Landing Planes

My friend Tom introduced me to a fun game on the iPhone called Flight Control, and it’s become oddly relevant to what we’re doing here at Marshall Creative — and it’s mainly thanks to web project manager Nick Keenan’s workflow analogies. When you play Flight Control, you’re an air traffic controller overseeing the flight patterns of big planes, little planes, and helicopters. And according to Nick, if you work in project management, you “land planes.” Big projects, small projects — all planes that need to land safely and in one piece. Some are built for transatlantic flights, some have already been in flight for a week and we’ve been brought on board to refuel and and recalibrate. Some are gliders out for a quick spin. And because we do 90% of our work on Basecamp, when we’re not in creative meetings or writing or programming or shooting a video, we’re cranking through to-do’s. Like a virtual widget factory, except the widgets are a bunch of 1′s and 0′s. At least that’s how Nick described it.