Social Update - Fall 2011

I’m currently somewhere over Greenland. Snowcapped mountains are reflecting pesky sunlight through the window of the 747 straight into my face and I’m coping with a mind-numbing case of exhaustion from two weeks spent at our Lithuania office. Who said business can’t also be pleasure?

It’s the crazy pace that we’re moving at that I blame for the lack of social updates to our blog. We are now twenty-three strong, twice the company we were at the beginning of 2011. That said, a good place to continue my tale is the end of summer when our Chicago team, plus a couple of extras, ventured out to Chicago River Canoe and Kayak.

Chicago Riverfront, I mused, was a pristine place to live – million dollar boats slowly coasting along gleaming towers made purely out of glass, restaurants gobbling up the remaining sidewalks next to the river, live music and crowds everywhere. After a short instructional course by a Croc. Dundee look-alike, we were dropped into the not-so-welcoming waters of the Chicago river, that, up close, have a fragrance of heavily decomposed dead things mixed with gasoline.

What from the sidelines looks like a cute little yellow canoe is indeed a plastic cast for your lower body that has intentions of murdering you if you don’t sway your hips the way the river demands (which, in a way, is similar to dancing to the Lambada). Excitement and fear in our eyes we starting paddling our way North from the Chinatown based harbor. During this water based adventure we learned the following:

• Remember that scene from Terminator 2 where Arnie goes melting in a pool of liquefied metal? Chicago river has a similar corrosive effect on human skin.
• Considering that every large boat aims to crush you, it is actually very romantic to paddle when the sun is setting in the west.
• The discomfort of a wobbly canoe is completely forgotten when the testosterone-loaded crew starts competing for pure acceleration.
• Ignas, one of our developers from Kaunas office, is a naturally occurring disaster, much like earthquakes and hurricanes, and the diagram below illustrates the movement patterns of his canoe.

All jokes aside, the trip was a roaring success. We continued to celebrate by sipping on some Hennessey in the parking lot, congratulating Mike on his recent proposal (and now inevitable marriage), and headed off to have dinner at a local Chinese restaurant.

The next memorable event is really what has me writing this blog post. I flew out to the Lithuania DevBridge office just two weeks ago but it feels like months. A lot of us at DevBridge share that very common cultural origin and the establishment and evolution of the Kaunas office now sounds as natural as breathing.

My previous trips to Lithuania were all to visit family and friends, and after spending two weeks with this talented group of professionals I would be honored to call them exactly that. A non-stop two weeks of strategy meetings, parties, and lunches has left me properly exhausted but also inspired and tingling to jump right into 2012.

Some of the highlights from the trip are:

• The formality BS dropped after a mid-week “social” that had me returning home at some unhealthy hour in the morning. Apparently “handling your liquor” is a requirement for a Lithuanian developer. Not so for the Kaunas office director.
• A bunch of us were disappointed with the iPhone 4s and swore we would never buy this piece of garbage. That lasted until the next morning – most were placing preorders. Vocal and critical group, we are.
• A trip to Lithuania Agile Tour 2011 – Vilnius proved to be a great and inspirational success. We confirmed that our core beliefs are valid and that we have established a solid base to build the business on.
• Strategy meetings with our three architects Paulius, Domantas, and Viktoras have laid the groundwork for the systems we need to implement this and next year to scale the business.
• We learned of the gaps that need to be filled out in our current planning and development process.
• An outing to the club proved that developers can, indeed, dance!

Surprisingly, the polar bears did not manage to break my neck this time and I am on my way back to Chicago with very little damage on the outside. The trip was, yet again, a productive and awakening experience. I’m full of goals, ideas, and strategies on how to take DevBridge to the next level and am hoping to see the whole team again in summer 2012 when we throw the yearly DevBridge outing.

Thanks for the great time, guys! We have so much happening – the coming year couldn’t be more fun.