Friday – 15 May 2020
For the past seven or eight weeks, my manager has held “check-in” meetings with my team. These meetings aren’t so much about day-to-day business; they are more light-hearted and casual – just making sure that we are all maintaining our sanity during quarantine and working remotely.

One of the things that my manager is big on is having our cameras on during meetings. He thinks, and I agree, that it fosters a level of openness, bolsters the sense of community, and helps focus on the people in the meeting rather than just having disembodied voices in your ear.

We – the various IT departments –  have been expanding our use of Microsoft Teams as a collaborative and communication tool over the past year. We are in the middle of actively migrating everyone else over from Skype to Teams. There have been a lot of training sessions that have gone along with this. A LOT.

Our Service Delivery team has also been providing less formal, more conversational sessions, highlighting some of the features of Teams and showing how different departments can make use of Teams to be more efficient and effective. One of the features that seems to be a hit with most users is the ability to either blur your background or to upload your own backgrounds to be used during video calls.

During our last check-in meeting, my manager casually threw out the idea of having us joining today’s meeting using a background that represented us or something we enjoyed. Everyone said, “Okay,” and went about the rest of our day.

Challenge: ACCEPTED

I spent some time over the past few days looking for a specific type of picture. I didn’t find anything that sang to me in the way that I hoped, but I kept looking. I wound up using a background I downloaded a few weeks ago, which still suited my purposes just fine.

And that is how I wound up dressed as Nick Fury – complete with scars, eyepatch, and overcoat – “sitting” in a S.H.I.E.L.D. conference room during today’s meeting.

I regret nothing.

#cosplayatwork #dressforthejobyouwant #LifeInIT #ajobaintnuthinbutwork