The View from the Office. 

Took myself out for a late Friday afternoon treat of affogato with Morgenstern’s burnt honey ice cream at Casetta near Dime Square. It had been a good week, with spectacular weather. 

If you don’t know it, Dime Square is the stretch of Canal Street where the Lower East Side empties into Chinatown. It’s the hottest place to go out and will be mobbed later tonight.

If you follow me you know I write these pieces on LinkedIn called “View from the Office.”

It’s normally a series of short profiles of people I meet. I typically publish two to three a week. Most of the people, though not all, are founders of startups. 

It’s sort of like a Humans of New York, but shorter and for business. 

It started one day when I was sitting in Bryant Park talking to a former colleague. The person asked where I was working, so I tweeted a photo with the caption: “The View from the Office.” 

Someone who had never been to New York City sent me a DM, saying effectively, “Wow, that is an insane view you have from your office!” 

I thought it was so funny that they thought it was actually my office that I started posting more “views from the office” from all over the city, wherever I happened to be working. 

It wasn’t meant to be serious, but it is no joke that some of the best work gets done outside the cubicle. That the modern “office” is wherever you are. 

At the time I was meeting a lot of people, in particular startup founders, and I was looking for a way to share their insights. I didn’t have time to write long profiles; I needed a shorter format. 

And I wanted a name for it so that people would know what they were getting. 

So I started posting short profiles under the header View from the Office. I included the place we were meeting and what we were eating as a way to anchor them to a place in time. 

It turned out to be a great way to share knowledge and connect people. I spoke to a guy recently who said he reaches out to most of the people I profile to network. 

He called me the “view from the office” guy which was amusing, but also a reminder on a deeper level that you become what you write online. Choose carefully!

I think the View stories are educational since most of the people I profile are building a new product or providing a new service and generally not well known. Many of them are on the cutting edge of what is being done with tech and AI.

I think the best social media content is like this, created organically and done to share insights. 

I don’t know how long I’ll keep doing these profiles. 

Probably, as long as I enjoy it and there are people to meet. 

Drop me a line if you are building something interesting and want to get together to talk about it.