Values Week: Wrap up

[Katerina]

There we have it, our very first Star Program Values Week has come to an end. Let’s take a look at how it went!

In case you’re still not familiar with Values Week here in the Community, last week we spent time with the amazing Community Stars really getting to know what’s important to us (our values), as well as getting to know each other some more.

Day One:

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The week kicked straight off with a blog post by @Peter and @MattSuda, and a coffee chat, hosted by the brilliant Stars @Jose_M and @Billy-J.

This was our first ever Star-hosted call, and went down just as smoothly as the delicious teas and coffees we were enjoying at the time. As we enjoyed our snacks and caught up with each other, we were treated to a team building doodling game whereby we all had to start by drawing a shape, and then skip to the next shape until it turned out to be a fully formed picture.
Here’s an example of some of the results:

Look, we didn’t claim to be artists, we just claimed to have fun 😉

The call finished with a GIPHY game called “suit the slogan”. Our hosts read out a slogan, for example “when the food comes and you have to pretend to love it!”, and then it was a race to find the best fitting and funniest GIPHY. If you’ve not played this before, we’d thoroughly recommend it.

Day Two:

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On Tuesday, @Emil hosted a ‘Meet the Pets of the Program call’, with a pretty awesome turnout. During the call we met the pets, and chatted about top tips for taking care of our little friends. This call is perhaps best summarized in quotes and cute photos, so here goes:

@AdamDamon - “I have a houseplant, if that counts as a pet” (we agreed it did, they’re debatably harder to look after!)
@Mihail - “As my vet says- if a cat's name isn't absurd it's like it's not a cat”
@Katerina - “My first parrot potty trained himself, he was so precious”

Note - pet pics are encouraged as a reply to this blog!

Day Three:

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On Wednesday the blog ‘Podcasts for values week’ authored by Star @Noah went live, and if you’ve not checked it out yet we’d highly recommend you do!

Disclaimer: If you end up listening to 10 podcasts as a result of reading this blog - we have warned you 😁 !

Day Four:

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Thursday was a pretty special day! We were lucky enough to have a call with Kirsty, from PUSH all about teamwork and the power of diverse, collaborative teams, including:

• How can we better empathize with each other and appreciate different perspectives
• Feeling valid to share ideas in safe spaces
• The positive impact of connection and teamwork

Kirsty was incredible, and we felt so empowered and connected after the call. Some of our key takeaways were:

1. Be present, listen
2. “What gets celebrated, gets repeated”
3. The ability to communicate and connect is a gift as much as responsibility
4. Diverse teams perform better: fact

Day Five:

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Friday was dedicated to music and listening to some together. How did we do this? We used group sessions and held our very first team one! 

It all started with a collaborative playlist and selecting a music genre we all enjoyed. On the day, we had a quick call to say hi and get instructions from our lovely hosts @Peter and @AdamDamon. Then, we split into two groups and our hosts coordinated the playback. We were all soon jamming and commenting together but oh so quickly, the session was over… Fear not though, hopefully we’ll be doing that again soon 😉


To compliment our streaming party, @Hubo wrote a lovely blog with tunes we've been jamming to that bring to mind our values! 

The weekend:

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The weekend was a double points special!
Stars earn points for their contributions which can be redeemed against rewards. As it was a special week, we thought doubling the points for two days would be a great way to end things.

That’s a wrap...

All of this was accompanied by some amazing swag, Values tweets from our AskSpotifyStars handle, and some extra Community surprises brought to life by our very own @Goodman.  @Goodman ensured the Stars got a daily values badge, some special signatures, and some Community design updates! 

For the first event of its kind, we’re all super pleased with how it went. We’re also holding ourselves accountable, and will continue to live by our values, and ensure they really are more than just words on paper and one week of events to us.

Thanks for reading!

This blog was authored by @Melody. Special thanks to @MattSuda for creating the blog images to accompany it!