Posted on 06.24.11

Lunch-n-Learn Thursdays

by Tim Frick

A new weekly summer tradition starts at the office.

This week we started something new: Lunch-n-Learn Thursdays. If the first installment of this new tradition is any indication, Thursday lunches should be a fun—and tasty—time at Mightybytes.

How it Works

Every Wednesday the Andersonville Farmers Market debits our bank account and provides us with forty dollars worth of tokens that can be used at the market. One person agrees to be chef for the week while another lines up a presentation on a topic of their choice. Only rules are that most of the lunch should be sourced from the market and should stick within a budget of around forty dollars. If more people start coming to these things, however, we may need to up the lunch kitty a bit.

Topics don’t necessarily have to stick to the oeuvre of Mightybytes services either. While Whit’s first presentation was on network security and data backup, future topics may cover anything from jQuery to rooftop gardening.

Why It’s Awesome

We think this is a good idea for several reasons:

• Most of the meals will be farmed locally so it’s right in line with our eco-initiatives.
• We love cooking and eating good food.
• We love learning things and solving problems.
• We can record the presentations for blog posts and client training materials.

The Experience

Shopping at the market felt a little like being on the Food Network show Chopped minus Ted Allen and a 30 minute time crunch. I think I drove Kris a little crazy bouncing back and forth between the many places offering asparagus and the sustainable meat booth (I ended up passing on the goat shoulder roast). Because I had early Thursday meetings I opted to cook Wednesday evening at home rather than Thursday in the office. For future Lunch-n-Learns I’m sure we’ll need to start ramping up the cooking supplies. Plastic forks and pepper packets from the local pizza joint won’t likely cut it.

Whit’s presentation was informative and delivered in his signature comedic style, which helped make the topic of data security lively and engaging to programmers and the non-technical members of our crew as well. It sparked several discussions and a group viewing of XKCD’s Exploits of a Mom comic. Little Bobby Tables. Nice.

Week One’s Menu

Lunching comestibles consisted of the following:

• Farro Risotto with Andouille sausage, asparagus, and crimini mushrooms
• Caramelized kohlrabi with radishes, pearl onions and arugula

Week One’s Topics

For Lunch-n-Learn 1.0 Whit covered data backup and network security, served with a nice side of ‘How to hack a website’.

Wanna see it in action? Here are some pics from our Flickr feed:

We are just getting started with this and so far it seems to be working for everyone. Of course, juggling Thursday lunches with busy production schedules could prove to be a challenge as weeks pass, but we are committed to making our Lunch-n-Learn Thursdays a thriving success. Is this something you would do at your office? We’d love to hear your thoughts!

Lunch-N-Learn 2