Shortly after I sent the office-wide email to introduce Christine Vo, our second COLABORATORY intern, I received a reply from Chris Nelson from our Business Intelligence team which contained the following question:

Do you mean to be saying “collaboratory”? Or are you meaning to say “co-laboratory” – like a shared lab?

Or, in other words: Why did we spell "COLABORATORY" wrong?

It's a totally fair question, and one that I haven't addressed here yet. We deliberately named the program "COLABORATORY" because of its multiple possible meanings: The fact that it's not immediately understood makes it interesting. What makes it better is that all the interpretations are correct.

COLABORATORY embraces a spirit of working together, a willingness to experiment and the commitment to share resources and ideas. All these ideals have taken root through COLABORATORY as our interns make new relationships among themselves and with the professionals they encounter. I've been delighted to see them posting videos with each other, meeting up outside of work and getting great face time with agency professionals.

We named COLABORATORY so we could build the meaning together. So, what does COLABORATORY mean to you?

Christine Vo