May 18

Written by: Joe Brinkman
5/18/2009 12:15 AM 

As many people already know, I spent the past week traveling to California and Canada to meet with the DNN Corp. management and engineering teams.  This was an exciting trip for me as it was a chance to see us reach one more milestone in the growth of DotNetNuke and DNN Corp.  For the last 6 years, DotNetNuke has been a virtual organization with core team members spread around the globe.  This is the norm for most Open Source projects and while it poses some challenges, it is something you learn to deal with if you want to be involved.  When Shaun, Scott, Nik and I formed DNN Corp in 2006, we continued operating in this fashion.  We each had our own home offices along with Charles Nurse and Bill Walker.

Starting in January DNN Corp began hiring additional employees.  It is no longer possible for everyone to work from home or to work from temporary office spaces and we began the search for office space.  As anyone who has been through the process can tell you, it can sometimes take a while to find suitable office space and get it built out and ready for employees.  In April we finally moved into new offices in both San Mateo, California and Abbotsford, British Columbia.  This trip was my first opportunity to visit the new offices and meet some of our new employees.

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Our California office is the home for our  sales, marketing and admin staff along with some of our management team. Located in San Mateo, this office is easily accessible from the San Francisco Airport.  It is a nice modern facility.  Unfortunately, we are almost out of space and will soon need to look for supplemental space to handle our overflow.  Just one of the many challenges of working in growing company.

Our California Office

Michelle Baca – Corporate Accounting Manager. The most powerful person in any company (she makes sure we get paid) ;).

 

Terry Erisman – Director of Marketing. He tries to keep us all on the same page with a consistent message.  A tough job in any company.

 

Alex Pringle – Sales Account Executive.  He keeps the engineering team focused by letting us know what the customers want – an invaluable part of the product feedback loop.

There are many other individuals working out of our San Mateo office who likewise contribute to the overall success of the company, unfortunately they were out of the office when I finally remembered to pull the camera out.  Some of them might say that is a good thing ;).

After leaving California, I headed up to Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada for a few days to work with the engineering team.  We are hard at work putting the finishing touches on the DNN 5.1 Community and Professional Editions.  For those who are not aware, Abbotsford is located near the US-Canadian border about an hour East of Vancouver.  It is also where Shaun lives.  Scott Willhite also came up for a few days – of course I monopolized a bunch of his time

Since Abbotsford is a small town, you won’t find any massive glass office towers, but it definitely has the better view of either office location.  Being located on the edge of the Cascades and Rocky Mountains, you are guaranteed to have scenic mountain views almost anywhere you go in Abbotsford, and our offices there are no exception.

It was exciting to see our logo on the office door for the first time.

John Lucarino – Software Engineer – Hard at work on an exciting new project.

Even though it was overcast that day, the Rockies are clearly visible in the background.  What an awesome view out of the office windows.  It is views like this that make me miss living in the Pacific Northwest.  Who knows, maybe a home in Abbotsford is in my future.

After a long week of visiting the new offices I had a big surprise when I returned home this weekend.  My wife had cleaned up my home office.  It was just like walking into a new office.  Trust me when I say that you would not want to see what it looked like when I left for the week.

My Home Office – after a major cleanup effort from a loving wife.  What a great way to end a trip.