might be able to help. How do you stay warm while working—whether on your writing or at your day job? Better yet, give us your most ridiculous idea to stave off the cold, and we’ll take a picture of a staff member wearing or doing it.

Thanks in advasbnm,ce (Whoops, mitten-related typo.)

– Chris A.

Photo by Flickr user Syniq

Thanks for Your Readership

Some time during our office’s holiday nap, this blog quietly reached 10,000 Tumblr followers. A pretty sweet milestone.

Today I reread the staff “Blog Manifesto” that started it all, and this phrase jumped out:

We want to show people who we are and what we care about.

I think we’re accomplishing that—through posts both silly and serious, on topics from the height of NaNoWriMo to the bottom of the Mariana Trench and everywhere in between. And even more importantly, we’re learning a lot about our readers through the great discussions that happen in the comments section.

But, we can always do a little bit better. We’d love to hear from you: What’s your favorite part of reading the OLL blog? What features do you want more of? Any new ideas or questions?

Thanks for your readership, and thanks in advance for your thoughts. We appreciate you making OLL a part of your day.

– Chris A.

Photo by Flickr user mollybob

Thank You, Chris Baty!

As he’s told you, our own Chris Baty—founder of NaNoWriMo, Executive Director of the Office of Letters and Light, and Supreme Kicker of Pants—will soon be leaving our organization to write (and tend llamas) full-time.

But we can’t just let him walk out the door without another round of appreciation.

We’re compiling a collection of video thank-you’s to Chris for all his hard work and inspiration. Check out the example from OLL board member Jason Snell, and then post your own as a response. (Click on the YouTube comments section, then “Create a video response.” You can also post a text thank-you there if you’d prefer not to film.)

When he’s not collaborating with our new ED Grant Faulkner (or pricing bulk llama feed), Chris will be enjoying your videos during his last days in the office. Thanks in advance for sharing your gratitude!

– The OLL Staff and Board

Our December Nap

Well, Wrimos, the time has come for all of us OLL critters to hunker down in our caves and nests for the traditional holiday nap.

The office will reopen on Tuesday, January 3. Until then, have an excellent end-of-2011 and a happy new year!

Best wishes,

Lindsey, Chris A., Sarah, Tim, Chris B., Dan, and Jez

Things You May Not Know About OLL

I’m bad with goodbyes. I mean, absolutely awful. It’s all never-ending tears and my blotchy red face. Far from attractive. The truth of the matter is, I’m a big ol’ softie at heart, and an incorrigible romantic to boot. And I have fallen so desperately in love with this office. This also means I’ll probably have to rewrite this post four times before it gets down to a palatable level of sappiness. 

I don’t feel I’m exaggerating when I say the Office of Letters and Light is the best place in the world to work. Everyone knows about the fancy-schmancy Google offices, with their beanbag chairs and special cafés. But do they have a hand-painted Tom Selleck? That’s what I thought. Mustachio aside, the OLL office overfloweth with people, objects, and moments chock-full of charm and delight. Let me enumerate them for you.

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A Nod to the Nog

The office is especially full of winter cheer today. We’re counting down the hours to our annual staff holiday party, where we’ll don our coziest sweaters and our finest nog-drinking mittens. Oh, and this year, we’ll also be playing bocce.

The high point of the night is always the white elephant gift exchange. Man, it gets intense. Last year, the in-demand items included a Star Wars USB drive, a brass-knuckles coffee mug, and zombie card game. Who knows what strange and wondrous goods await this evening?

What are your office holiday parties like? Any good stories? (We promise we won’t tell HR.) What’s the best, worst, or weirdest thing you’ve ever gotten in a gift swap?

– Chris A.

Photo by Flickr user H. Michael Karshis

From East Coast to West Coast

I’m hardly the newest employee of the Office of Letters and Light, but I am one of the farthest from the home office. I’m a remote staffer, and as such, I do most of my work in the comfort of my own home: Georgia, home also to peaches and boiled peanuts. I sit on my couch, with my keyboard in my lap, and a cat curled up behind my head. 

This week, though, I had the distinct pleasure of visiting my own office for the first time. Have you ever wondered what it’s like to visit OLL? it’s awesome. Many of you can attest to the fact that it’s just plain cool; as a staffer, it’s even cooler.

I get to hang out. Eat sandwiches. Good sandwiches. With Dan Duvall.

I get to sit at Chris Angotti’s desk while he’s out of town.

I can hug Blobby. And Tim Kim. And Chris Baty. More than once. I’m really excited about hugging Blobby though. (Sorry, Tim!) 

Visiting California has been the most amazing experience. I’ve never traveled out of the South, so this has been something truly different. I’ve eaten well, I’ve seen so much neat stuff. 

I haven’t written a word. 

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A Technical Education

Three years, 2 months and 24 days ago, I came on board at OLL as the first employee to hold the title of Community Liaison. I had a writing and business background, but I was pretty weak on the technological know-how.

 Lucky for me, overseeing volunteers didn’t expressly require that I have great programming chops or anything. But it did require that, in my very first week, I learn some rudimentary HTML.

The first thing I created on the site was called The Best Page Ever, and featured photographs of a bearded man and a kitten, as well as a list of my favorite foods in descending order. (I aced the HTML portion of the test, but accidentally published the page, to the confusion of a few very vigilant Wrimos.)

Fast forward three years. The Best Page Ever is still stored in our database (though it’s now unpublished, thankfully). And we are pulling the curtains back on the second website I’ve ever helped create: the brand new Rails-built NaNoWriMo.org (the first being the Camp NaNoWriMo website, released this summer).

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Five Launch Lessons

Over the years, I’ve learned to enjoy NaNoWriMo site relaunches the way a winemaker might savor a fine vintage. It’s such a heady mix of flavors! There’s the bouquet of excitement, a slight grace note of terror, all undercut with a peppery finish of ripening HTML code.

This is the second year I’ve had the pleasure of watching relaunch from a distance, as the great NaNoWriMo Program Director Lindsey Grant worked with fearless tech lead Dan Duvall to oversee everything. Not being as directly involved in the process has given me a chance to reflect on all the lessons I’ve learned from site relaunches of years past. I would like to share some of those lessons with you now.

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Presenting Tim Kim

As some of you know, our beloved Office Captain Tupelo is leaving us at the end of September. While we hate to see her go, we can’t begrudge her for going on to exciting things—namely preparation for her novel girlchild, which will be published in January. Last week our new Office Captain arrived, and has been training up to fill Tupe’s shoes. If I may, I would like to present Tim Kim.

Tim grew up as a chatty child with a strangely deep voice in an Orange-County-esque southern California town. He says “it was before The O.C. though, so you know, no one knew it was hip.” Tim moved to Northern California when he was 13, only to head back down south for a Lit Writing degree at UC San Diego.

After graduating, Tim loftily ventured to Los Angeles to pursue screenwriting, and spent some time as the assistant to a studio executive. This is when he honed his excellent dry-cleaning-retrieval and deck-building skills. For a short time he also worked at a private school as a chaperone for David Beckham’s children. (Yes, really.) Tim finally got back into the writing world, and the Bay Area, with jobs at San Francisco Magazine and Wired.

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What’s your favorite OLL shirt?

As you may have heard, we are celebrating the 13th year of NaNoWriMo with a very special sale. Through next Thursday, September 22, all t-shirts in the OLL store are just $13. It’s an opportunity to pick up a design you’ve always coveted at a nice price, or stock up on extras for winter-layering in November. Who needs a coat?

We really love all the shirts we’ve designed over the years, but we each have our own special favorites. Here, let us tell you about them. And once you’re done reading, be sure to post in the comments about your favorite OLL shirt!

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