Carl Smith // July 27, 2011

But wait… there’s more!

As you may have read in the recent .NET article, we’ve been going through some changes over here at nGen.

A few other things have happened that we didn’t put in the article but I wanted to share.

Saying goodbye to an old friend

When we first started nGen Works we knew we “had” to have an office for people to take us seriously. Over the last eight years that space at 1807 Hendricks Avenue has seen some great, some bad and some downright funny as hell moments. Because of our flexible nature and the requirement for nGeneers to live their lives on their terms, that old red beauty is only home to two of the 14 people currently working with nGen. We’ve held on to it for sentimental reasons, but now it just doesn’t seem to make sense. So we’ll be closing her later this year and using that money to plan trips and events when all of the nGeneers can get together and get to know each other better.

Saying hello to Vegas!

As a distributed team, it is critical that we get to hang out. We’ve gone to conferences together and that’s fun, but distracting. What we need is a party town where nGen can take all of us and we can just have fun together. No meetings, no workshops, no speakers. Just a freaking party full of hilarity and laughter. These memories will keep us strong as a team for months. At which point we’ll just have to do it again. Costa Rica, anyone?

nGen Friday is back, baby!

What started in the early days as a way for nGeneers to recover from Thursday night drinking binges has become a tradition. It’s all about the company treating those of us who work at nGen right. For years it’s involved lunch and drinks. Sometimes movies. Sometimes bowling. Lots of times Rockband. But as the team has moved further apart those things become difficult. So we quit doing it, which really sucked because it felt like part of our culture was dying as we grew apart. A few weeks ago, we brought it back with a vengeance. The trick — we just send pics of ourselves having fun to each other. That’s when we realized we should invite the whole Twitterverse to nGen Friday. And while we can’t pay for everyone’s lunch, we can at least pick one lucky winner. So we have. Last week we took Tom Osbourne and his lovely daughter to see Zookeeper. Okay, we paid for the tix; he made the bad decision to see Zookeeper all by himself. So keep an eye on Twitter for all of the Fridays to come, you never know what we might buy you!

Share the insanity!

As our madness continues we’ll keep you informed. Here’s a crazy thought, why don’t you do the same? Let us know what new biz things you’re trying and how your company is evolving. We can only get smarter (or dumber) together.