I’m going to introduce another of my favorite YouTube channels. This one is in a completely different genre than the last I mentioned in these pages (Great Art Explained), and instead focuses on the construction industry. The channel is The B1M, a channel that produces the sort of 6-10 minute episodes that entertain me once a week when I eat breakfast. Its slogan is “The definitive video channel for construction,” but it is more entertaining than that description indicates. Trust me. Besides, the host is British and so all of the videos are understated in a way that would not be the case if the channel were American. Recent videos have covered Russian port development in the Arctic, a Chinese crackdown on new skyscrapers, the Second Avenue subway extension in New York, and a video on the world’s largest observation wheel in Dubai.

I am not an engineer. Even in our childhood, my brother was the one more interested in Legos. I am someone who enjoys a broad exposure to ideas, though, and I am always searching for additional inputs to improve my own communication and presentation style. Exposure to different presenters is one way I achieve that. Many of our clients are engineers anyway, even if they build software instead of buildings, so listening to an engineering brain at work helps me empathize with my clients in a tangential way.

The channel is often sponsored by software companies involved in supporting these massive construction projects (such sponsorships being a necessary intrusion given the economics of YouTube—control of distribution means control over money), but even their paid bits offer a glimpse into a world I know very little about. We have done some legal work for a company that is developing software in this industry, but a demonstration of the technology has not yet been an aspect of our legal representation. The curiosity in me wishes it were; perhaps that can be a policy moving forward. Part of the fun in working with technology startups is getting a look at the future before the rest of the world sees it, and injecting more fun into the workplace is rarely bad so long as the work still gets accomplished.