February 26, 2021

Miranj Newsletter #3: Ten Years Young

by Miranj

Hello!

Trust this email finds you in a state of well being and optimism.
 
If you didn’t receive (or missed) our first or second emails you may be wondering how you got subscribed to our newsletter. We’ve taken the liberty of writing to you because we’ve either worked together, are friends with you, or both. :)
 
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🎂 We’ve turned ten! 🎉

In a world where businesses often fall out, disband or get acquired, we’re glad to have been profitable, sustainable and resilient for a decade. Despite remaining small throughout, we’ve travelled a long way from a tiny basement office in 2011 to now having a distributed team across New Delhi and Phnom Penh. We’d been eager to celebrate this milestone with our clients, friends, collaborators and well-wishers, but the world had other pandemic-sized plans. Hopefully someday, within this 10th year, we’ll reach a point when social interactions are safe again, travel restrictions are lifted and we get to celebrate with you in person. If you’re reading this letter, you’ve definitely played a part in our journey and we’re grateful for your support.
 
Six months back, we were in a tentative state of mind. The pandemic had impacted several businesses around us, but slowly, the world adapted, pressed on, and so did we. Here are a few updates from this period—
  1. 🔌 In August, we packaged a handy bit of code for content filtering (and URL routing) into a Craft 3 plugin called Router. The plugin got featured in the New and Noteworthy list curated by the makers of Craft CMS and also in Craft The Planet newsletter in the form of a demo by Prateek.
  2. 🤝 In November, one of our flagship projects Guiding Tech announced its acquisition by a US-based media company. Guiding Tech is a consumer technology content platform that had approached us for a revamp in 2017. Since then, we’d been constantly improving the technology and design of the website. This includes WordPress to Craft CMS migration, fresh Information Architecture, new design and UX, and several external integrations. We’re proud of how the website has scaled, performed and succeeded.
  3. ⛔ In December, we decided to close down Base Station — our 6-year-old office (and a co-working space) in New Delhi. We’ve been working from home right through the pandemic and the office was left completely unused. We made some great friends and memories while running Base Station as a co-working space. If you’re one of our past co-workers, thank you for giving us your company. For now, we’re embracing remote working and adjusting to the new normal.
  4. 📡 Speaking of remote working and collaborations, one activity that we’ve always gone out of our way to conduct in-person is client workshops. However, in the last few months, we’ve undertaken two online workshops using tools like Dropbox Paper, Google Sheets, and more recently, Miro. We’re still experimenting and adapting our process. If you’ve been conducting online brainstorming and strategy workshops, we’d love to know your approach: What process do you follow? How do you keep it engaging and interactive? What are you using to replace stickies, markers and whiteboards?
  5. 🗣️ Continuing our initiative since mid-2020, we hosted several more sessions of Content Web (weekly discussions covering various facets of creating and managing content-based websites). If you are interested in the subject, we particularly recommend the following sessions —
  6. ✍️ The Hard Copy, India’s homegrown publication on building digital-first brands, recently published Souvik’s article on Why Your Website Should Look Beyond English. Do give it a read and tell us what you think.
  7. 👩‍💻 And lastly, our team grows by one more person. Meet our newest team member Divya Chauhan. She joins us as an executive manager who will be helping Miranj with everything operations.


Coming Up Tomorrow

We’ll be celebrating World Information Architecture Day (WIAD) once again on 27th Feb 2021. This is the first time WIAD will go completely online with the help of our volunteers Manish, Saurabh, Abhishek, and logistical support from Hasgeek. This year’s WIAD sessions will touch upon a diverse range of topics: Computational Gastronomy, Choice Architecture, Indoor Gardening and Visual Narratives. Do register and join.
 
 
The worst of the pandemic (read: 2020) is behind us. We’re excited about this year and have some great plans (and work) ahead of us. We also look forward to reclaiming our social lives and hopefully interacting with all of you in person. But until that day comes, do write to us about how things are going at your end. 
 
That’s all from us. We leave you with some snaps from our New Year and 10th Anniversary celebrations (and of the instant cameras that Santa got us).
 

Stay safe and continue with the precautions,
– From all of us at Miranj
 
Miranj is Archit, Divya, Paul, Prateek, and Souvik.
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