Digital 51 is 6 months old already, it sounds a little cliché, but it feels more like 6 weeks!
Taking some time to reflect on what to write in this blog I realise that the trend would be to ask myself: what challenges have I faced? It is the natural route a lot of people would take, so instead I decided to write an appreciation piece for the people that are driving Digital 51.
Let us start with our founder, Simon Brown. At the point of me writing this Digital 51 has 3,307 followers on LinkedIn. Now I would like to think my engaging video content has driven this number up, but it hasn’t (well maybe by 5 or so). What you don’t see is the amount of time Simon spends his weekends and late evenings writing content and consuming idea’s. You don’t see the hours he takes on creating great visual’s and he does all this while recruiting into the creative space. Simon’s passion towards any task is highly enviable.
Next, is our co – founder Adrienne Howlett. Adrienne with no prior experience in building a community, has managed to build and launch a community called Product 51. She’s focused around being a ‘give back’ from senior members of the product community to junior members or people that have an interest or desire to get into product. These give backs include excellent video interviews and podcasts. The number of hours that go into recording and editing these videos again alongside recruiting into Product is seriously impressive. She is relentless with process and organisation, and this is reflected by the great partnerships she built already in her time with Digital 51.
Our other co-founder Alex Hall. One thing that doesn’t deserve appreciation is the way he makes a cup of tea; milk first is so wrong! On a serious note, Alex, you drive me to be better. Alex is a perfectionist in a lot of things he does. He always pushes himself to know more, learn more and develop his technical knowledge to make himself a better recruiter. Week by week you see a constant improvement in his technical knowledge. Also, the guy is killer with a spreadsheet (inside joke there).
Lauren you’re up. Digital 51 was launched in March and since this point, we have all taken ourselves out of our comfort zones, whether that is recording videos, internal presentations or hosting the daily huddles. One of our recent huddles included a task to choose one character trait from each other that we would take to create a super recruiter. 3 of the 4 team members on the call said the same thing regarding Lauren. In or out of her comfort zone she presents herself exceptionally well in every task she undertakes.
Last but no means least a mention for Chloe our marketing intern, who would have corrected all the grammar issues in my writing here. It has been great to have you with us for two months and I have learnt from your writing so, thank you.
So, what have I learnt in the first 6 months?
I have learnt that I am surrounded by great people, and I can learn so much from all of them. Has it all been smooth? No. It was never going to be. You have taught me to be more creative, to always strive to improve on your process and technical knowledge, to always present yourself in the best way possible and that I should have tried harder in English at school.
I look forward to learning more from you all in the next 6 months.
