Projecting II

Projecting (emphasis on the first syllable) is a term used by rock climbers to describe the process of figuring out and executing a route up the side of a rock face. A successful route (a executed climb) is a completed project. Projecting is figuring it out - seeing what works and what doesn’t. And by working through the process again and again, a climber (problem solver), is able to strengthen their approach to the challenges that lay ahead.

As I understand it, projecting is a “hands-on” way of trying every available option until one finds the best, most efficient, most repeatable, and safest method for solving problems. Projecting allows for many freedoms. It allows one to practice and become better at the skills in which they are confident. It encourages one to consider every possibility, every answer to a solution. It allows one to step back and consider the whole problem. Projecting does not produce a “definitive” route, it produces a route among many possibilities, that allows on to solve a problem.

I named my Narrate business website, narrateproject.com. With that, I wanted to convey that Narrate is a business projecting, always trying to grow and improve. That we are growing constantly, and figuring out the best answers to our problems. Narrate isn’t looking for the perfect way to conduct interviews, if we were it would imply that we had nothing left to learn. Instead, we are constantly projecting. Trying to find the best way to properly represent your loved ones and their stories. Narrate can promise that we are building to the best solution at the time - taking our past experiences, customer input, and gathered data on applying that information to our route - projecting the process the whole time.

Accompanying photograph by Noah Sahady for the New Yorker magazine.