In this episode of the Creative Work Hour, the team explores the concept of Tiny Desk Concerts, providing a platform for community members to showcase their creativity. Highlights include musician Bailey Phillips' journey, Baseerat Chaudhary's Brooke Owens Fellowship application, and community contributions like Bobby's culinary demos and Shadows' "Daily Echoes" project

00:00

Hello and welcome back to another edition of the Creative Work Hour podcast. Today is November 16th. Today we're going to switch gears a little bit and talk about something that we call a Tiny Desk Concert. And what I'll do is I'll ask our Creative Director, Alessandra, can you tell me briefly what is a creative desk concert?

00:21

A tiny desk concert is taken by inspiration from national public radio in the United States and I've always loved it. If you look at a Tiny Desk Concert now, you can find it on YouTube, and they're really kinda out of control. I'm not sure that they're legal as per the fire department because there's always so many people in Washington, D.C.

00:43

Office for National Public Radio, but Taylor Swift has been there. Like, just name a big name and they've been there. So in Creative Work Hour, because we have an asynchronous and a synchronous component, our synchronous component is that we are meeting on a platform where we get to see each other in whatever our situ is. A chosen background or you can see Dr.

01:06

Melanie's library behind her. You can see Devin's cat, hello Nisevue, in front of him. And so that's the live component, the asynchronous component is on Discord. And that's where we care for each other between sessions.

01:21

And being that we have 4 to 5 to 6 sessions a day running 160 events every month, We need that asynchronous thing, don't we?

01:33

Right, right.

01:34

So the Tiny Desk Concert is a little something that got pulled in so that if someone is working on a presentation or they are working on an elevator speech for a screenplay, if they are working on music, We had Bailey Phillips. He is a pianist and flutist, and he was in a car wreck a week before his senior recital for which he needs to graduate. Well, he was still pretty banged up.

02:04

So what happened is I said, can we help? Can we do a tiny desk concert where you are on stage and you've got a recording device and your professor is to come? So Bailey pitched this thing to his major professor and his major professor said that is a great idea. So here comes Bailey dressed to kill in this tuxedo and he knocked it out of the park and I found that recording just last night as I was getting ready to send you 1, Greg, as a matter of fact.

02:37

So last month we spent a lot of time with Wai Ling Fong as she was preparing for the competition for her three-minute thesis. But this month we've been helping Basirat Chaudhary, our boss engineer, with an application for a fellowship that she's been seeking. Basirat, do you want to tell us a little bit about what you're doing?

03:01

So I was applying for the Brooke Owens Fellowship, which is a fellowship awarded to 40 undergrad women pursuing or interested in a career in aerospace. The fellowship provides an internship if you pass through the finalist round. And they also, the thing that sets them apart is that they provide mentorship specifically in the aerospace community.

03:30

And They also provide a community from all the previous fellows and the current fellows that are in the program. So there's that community aspect to it, which is really, really important to me. And when I was doing the entire application, I was nervous, but I tried to incorporate my story while emphasizing those things that they were looking for, which was the passion and the communication aspect, which is what they said you actually don't need any background in aerospace. That's not what they're looking for.

04:02

If you do, that's great. But what they're looking for is that communication and that passion. So I did a book review of I Am Malala, incorporated it into my own story, emphasized self advocacy and communication, and then tied it back into aerospace. That was just my video application.

04:20

And I also did an essay portion, which is also required. And I'm currently a semi-finalist. And I have an interview shortly in the next hour. And we'll see how it goes.

04:31

And hopefully I get to the finalist round.

04:33

How has the Tiny Desk concert helped with that, Basira? How's it helped

04:37

with that? It's actually my first Tiny Desk hour, I think. And it's really helped me connect with, you know, just through the whole Creative Work Hour community, I've been able to connect with a lot of like-minded people.

04:49

I really like when we do meditation at the beginning, we check in what we're going to do, and then we share our struggles and what we accomplished by the end of it. I also didn't even realize until I thought in the past summer that a lot of the people here were writers, just full time since the very beginning. But I realized a lot of the people here are also from technical backgrounds.

05:13

They have a mind for sort of dumbing.

05:16

Yes, I've been getting some mentorship and Bobby, I met with Bobby one-on-one and he was giving me some really, really great advice on how, you know, I can approach this, how I can approach the fellowship and also just how I can approach life to be honest. And yeah, he gave me a lot of really good insight and really clear, concise advice that isn't very direct from other sources.

05:39

That's wonderful. That's wonderful. How about the rest of the crew?

05:42

Have you taken part in, have you done a Tiny desk concert of your own or taking part in 1? What's your thoughts on this?

05:48

I kind of did 1. But 1 of Bobby's talents is that he is a wicked smart chef. He is good in the kitchen.

06:00

And last holiday season, he practically had his own show with Creative Work Hour, because he would take us into the kitchen and he would show us these things that he was making. And it was just unbelievable. So Bobby, you're officially invited to do Tiny Desk concert from your kitchen whenever you're ready.

06:17

What's your favorite cook in this test kitchen, Bobby?

06:21

Oh, edible. If I can read something edible.

06:25

Is that code word for edibles?

06:28

No, no, no, no, it's not. But I am constantly exploring, just pushing myself. There's some things I lean back into for certain events, but for instance, today is kind of a pseudo potluck as people will bring nibbles to have while we're making tamales And I had come across a recipe recently for a twist on what could be a Thanksgiving day item.

06:52

It's a cranberry curd tart. And so I am going to whip that up and subject people to it. We'll see how it turns out.

07:02

2 important questions, Bobby. 1, do you take pre-orders and 2, do you do it?

07:11

I take pre-orders and unfortunately I'm limited to regional deliveries.

07:18

Devin, what were your thoughts?

07:19

I was just saying, a lot of time Bobby's a jam band. He has made some of the best looking jams I've ever seen. Made me want to hop a flight to LA.

07:30

It's like we

07:30

have our own network.

07:32

Not jamming in a concert in a tiny desk jam concert. No, okay. Different kind.

07:40

No. But Shadows did 1 recently. I think it was, was it 3 weeks ago, Shadows? Tell us about your tiny desk concert.

07:46

It was more like a tiny desk presentation of my Daily Echoes in the process.

07:52

What's a Daily Echo?

07:54

Daily Echo is using AI to explore life 1 day, or 1 word at a time.

07:59

And We'll be posting that at some point. We'll try and post the audio from that maybe, or at least we'll do a blog post on Shadows Echoes and you can find her over on Hive, Shadows Pub on Hive and all of the social places. Her daily echoes are really quite cool.

08:13

Dr. Melanie, have you been part of this Tiny Dash concert, Observer, or taking part?

08:18

I don't think so. However, I have a presentation on delirium coming up in January. And so my guess is the end of December, I'm going to be having a look.

08:30

It's a it's multidisciplinary. So mine is brief, but I did it last year. So this year I'd really like to tune it.

08:37

Ooh, that would be so it's delirium.

08:40

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, because people don't understand, you know, like they call psychiatry when someone comes in and alcohol withdrawal and is seeing things. And that's medical delirium, not psych delirium.

08:51

And that's hard for residents. It's a teaching hospital. And this time, last time it was presented to psychiatry, this time it's being presented to the medicine residents. So there's a neurologist and a psychiatrist and me who's sort of the multidisciplinary 1 and a geriatrician and blah, blah, blah.

09:07

Sounds very interesting.

09:09

It's very cool. Actually. I think it's good.

09:11

Nobody's ever done this before. I'm like, how can we not do this? Nobody knows what the hell's going on. Let's just do it.

09:17

So would you be doing 1 of

09:18

These Tiny Desk Concerts to do with that, Dr. Melanie?

09:22

I would do my part on the Tiny Desk Concert. It's too long for all 5 of us or so to do it. But I just want to tune my part because I already have the slides.

09:33

I'll just update and that's it.

09:36

It sounds really interesting. And if it's a presentation or a performance or a, you know, this is the work in progress, just check in report, whatever your 3, 5 minutes are, It's very helpful to get the feedback from the group who knows you and who's interested in what you're interested in Because we're all friends. We're not the kind of friends like oh, we're gonna go for your birthday party No, we're the kind of friends that are, we're actually interested in the projects that we each take on.

10:08

We're interested in that. And those are those things that your family doesn't care about and your other friends are sick of hearing about it. But we dig that stuff. We dig that.

10:18

Right. Atheera, how do you

10:20

think? I actually have 1 thing I haven't shared with you all. Maybe I did very, very briefly. So 1 additional thing that I'm working on after, you know, my Brooke Owens Fellowship chaos is done with, I'm working on a speech, quote unquote, speech for the United Nations where I'm basically pretending that I'm going to make a video where I pretend that I'm presenting at the United Nations and I'm going to talk about like being a girl's rights and education activist.

10:52

So I'm basically going to be talking from the perspective that I'm literally going there and I'm you know presenting for this And maybe it'll be done sometime by the end of December or mid December. And I will present it at that time because the applications do like early January.

11:12

Very cool. Very exciting.

11:15

Bobby looks proud over there.

11:19

I tell you, sky's the limit as long as we don't trip ourselves. Actually, I was thinking this sounds like a moth presentation as well, just a

11:27

heads up.

11:29

Maybe there's a Ted talk in there somewhere. Well, you heard it here first and it's happened again. You've wasted another few perfectly good minutes listening to the Creative Work Hour podcast.

11:39

Come back again tomorrow and we'll be here. If you have a question or a thought that you'd like to hear the group discuss send us an email to me that's me at creativeworkhour.com