We just celebrated 24 years of Viget. That’s two dozen years! This year, our Spring TTT in celebration of “Viget24” was a virtual extravaganza. We’ve put on a lot of virtual events over the years. Some with really strong themes and swag bags; some that focus on simple, meaningful time together; and others that let us enjoy learning something new as a team. Regardless of the rest of the experience, a key component of all of our virtual events is joy, achieved often through intentional levity. We think it’s important to laugh together! We see laughter as a way to expedite connection, and connection leads to rapport which makes us better at collaborating — and in turn leads to more quality products for our clients. 

Experimenting and iterating is a critical way we try to continually get delight right. We’re pretty pleased with one of our experiments from Viget24 that we called “Lovely Spring Day”.

A Lovely Spring Day

As we were brainstorming for this TTT, we thought about how to throw some joyful levity pizzazz into the pieces of our virtual events puzzle that have become pretty standard. How do we add lots of delight without adding lots of time to the action-packed schedule? We zeroed in on the virtual backgrounds we’ve been creating for every event — they add a layer of specialness. Of place. This isn’t any old virtual meeting. This is a TTT! 

Another key consideration for our team is figuring out creative ways to tie in inspiration from our industry and our work. AI has been an obvious contender —  we’ve discussed it and tied it in to some extent for the past several TTTs. But this time, we wanted to see how we could use AI for delight — marrying it with virtual backgrounds felt obvious. And so, a ”Lovely Spring Day” was born. 

The TL;DR is that we generated custom virtual backgrounds for every Viget employee that encapsulates their “ideal spring day.” We then played a 15-minute guessing game where people tried to guess who the background “belonged to.” Then, people had access to the full folder of AI-generated virtual backgrounds to look through. Vigets could then choose the background that spoke to them most and set it as their background. 

Read on for more on how we put this together!

Pre-Event Survey

To support all of our TTTs, we send out thoughtful pre-event logistics surveys 2-3 weeks before the big day. The survey lets us know where folks are joining from (where can we send their activity + snack packages?) and gives folks a chance to provide input on how the People Team can help folks enjoy and be present for TTT. This time, we also snuck in three questions, just “for giggles.”

• In one sentence, describe your ideal spring day.
• List three things that spark joy.
• What color do you think suits you best?

We did not share why we asked these questions. Sneaky, sneaky! When it’s low-key like this, the element of surprise is often a quick way to level up the delight.

Asking for a Friend

With rich data in hand about what makes people happy in spring, we were ready to generate the backgrounds. I was stoked! I’ve been experimenting with ChatGPT for some time, so it was fun to be able to use the DALL-E 3 side of OpenAI’s GPT-4 model. 

Who knew Prompt Engineering would be part of my role as a recruiter-who-helps-support-TTT-planning? I played around with a couple different prompts to generate these background images. Ultimately, my goal was to create backgrounds that were meaningfully different from one another but still felt good (i.e., something you might feasibly want to set as your virtual background and nothing freakily AI, like uncanny valley hands).

Here are the prompts I landed on that got me to our set of virtual backgrounds:

• Please generate an image (dimensions of a virtual meeting background) that encapsulates the vibe of a day with [ BLANK ].
• Please generate an image (dimensions of a virtual meeting background) that features [ BLANK ].

In the blanks, I wrote the things people included in their surveys. Those blanks were filled with everything ranging from dogs, cats, and friends to beverages, specific temperatures, yard games, carbohydrates, hammocks and more! Sometimes, I’d include a detail I knew about that person myself, even if it wasn’t in their survey. Yes, I occasionally editorialized for both clarity and whimsy! This was for delight purposes, but also helped serve my goal of having the backgrounds be “meaningfully different from one another.” It’s amazing how many people’s ideal spring day is as simple as having 1) moderate temperatures and 2) no pollen!

I generated 55 images. Throughout the process, DALL-E nailed it. I only needed to regenerate 2 or 3 images with clarifiers (and only because they included AI-specific outliers like disembodied hands). Huzzah!

Here are some of my favorites, along with their prompts in the captions. Can you guess who they belong to?

IRL

Ok, so for the actual activity we had the images ready to go in a private Google Folder. I took twelve of the images and put them in a very simple deck. I shared my screen, introduced the activity, and invited people to guess who they think each image belonged to in Slack. It was so fun seeing people throw out guesses and then narrow in with any verbal hints I gave!

Each image took about a minute. Then, we shared access to the Google Folder, gave folks a couple minutes to choose a background that called to them (their own image or someone else’s), and set it as their background. It felt like a magical moment to witness people finding and resonating with their own image or delighting in the ridiculousness of their coworkers’. We saved about 5 minutes for this piece, which felt right.

The whole Lovely Spring Day activity took just over 15 minutes! It was a perfect way to transition from a long meal break into our next grouping of content. And, we got to see the different backgrounds throughout the rest of the meeting.

Oh, the humanity!

I think this activity was successful for a couple of reasons.

1. People laughed! 

2. People felt seen. Some of these backgrounds were incredibly on point. Some of that was due to key folks having well-documented interests and a Slack-Famous Dog. 

But some of it was due to the People Team knowing about our people — our coworkers — beyond the sentence they wrote in. This uniquely human involvement helped me call an audible as needed and tweak prompts slightly to make the backgrounds feel even more relatable.

3. We could commiserate about our eventual AI overlords. (Did you notice that I say “please” in my prompts?!) Listen, Viget has plenty of practical, healthily skeptical people who are dubious about AI. GenAI is not always a fun, lighthearted thing. But using it in a fun, lighthearted way to do something it’s really good at was a nice use case and thought-provoking exposure even for people who are not into it.

4. We could see where we all align, and where we differ! It was amazing to see just how many people love picnics, covet their caffeine, and appreciate a bike ride. It was also cool to see some unique folks who simply crave a rainy spring day, or some beloved Buc-ee’s. What a rich tapestry of individuals — literally!

When starting a new project, decision makers are faced with the dilemma of choosing a content management system (CMS). Sometimes, it’s not that simple and they must choose whether to go with a traditional CMS or a headless CMS. Both offer unique benefits and cater to different needs, making it crucial to understand when each makes sense for your project. Let’s take a look at some considerations that can help you make the right decision.

What is a Traditional CMS?

Traditional CMS’s – like Craft CMS, WordPress, and Drupal – offer a pre-packaged solution for content creation, management, and delivery. They include powerful interfaces with content editing capabilities and templating out of the box, enabling you to create sites with ease. A traditional CMS can be monolithic because the back-end and front-end are tightly coupled. Using a traditional CMS typically means you are using all of the tools included to achieve your goal.

What is a Headless CMS?

A Headless CMS is like a Traditional CMS in that it includes content creation and management tools. But it differs in the fact that the back-end content management system is decoupled from the front-end (presentation layer), allowing developers to use any technology stack they prefer for building the front-end of the site. The back-end acts as an API with its only purpose being to serve content from the database. There are CMS options like Contentful, Payload, and Strapi that are built to be headless. Popular traditional CMS’s like Craft CMS and WordPress also offer headless variants.

The Restaurant Analogy

Let’s simplify things a bit more and look at the decision using an analogy; a restaurant.

Traditional Restaurant (Traditional CMS)

Imagine a restaurant where the kitchen and dining room are connected. The chefs cook the food, and the waitstaff serve it directly to the customers in the same building. This setup means that everything is closely integrated, and the kitchen (back-end) is tightly coupled to the dining experience (front-end). Picture a scenario where the restaurant decides to change from table service to buffet style. The food now needs to be prepared in advance and delivered to the front of house in a different way, potentially even requiring new equipment. The restaurant needs to be reconfigured to not only accommodate the buffet but also to interface with the kitchen differently. Because the restaurant and kitchen are coupled, both sides would require work in order to accommodate a shift in strategy. 

Ghost Kitchen (Headless CMS)

Now, think of a ghost (or cloud) kitchen where food is prepared centrally but can be delivered to various locations or dining experiences. The kitchen (back-end) focuses solely on cooking (content creation and management) and doesn't worry about where the food is served. Instead, the meals (content) can be delivered to different endpoints like food trucks, home deliveries, or partner restaurants (or in our case websites, mobile apps, etc.). This separation allows more flexibility in how and where the content is delivered without changing the core cooking process. If a new experience requires new equipment or processes, the kitchen can be expanded without affecting the front-end experience.

When to Use a Headless CMS

Omni-Channel Content Delivery 

If you consistently need to deliver content across multiple platforms (websites, mobile apps, IoT devices), a headless CMS is ideal because it can serve the same content through APIs to any front-end. The front-end can be swapped out without any need for development to the back-end.

Scalability and Flexibility

If you want the ability to keep your content management system up-to-date independently of the presentation layer, a headless CMS can allow for more agile and scalable development. This could be especially useful if you anticipate needing to redesign or update parts of the front-end frequently without affecting the back-end content.

Front-end Framework Preferences

Maybe your team has developers who are very proficient in a particular JavaScript framework, like Next.js, SvelteKit, or Astro. The time needed to learn a new templating language could push you past your deadline. Maybe you have some cool interactive interface in mind? A headless CMS can provide the raw content for your developers to build highly custom, tailor-made front-ends in whatever language or framework they please.

Security

Going headless can offer security advantages due to its decoupled nature. By communicating via API to the front-end, data access can be controlled more granularly. Because the back-end is only responsible for content management and delivery, fewer plugins are typically used which means a smaller chance of vulnerabilities due to third-party software.

Hosting & Infrastructure

A cloud-based headless CMS offers additional advantages over a self-hosted headless CMS. It can simplify maintenance and operating costs since the cloud provider is responsible for updates and security of the platform. Cloud-based solutions like Strapi Cloud often come with integrated security features, automatic backups, and disaster recovery options.

Which will you choose?

While the flexibility and security a headless CMS offers may be great benefits, it may not be necessary for every project and could even introduce complexity. It’s important to consider the long-term purpose of the project and who will be responsible for maintaining it as well as authoring content. If your primary focus is on managing and delivering content in a structured manner with rapid development, a traditional CMS can be an excellent choice. But if you feel any of the examples I’ve laid out above align with your project’s requirements then a headless CMS may be right for you! 

Whatever route you take, remember that both Craft CMS and WordPress can be used in traditional or headless applications and are a fine choice either way! Now you know the differences between a traditional and headless CMS, and an informed decision can be made. If you have more questions or a project you think could benefit from a traditional or headless CMS, we’d love to help!

This week we will bid farewell to our fifteenth cohort of summer interns. Ciel Park (UI Developer Intern), Faye Stover (Product Designer Intern), and Paul McKissock (Application Developer Intern) joined our team ten weeks ago and have been hard at work learning and growing, teaching and sharing, and iterating ever since – and so have we. 

At Viget we are committed to fostering curiosity and drive both for budding engineers and designers but also for our team of full-timers who are eager to learn themselves and flex their mentorship muscles. As we’ve shared over the years, the internship is one of our favorite traditions and while a lot has changed in fifteen years, that commitment remains the same. 

Here’s a quick look at three core aspects of the Viget internship that remain flexible. 

Cohort size and available roles.

We are not married to a specific number of interns. We recruit for and match interns with available mentors who serve as our interns’ dedicated advisors.

Working location. 

This summer our interns primarily worked from our Falls Church, Virginia headquarters. We required interns to work in the office for the first three weeks of the program and the last. During weeks four through nine they were able to work remotely two to three days a week. In the past the internship has been fully in-person and fully remote. 

Cross-discipline internship project. 

Interns can expect cross-discipline collaboration during their time at Viget but how exactly that takes shape remains flexible. In years past interns spent 8 weeks coming up with, designing and building a working product. This year, with our smaller cohort of interns, we opted for a smaller approach to the group project. The project was pre-defined, scoped by our advisors, and happened over just two short weeks.   

Earlier this summer we hosted an internship alumni panel and invited Hayley McMillon (2022 Summer Cohort), Andrea Brucculeri (2019), Gabriel Kay (2019), and Vigenesh Gopalan (2018) to discuss lessons learned at Viget, life after Viget, underrated skills worth developing, tips for remote collaboration and more. The event was open to all and both current staff and other alums sat in on the moderated panel discussion. It was awesome, and everyone – long-timers and interns alike – left feeling inspired. This is my favorite aspect of the internship, our alumni network, and how our interns graduate to be active contributors.

I’m looking forward to staying in touch with Ciel, Faye, and Paul and I cannot wait to see all the wonderful things they accomplish. 

Does this sound like an experience you want to be a part of? We’ll host our 16th cohort of college students and recent grads next summer. Bookmark our internship page to keep an eye on future opportunities.