Iterate Weekly - Issue 128
This week we're talking about the return of Clubhouse, "core-weeks" to return to the office, Patagonia founder makes a house of hay, Calm finds a new voice on TikTok, and "Blood in the Garden"!
Welcome to issue 128 of Iterate Weekly!
Hope you’re all doing well. This is just a friendly reminder that you can always reply directly to these messages or leave a comment on the Substack post. Feedback is highly encouraged and I’m happy to answer any and all questions that come up.
Let’s jump into this week’s stories.
🤖 Tech
Clubhouse attempts to reinvent itself as a messaging app
Do you remember Clubhouse? It was one of the early pandemic darlings of tech. The service allowed for audio chat rooms that weren’t like any other social media experience at the time.
Maybe we were all just a little out of sorts back in 2020, but the popularity of Clubhouse quickly subsided. This was partially due to people coming out of lockdown with more options at their disposal, but the concept of Clubhouse just sorta ran its course.
After being out of the spotlight for a while, Clubhouse is now reinventing itself as an audio messaging app.
You can think of it as an audio-only group chat. Or maybe it’s an interactive audio Instagram story. However you slice it, Clubhouse hopes that people still have an appetite for this type of audio content. Perhaps large chatrooms filled with audio strangers were a pandemic fad, but a closed group of friends sharing sound snippets might just work.
Rest assured that the original Clubhouse features will still exist even if they are no longer the focus. Users are still able to “go live” whenever they’d like to a larger audience of listeners. But it’s clear that Clubhouse doesn’t see that being the path forward. Its initial success spurred a number of copycat experiences that popped up from Twitter and Facebook.
There may not have been anything all that novel about the initial Clubhouse concept, but it worked really well for a time. I can’t say that I’m all that bullish on this new feature taking off but it could have some niche appeal. Personally, I can see why people would want to share audio clips in a more secure setting with friends. It should offer all of the convenience of an ordinary group chat but with more personality.
Just a few weeks ago, I wrote about how much millennials seem to love voice memos. Maybe they’ll be keen to give the new Clubhouse a try too?
🎓 Education/Productivity/Work
Could “core weeks” end the return-to-office battle?
Who could have guessed that the fine folks over at Smuckers would be the ones to come up with an extremely sensible return to office policy that seems to be working.
Yep, I’m talking about the company that is known for making Jam. All jokes aside, J.M Smuckers is a company that employs over 1,300 people and makes a whole host of consumer goods including Jif peanut butter and Folgers coffee.
Their plan doesn’t mandate that workers return to an office for a set number of days per week. Instead, they have a concept called “core weeks”. These are essentially weeks throughout the year where teams are expected to be in-person at offices in Orrville, Ohio. But aside from these weeks, employees are encouraged to live wherever they’d like.
The core week requirements seem to vary by department but about 22 weeks are earmarked throughout the year for in-person attendance. When this is mapped out across twelve months, it ends up being about 6 days in an office per month. And that seems like a number most employees have agreed with.
Core weeks are also not fully scheduled out and allow for plenty of downtime and team building. Those weeks also give opportunities for those chance encounters that just don’t happen with remote work.
I’m still in favor of as close to 100% remote work as possible for most roles. But in-person events a couple of times per year seem like a nice compromise to me.
Let’s hope that more companies take this more strategic approach rather than the heavy-handed “X number of required office days per week”.
♻️ Health & Environment
Patagonia founder makes new home out of hay
Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard has always been a bit eccentric.
His book, “Let My People Go Surfing” was one of my favorite reads from a few years ago. And since reading it, I’ve been more in-tune to what the man behind the brand has been doing beyond selling puffy jackets.
Chouinard’s latest crusade involves building a new home outside of Ventura, California. What makes this home so interesting is that it is built out of hay.
Queue up the Three Little Pigs jokes but a house made of hay is apparently pretty sustainable. The straw bale building unique uses byproducts from wheat, corn, and straw to efficiently insulate the home. From the exterior, it looks like pretty much any other home, but the heating and cooling needs are greatly diminished thanks to the properties of the hay.
To be clear, the home is still framed with wood, it’s not entirely made of hay. But the reduced need for expensive building materials should make it much more affordable to produce. And there is no need for sheetrock or other expensive interior finishes. While this is meant to be a one-time experiment for Patagonia (they don’t plan on a new revenue stream building houses) it does line up well with their “good for the planet” mission.
You can check out the full story in this short movie that Patagonia put together:
I’m all for these older, more sustainable building practices coming back into fashion. Let’s hope we see more options for homes built of hay, straw, and anything else that could be good for the environment and still strong enough to keep the Big Bad Wolf at bay.
🛍 Grab Bag
Calm adds a new voice to its meditation app
I’ve been a long-time fan of the Calm app. It’s always been my preferred meditation tool and they’ve done a really solid job of expanding their content to include stories and music that go beyond the traditional idea of meditation.
Now they are launching a new Sleep Story that features a familiar voice for TikTok users.
The story is voiced by Kat Callghan who has been known as “The Voice of TikTok” since it is her narration that powers their text-to-speak function. While I can’t say that I’m a big TikTok user, I do know that the sound of Callaghan’s voice is the last thing that millions of diehard users hear when they’re drifting off to sleep.
Now Calm is capitalizing on this trend by giving Callaghan her own Sleep Story that covers memes and viral themes that would normally be found on TikTok. It’s a pretty smart move to try to get this audience into the world of mindful listening. And kudos to Callaghan for jumping into the spotlight after being just a disembodied voice for a while. Now she has the opportunity to use her stardom to get a whole new generation falling asleep earlier as they drift off listening to her voice.
Any other fans of the Calm App out there?
💬 Quote of the Week
"Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant."
-Robert Louis Stevenson
📚Content Review
Blood in the Garden
The NBA fan in me recently devoured Chris Herring’s fantastic “Blood in the Garden: The Flagrant History of the 1990s New York Knicks”.
It was one of the best sports books that I’ve ever. The chronology of following a team across a full decade of ups and downs was pretty smart. As a kid who grew up in New York during the 90s, this was a fun trip down memory lane. In fact, it even conjured up memories of attending one of former Knicks coach Pat Riley’s first games coaching the rival Miami Heat. Being ten years old at the time, I wasn’t exactly sure why the old man sitting next to us kept yelling, “Riley, you’re a bum!” but now it all makes so much more sense.
Pat Riley is enjoying a bit of a moment right now with Adrian Brodie’s amazing portrayal of the coach on HBO’s Winning Time series. The stories about Riley’s tough upbringing in Upstate New York and unorthodox coaching style are worth the price of admission here alone. It seems like every Knicks player during the decade was a bit of a character and Herring does a great job of giving each player a proper examination.
This one is a must-read for basketball fans and anyone who grew up in the New York area in the 90s.
Thanks for reading, I’ll see you next week!
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Man, Clubhouse was such a fad back when it came out. And then it just vanished, poof.