Playful Together: Discovering Joy in Shared Creativity
Exploring creativity, self-doubt, and learning through play. New workshops, evolving ideas, and the power of community and curiosity—especially in uncertain times. Progress is rarely linear, but it’s always worth celebrating.
June-July? 2025 newsletter
I'm Blanca, a principal engineer and a transformational coach. I founded staffplusengineer.com to help the technical leaders level up their thinking.
Welcome to my monthly-ish newsletter, where I will share my thoughts on a big idea. My aim is to encourage more sharing and help you consider a different perspective.
Being curious and observing how we think helps us connect through our differences and spark new ideas. I'm grateful to have you on this journey!
Reflection on progress
In May's newsletter I talked about how contributing to the conversation can change you and shaping my own creative process. The process remains a bit messy but there has been progress - and it's important to acknowledge that. Learning new skills or building habits is non-linear, sticking with it is what matters most.
Recent highlights
A lot has happened over the past few months:
- I delivered two new workshops at different conferences.
- I presented a new talk (twice).
- I was interviewed for a Spanish tech news TV programme 🤯.
- I became more aware of how my creative process is evolving, particularly how anxiety, high personal standards and the pressure to make it "great" can hold me back. There more I leaned in, focusing on my audience and what I wanted to share, the more I tuned into my curiosity and interests. That's when I found flow.
The power of support and feedback
While in the process, I reached out to a few kind friends for reviews, opinions, feedback and sometimes just a bit of support. Their input helped test ideas and eased my nerves as the days of actually delivering the workshops came about.
The workshop experience
During the workshops I became more aware of how I influenced and set the tone for the room. I noticed how my moments of self-doubt would change the energy, but I also embraced moments of creativity, playfulness, and experimentation—and wanted to share those with others.
(I have some upcoming posts on the themes of my workshops, they will be published soon!)
Navigating uncertainty together
We're at a time in the tech industry were there is a lot of doom and gloom. Layoffs, hype and skepticism of AI, uncertainty. Add to that personal struggles, family issues. It's easy to feel overwhelmed or out of control.
Yet, even in this moments, we can find of joy. These glimpses of play and connection help us lift our gaze from the day-to-day and look further ahead. That sense of play and connection is something I aim to bring to every workshop: learning through play.
A thank you
Here's a photo of one of my workshops at LDX3 London, were I might have been the most excited person in the room 😄.
If you were one of the people who shared feedback with me afterwards: thank you so much. Your honesty truly warmed my heart - sharing what worked and suggesting improvements. Being playful is all about experimenting and iterating 😉
Upcoming workshops and more
Upcoming workshops: I'm speaking to a few companies who are interested in bringing some of my workshops to their engineering teams. If you want one of my workshops for your teams or conference, check out more info in my workshops page
Online workshop: I have postponed for now thinking of bringing online my workshop on "Getting business buy-in to address technical debt". I realised after a Q2 of intense creative work, travel and conferences I needed time to process, reflect and take in all that I learned. It's not a never, just not right now - prioritising and saying no is one of the hardest things as a founder!
Coaching services: I am currently focusing more on my coaching clients. Get in touch (link at the end of the page) if you are thinking about it and would like to learn more
Until next month! 👋