DevBridge Picnic 2010
DevBridge runs from multiple continents, the Unites States office being the Yang of the Lithuanian Ying. We also have a peppering of developers that found shelter in other countries such as Spain and Belarus: some by choice, others simply don’t know that life is better outside Belarus (How’s military service, Anatoly? Send us some tips for proper maintenance of AK-47’s!) . I mentioned previously that Martin organized a Lithuanian Meet for our East Bloc developer brothers, so it is only natural that the US headquarters should follow up with an event of our own.
It is hard to distinguish our Picnic as a company event because there were more family members and friends combined that the number of employees we have. Excellent food was catered by “Cut Above Catering”, and several employees were spotted returning to the dining table, their chins dripping with sauce, and hands elbow deep in spicy sausages, beef kebabs, and hamburgers. The two kegs of beer were, in a very unlikely fashion, half full by the time we were done which brings me to the sorest part of this tale.
During the day we organized several sports activities that majority of the guys were involved in in their maximum capacity. How Kazys was able to play volleyball with one arm in a cast is still puzzling me, but he did look a little like a blend of Popeye and Hellboy swinging that menace around in midair. To add insult to injury, volleyball was followed by soccer (or football, as the rest of the world calls it). As a development company we are not too far out of shape, but the week after the event we had to listen to Rus moan every time he stood up from his chair and Gedas is still limping around the office like a professional pirate. I want to make a shout out to Bill from Ascender who certainly proved that a soccer match between Devbridge and Ascender would be a challenging affair if Bills performance can be matched by the rest of the Ascender team.
The day blew by in an instant with everyone wondering where the time went when we started packing up at 1am. Our event organizer Martin did a fantastic job and took care of the details for the team to enjoy the day. We distributed the left over kebabs, water guns, and DevBridge t-shirts and headed home.
On a slightly different topic, one of our team members has recently acquired a wound to the face. Our architect Tomas is not known to get into knife fights often, but that was the first thought that crossed my mind when I saw him. To shed some light on the event I must mention that Tomas is an avid hockey player and, much like professionals of the 50’s, does not wear any face protection. During an intense duel of ice ballerinas in body armor a deflected puck kissed Tomas on the cheek… as he was sitting on the team bench.
Since the original story does not scare little children into good behavior, we decided to tell everyone that it’s an old scar back from the days when Tomas lived on the rough streets of Lithuania where every loaf of bread had to be fought for. Unfortunately for us his chess performance has not been impacted. A higher velocity projectile is needed for accomplish that, I guess.
Señior Mario, our Spanish pilgrim of code, has recently reported that it gets hot in Spain. It is also expensive to pay for electricity in Spain and, following this logic, he is not using the air conditioner when he can avoid it. A picture he recently sent us shows 30C (86F) at his desk which does explain why he forgets to check the code he deploys to production servers. All kidding aside, we are slowly strategizing an opening of a physical office in Lithuania in a year or two – which would probably get air conditioning to Morris’s relief. DevBridge US is also currently looking for a new location in Chicago – drive-bys, drug dealers, and cars jacked on Champagne bottles are only exciting the first time you experience them in the fine town of Bensenville, IL.
In the last couple of weeks we’ve had a flurry of activity around ConceptFeedback.com – from visiting Sandbox Industries, to being accepted to Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center for mentoring, and new features cropping up like mushrooms after the rain. We’re putting in a ton of effort into the system and things are starting to move. These are exciting times at DevBridge, ladies and gentlemen.
