Pollen’s new Minneapolis headquarters is officially based out of CoCo Uptown. We are embedding ourselves within the fabric of the CoCo community to deeply investigate the magic happening here. We have only just settled in, and to get a feel for the citizens ofCoCo, we took a random sampling of CoCo-workers on an equally random day. It was a perfect way to introduce ourselves and to introduce the digital Pollen community to a physical space that shares our reverence for cross-sector professional collaboration.

Pollen: How do you describe what you do? 

Jim: I am the leader of the company that I started in 2010. It is called Engine. We bring teams of corporate professionals together to experience a leadership development program, and while they are going through that program, they complete a consulting program for a nonprofit. It is a program that teaches leadership, but in a broader context, outside an individual’s job.

Pollen: Why did you start Engine? 

Jim: I worked in financial services for 12 years. It was fine, but I was not passionate about it, although I found all this other community stuff that I was really passionate about. So I tried to figure out a way to do both at the same time. I wanted to create an avenue for up-and-coming talent to engage in the community without having to quit their jobs, like I did. There is this concept that I am always embarrassed to talk about, but it is this concept that there is a River of Awesome out there for everybody. And sometimes that flows through their day job, and sometimes that doesn’t. And for more and more people it doesn’t. More and more, as people are seeking their river of awesome, companies can provide an avenue to the river of awesome through their company, and then people don’t have reason to leave. At least, they will stay at the company for a longer period of time.

Pollen: How do you identify yourself in work and in life?

Emily: For my work, I am an attorney at Davis Law. For my life, I am a mom. I have two boys. I have a traditional little house: two kids, a dog, a husband.

Pollen: Is there some crossover between parenting and being an attorney?

Emily: The first thing that comes to mind is patience. What we do here at Davis Law is quite different than what I did previously. When I was in the litigation realm, it was pretty intense, negative, and rife with conflict. But what we do here, at Davis Law, is provide general counsel for small businesses and entrepreneurs who otherwise would not have someone in-house to bounce off legal ideas.

Being patient, being articulate, and explaining things to a three year old actually provides a good mindframe for explaining something in a document, or to a judge, in a way that they will understand.

Pollen: If your kids were clients, how would you describe them…as clients.

Emily: (laughs) Well my three year old feels the world revolves around him, because that is how three year olds feel. And I think that is pretty common when you are going through a lawsuit in particular. This is less so for our business owners now, but in the past, I’ve dealt with clients that were in the middle of a problem, and the world felt as if it was crashing down around them. So he would be a typical client in that regard.

My other son is two months old. And you know, I think that is also a fitting analogy. If things are smooth sailing, then he is happy as a little clam. But if things get out of hand, then we hear about it. And that happens with our business clients too. We encourage our business clients to be proactive to avoid this. If things are going well, you don’t think about your legal needs at all. And then when something pops up, and you panic. But we are happy to help the client either way.

Pollen: How did you come to balance design and illustration with an event planning practice? 

Allegra: I do illustration and design mostly, because that is my MCAD training. Once I was out of school, I was like—these are my skills! I only just recently began project management (which is really what event planning is), because I liked that part of my creative practice. I like organizing, I like meeting with clients, and I like connecting around a mission. So I make sure there is time to balance all of my areas of work. Since I am a freelancer and an entrepreneur, I can work whenever I want. I work on weekends, early in the morning. Not just 9 to 5!

Pollen: What do you like most about your work?

Allegra: I am lucky! I just love it. I get to learn something every day. I get to help people find meaning and see things come to fruition. People come to me with their dream projects and I ask the right questions and do the work to make them happen.

Pollen: Any hobbies?

Allegra: I would rather work than develop a hobby (laughs). I am thinking about horses as a hobby, but I am not there, yet. 

Pollen: What do you do at Spark?

William: At Spark, I am in charge of sourcing and manufacturing for our hardware division. It is funny, because we always talk about divisions of the company that really end up being single people, or half of people. So the hardware division is maybe three people. I am in charge of sourcing and manufacturing for all of the projects that we make, which are typically in China.

Pollen: What is your favorite thing about your job?

William: My favorite thing about my current job is that 99 percent of what I do, I was not trained to do through the educational system. Which is sometimes uncomfortable but is always really rewarding. I have been able to learn so much about not just our company but about startups in general.

Pollen: So, what do you do?

Ian: I was afraid you were going to ask that. I have a consulting practice, where I do programming and technical marketing. I also have a startup, Giftster, which is a lifetime wish-list for families.

I quit my day job a little over two years ago. So my two year “quitaversery” is coming up soon. We are having a party, actually. I then fell into making websites, but over time I have moved into a focus of achieving business outcomes. Rather than just “building stuff,” I help clients make their websites more user friendly and profitable.

Giftster has been around since 2008, but I just joined as CTO and co-founder this year. It is a lifestyle registry, like a wedding registry, but for anything. Most people use it for Christmas. It is a real thing, with a lot of people using it.

Pollen: Why would you work at CoCo rather than working from home?

Ian: Because I am not a sad and lonely person? No, I only moved here a few years ago, and so I didn’t have much of a network. So that has been the cool thing about CoCo. All of my income over the last two years can be traced back to the relationships I have formed here. I would have had to get a real job if I hadn’t come here.

Pollen: If CoCo was a band, what band would it be?

Ian: Broken Social Scene. They have rotating members. When Feist becomes a superstarand leaves the band, they bring someone new in.

Pollen: Can you tell us a little about what you do?

Cecily: I am a futurist! I work on strategic innovation projects for organizations that are asking themselves, what is the future? So as organizations are looking at that question, I help them figure out how conditions are changing. We look at what the needs of their constituents are—the real human needs. Then we create scenarios together, and they get to essentially solve those problems, but from the future! We reverse engineer a plan that is delivered in the present, but is based on a long-term sense of the future that has been really well researched.

Pollen: What got you into that model of problem solving?

Cecily: There were problems that needed to be solved! I am a good problem solver. I was doing brand strategy and it sure felt like most organizations were not answering two of the most important questions: “Who are you?” and “Where are you going?” The answers to those questions really help anchor strategy. Without that, you really don’t have strategy.

Pollen: Tell us a bit about your organization.

Emily: We are a nonprofit that organizes big community feasts for other nonprofit causes. Our mission is to build a culture of generosity through sustainable community feasts. So we invite people to come together for big meals, to give whatever they can—that could be $20, or time washing dishes, or making the meal, or creating art, or brewing beer—and we pull that together and donate that to different nonprofit causes. So really, it is about a shared cause and bringing people together in community.

We are embarking on a cross country road trip. The Mobile Kitchen Tour will set off with a trailer and a truck and will visit 10 of our branches and help start Eat For Equity in new cities. So Tripper and I will be hitting the road soon.

Pollen: Speaking of Tripper, what is it like to work with your dog at CoCo?

Emily: It means that people come by and say hi to the dog first, but it starts a conversation in a more organic and sweet way. I come regularly now, because otherwise it is hard to be away for the full day. It begins so many conversations. It is really sweet to see. She gets along well with the Davis Law bulldog. Hunter, the little Spark dog, barked ferociously when he first met Tripper. But they are friends now.

Pollen: You’re working at CoCo when it gets buried by an avalanche. Before it strikes, you have enough time to pick a spot in CoCo to hunker down until a rescue team digs you out. You have enough provisions in this space to keep you comfortable until you are rescued. Where in CoCo would you live, and if you could take something with you, what would it be? 

Allegra Lockstadt: One of the living rooms. We could bunk the sofas and hunker down. 

Jim Delaney: I’d go into the lab, and write everything I know about Engine on one bigwhiteboard. That is something I really need to do. I read something today that when you read an email, it takes you 25 minutes to get back into a deep level of focus.

Emily Buchholz: The lounge. There are couches. There is a stage. Perhaps you could write an original script and and put on a performance. 

Emily Torgrimson: I would raid the fridge and figure out what I could make to feed everyone that is snowed in. I think we would have a lot of fun.

William Heart: The man cave in the back is the easy answer. I would bring a computer. I would watch TV in the movie theater. And probably play ping-pong against myself.