Mashed

Week 4 · Strasbourg

I often think of it as management by Christopher Columbus.

You sail west because you have a hunch. Not a plan. Not proof.
You move before you can prove it will work, and you ask people to come with you anyway.

That’s where I am right now.

We’re about to launch something new called Brida Tables. At heart, it’s simple: people sitting down and talking to each other. The difficult part isn’t the talking. It’s getting anywhere near the people in the first place.

We’re inviting them the old-fashioned way. Printed cards. Handed out carefully, one by one. No mass messaging. No shouting into the internet and hoping someone notices.

Social media isn’t really part of this. The effort it takes now to get even a second of attention there feels upside down. You work harder and harder for less and less response. So I went the other way — away from the noise, toward whatever empty space is left behind.

That’s how the walk started.

Strasbourg is full of fortresses. Some are old and made of stone. Others look modern and friendly, but behave the same way. Thick walls. Reception desks. Locked doors. You can see people inside, but getting in is another matter.

I walked around them, not trying to force anything, just paying attention. Noticing how closed everything is. How much effort goes into keeping strangers out. How little goes into making contact possible.

This wasn’t a philosophical exercise. It was practical.

Because Brida Tables only work if people can actually meet. And modern working life seems very good at making that difficult. You can email. You can fill in a form. You can wait. Turning up and talking to someone has become oddly suspicious behaviour.

That part of the problem is mine. Janita and I need the business to grow, and we need it to grow soon. The people we’re trying to reach aren’t abstract “users”. They’re real people, sitting in real buildings, behind real doors. If this is going to work, I have to find a way to reach them without being treated like a nuisance.

By the middle of the week, I stopped walking and went back to the desk.

Not because the walk failed. It did exactly what it needed to do. It showed me what I was dealing with. Limited time and money on our side. Limited tolerance for strangers on the other side. Walking around and hoping for luck wasn’t enough.

So the question became very simple:
How do you get an invitation to a conversation into a place that doesn’t want conversations to start at all?

The answer wasn’t to push harder. Or talk louder. Or dress the idea up in clever language. It was to be quieter. More precise. To look for cracks instead of doors.

That’s where the idea settled. Not breaking in. Not persuading anyone. Just placing our invitation somewhere it might be seen by a human being before a system gets to it.

Getting there wasn’t elegant.

I had a few databases to work with. None of them matched. Names were wrong. Roles were out of date. Companies had shifted or vanished. I bought a small list to fill the gaps. It was cheap, and it showed.

So I did it by hand. Comparing bits of information. Checking one source against another. Looking for overlaps that felt real. It was slow, boring work, but it mattered.

Invitation cards don’t work if they’re generic. They only work if the person holding one feels like it’s meant for them. That meant putting in the effort before showing up. Making sure the name made sense. That the role was close enough. That the invitation didn’t feel like it had been sprayed out by a machine.

That part felt right. Not because it’s clever, but because it’s careful.

A Trojan Horse sounds dramatic. In reality, it’s much duller than that. It’s just finding a way to move without setting off alarms.

The walk didn’t solve anything. But it made the situation clear.

Next week, I’ll go back out again.
Still sailing west.
This time with fewer questions, and a good stack of cards.

The fortresses are still there.
So is the invitation.