硅谷那些挑战想象力的会议室名字

    在Pinterest位于旧金山“市场南”街区的办公室中，员工们每天都穿梭于一个个叫做“时髦婴儿”（Hipster Babies）、“海滩婚礼”（Beach Wedding）和“小猫连指套”（Kitten Mittens）的房间中。继续往下，就到了Airbnb位于布兰南街富丽堂皇的新总部。就连文艺复兴时期王室宫殿的中庭都难以超越Airbnb总部之堂皇。 而这家公司的会议常常都在“米兰”、“雷克雅未克”或者“巴厘岛”举行。

    Airbnb发言人玛吉•卡尔表示说：“这有时候的确会让人迷糊。我刚来到这公司时，有次曾听到说‘某人正在柏林开会’，而我的大脑当即卡壳：‘你在说什么啊？我今天早上刚刚见过他。’”

    如今，“31B”和“就五楼那个”这样的会议室名称成为过时的概念之后，类似上文中的会议室名称就开始流行起来。许多初创公司已经把会议室的命名当成了一项让员工施展创意的协作活动，借此来发扬公司的企业文化。

    Facebook发言人斯莱特•托尔说：“通过与员工表决来决定会议室名称是我们这里的一项长期传统。”在Facebook位于各地的办公室中，各工作区域的员工都会投票决定本区域内的会议室名称。投票首先会挑出一个会议室名称主题，然后再表决这个主题范围内的各个名称。

    托尔说：“当投票结果不相上下时，活动就更有意思了。”Facebook门洛帕克（Menlo Park）总部的一栋办公楼中，“星球大战人物”和“鸡尾酒”两项命名主题就打成了平手。最后，员工决定将两者混合，从而出现了类似加•加•饮克斯（Jar Jar Drinks）和达斯-野格酒（Darth Jäger）等奇特的会议室名字。

    Pinterest也采用了同样的民主过程，但会议室的命名主题则固定为网站用户关注最多的热门话题。因此，会议室出现了“羽衣甘蓝蔬菜片”（Kale Chips）和“电暖锅”（Crock Pot）等命名。而在Dropbox公司的总部，三名员工为43间会议室逐一创建了QR码。好奇的人们可以从中探究“门童德鲁”（Doorman Drew）的命名到底是否是在开Dropbox公司CEO德鲁•豪斯顿（Drew Houston）的玩笑。（其实，它实际上是在向这家公司第一个办公楼的门童致敬。）

    不过，民主程序偶尔也会跑偏。去年，Dropbox就忽然觉得有两个房间的命名不妥，从而将其移除。这两间房间分别叫：基情厅（Bromance Chamber）和分手间（The Break-up Room）。【它们还没有新名字，但员工提交的替代命名之一是“鸡毛蒜皮棚”（Bike Shed），以此抗议公司管得过宽。】

    比起其他公司，Airbnb 在会议室问题上更进了一步。它把网站上的一些热门租赁房间进行高度还原，然后把它们搬到了现实中——建筑师甚至成功在办公室实现了巴厘岛温泉房的茅草屋顶，而且还是防火的。而另一间名为“劳施”（Rausch）的房间则是复制了乔•吉比亚与布莱恩•切斯基公司的这两位创始人在旧金山的合租房，纪念两人于2008年在那个房间里萌发了Airbnb的想法。房间复制相当逼真，连棕色乙烯基沙发等细节都不放过。最近一个周二还能看到房内一面墙上贴满了各种信手写下来的便利贴，表明这间房不是装饰，而是真正的工作间。

    还有的公司则使会议室的命名方案契合公司名。移动支付技术公司Square的旧金山办公室就用世界各地的著名广场为自己的玻璃围墙会议室命名，比如阿萨迪（伊朗德黑兰）和拉法耶（Lafayette；在美国许多城市常见，但最著名的也许要数新奥尔良的那个）。

    这一切奇思妙想有时候需要花点心思。Pinterest发言人米思亚•斯里尼瓦桑就说，知情的员工不得不就一些别出心裁的会议室名费一番口舌，就比如“青年布”（Chambray；一种常用于纽扣休闲衬衫的轻型面料）。

    斯里尼瓦桑说：“说来有趣，你在‘无限长围巾’（Infinity Scarf）会议室里跟工程师谈着，他们忽然说，‘原来这就是无穷长围巾啊’，因为真的就有人围着这种围巾。然后他们就会恍然大悟般表示明白。”(财富中文网)

    译者：Liam

    On any given day at Pinterest's office in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood, a staffer could hop between Hipster Babies, Beach Wedding, and Kitten Mittens. Down Brannan Street, at Airbnb's palatial new headquarters -- Renaissance royalty couldn't have wanted for a grander atrium -- meetings might take place in Milan, Reykjavik, or Bali.

    "It can get confusing," said Maggie Carr, an AirBnB spokesperson. "When I first started, I heard that someone was in a meeting in Berlin and I was like, 'What? I saw him this morning.'"

    This is what happens when conference room names like "31B" and "the one on the fifth floor" become passé. Many startups have turned the naming of meeting spaces into a creative, collaborative event in an effort to celebrate company culture.

    "It's a long-standing tradition here that we vote on conference room names," said Slater Tow, a Facebook spokesperson. In every Facebook office, employees vote on the name of the conference room in their designated area, first by picking themes, which get voted up or down, and then by voting on names within the theme.

    "The fun part is when two ideas tie," Tow said. In one building on Facebook's Menlo Park campus, Star Wars characters tied with cocktails, so staffers decided to combine them, resulting in conference room names like Jar Jar Drinks and Darth Jäger.

    Pinterest also uses a democratic process but anoints meeting spaces based on what the site's users are excited about, hence Kale Chips and Crock Pot. At Dropbox's headquarters, three employees created individual QR codes for each of the 43 conference rooms, so inquiring minds can find out whether Doorman Drew is a joke about Dropbox CEO Drew Houston. (It's actually a nod to the doorman at the company's first office.)

    Occasionally, democracy can run off the rails. Last year, Dropbox removed the names for two of its rooms, Bromance Chamber and The Break-up Room, after deciding they were no longer appropriate. (They have yet to be renamed, but Bike Shed is among the alternatives submitted by employees.)

    Airbnb goes a step further than most companies by recreating some of the home rental site's most popular listings to the truest extent possible -- architects managed to make a thatched roof in the spa-like Bali room that is also fire-proof. One room, Rausch, pays homage to the San Francisco apartment where roommates Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky hatched the idea for Airbnb in 2008, down to the post-collegiate brown vinyl couch. Dozens of Sharpie-scrawled Post-it notes covered a wall on a recent Tuesday, indicating that work, indeed, takes place here.

    Some make their conference room naming scheme fit the company's moniker. Square's San Francisco office named its glass-walled meeting spaces after famous squares around the world, like Azadi (in Tehran, Iran) and Lafayette (common in many U.S. cities, though perhaps most famously in New Orleans).

    All that whimsy sometimes requires work. Pinterest spokesperson Mithya Srinivasan said in-the-know employees have had to give tutorials on some of the more sartorial conference room names, like Chambray (it's a lightweight fabric often used for button-down shirts).

    "It's funny, you'll be in Infinity Scarf talking to engineers and they'll say, 'So that's what an infinity scarf is,' because someone's actually wearing one,'" Srinivasan said. "It's like, 'I get it now.'"