Last month VIA hosted the annual holiday party for our employees and their guests and we had an excellent time, as we do every year. As the cliché goes, here at VIA we work hard but we also know how to play hard when the occasion presents itself, and we had an incredible year worth celebrating. Traditionally I have always given books out as gifts to the team, but this year I wanted to try something a little different, something that I hoped would still be meaningful. I’m a huge reader of all kinds of mediums, but lately I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the fact that music has often proved just as inspirational to me as the printed word. Sometimes even more so. For me, music has never been something that goes on half-noticed in the background. It has the power to change a mood, evoke a feeling, to literally move people. That’s why we still embrace opera and musical theatre, genres that have evolved over time but still remain vital pieces of the culture. It’s the reason presidential campaigns would never think of going into election season without a theme song and – love it or loathe it – a big reason American Idol has held on now for eleven straight seasons.
So the holiday gift had three parts to it. The first was an iPod, which is basically a practical delivery system for music, but is also a truly exceptional product. The second was a gift card to a local music shop in Portland where we as a company would descend the following morning, (hangovers be damned) to each choose an album – but not just any album. I asked people to consider their choices closely, and to submit to me their written rationale for why they chose what they did. I wanted to know how that album either inspired them, how it will inspire us as a group, or how it inspired a generation. All our album choices have been loaded onto a shared music network that anyone in the building can access and enjoy, which is part three of the gift. And just to make it interesting, I put a deadline on the submissions and turned it into a contest with a cash prize for the winner. The winning entry was submitted by our resident senior copy editor and proofreader, Patti Lanigan, who happens to also be an accomplished musician in her own right. (Click here to read Patti’s entry, “All Killer, No Filler”.)
Here’s to an endless fountain of inspiration for us all in 2012. Happy New Year.
Best,
John
