It’s wild to think that it was almost exactly eight years ago that we got together in Boulder, Colorado and planned out what kind of company we wanted Viget to be.  Last Friday, everyone from both offices got together for an incredible afternoon out of the Lab at the Marriott Ranch.  We broke from tradition a bit and combined our Third Third Thursday event with our annual “Viget’s birthday” dinner.

The afternoon was spent horseback riding, skeet shooting, jeep driving, and generally having fun together outside of work.  We played our annual game of Vigetry (sorry, you’ll have to join us to learn more) and enjoyed a round of toasts that varied from hilarious to sentimental — all great.

As we reflected, I was reminded of all the hard work we’ve put in over the years to get to where we are today.  As I mentioned during the Refresh panel discussion last week, I’ll never be completely satisfied with what we accomplish at Viget — I’ll never say “we’ve made it” – but I will celebrate along the way. 

There were times years ago where you could have easily made the argument that we should have quit.  In fact, looking back, if I were advising me 5 five years ago, I’d probably tell myself to pack it in.  But we just kept working hard then like we still do now, and I’m proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish as a team.  We still have a lot of great work to do ahead of us, but I’m glad we have traditions like last Friday to remind us that hard work pays off and sticking is a good thing.

One of the things I love about Viget is working with clients who are really making a positive impact on the world, especially when it comes to kids.  Healthy Child Healthy World is one of them. 

Healthy Child Healthy World is a national non-profit dedicated to protecting the health and well-being of children and families through cleaner, greener, and safer lifestyle changes.

Today, CEO Christopher Gavigan released his book Healthy Child Healthy World: Creating a Cleaner, Greener, Safer Home on Amazon.  I’m just helping to spread the word.

While I’m in a book promotion kind of mood, I can’t help but join the rest of the universe and plug Gary V’s new book Gary Vaynerchuk’s 101 Wines: Guaranteed to Inspire, Delight, and Bring Thunder to Your World.  Gary’s not a client.  He’s also not yet our VP of Strategy, despite my best efforts to recruit him.

Nick at Web Designer Wall worked with our designers at Viget to tell the story of how our new blogs came to be.  Great post!

Late last year, we had the idea to launch a blog for each of the “Labs” at Viget – strategy, design, development, and marketing.  Early this year, as we sat down to do it, we decided we should relaunch viget.com as well, and put it all on ExpressionEngine.  Last week, we launched it all, just in time for SXSWi (I am writing this from Austin, in fact), and the response so far has been great (thanks, everyone!). 

I wrote a longer post about our blog plan on the redesign FourLabs (i.e., “all about Viget”) blog — I welcome any thoughts or feedback you have on the concept …

A big congrats to Samantha, the newest member of the Viget family (until Monday, when David starts).  It was just announced that she is a SXSW Web Awards Finalist for the Blog category.  Last year was my first SXSW experience, when Squidoo won for the Community category, and it was a blast.  The Blog award recognizes:

Sites that revolutionize the power of publishing by providing regularly updated content of a personal or professional nature.

Her blog, Bad Ass Ideas, is one that I followed well before she applied at Viget.  Of all her posts, this one is my favorite. 

Samantha’s recognition is much deserved, and I have a lot of respect for her commitment to sharing her knowledge and insights with the community.   It’s something we really believe in at Viget (which will be even more apparent in the coming weeks as our company-wide blogging plans are revealed).

Speaking of community, it will be great to have the DC web community represented (the Library of Congress blog is also a finalist) at SXSW.  We’ll have six folks from Viget there, and I know a lot of other local web people will be making the trip.  I dare say Samantha can count on some rowdy cheers at the awards ceremony …

Gil is the Chief Engineer at Squidoo.  He put up a lens telling the story of how Squidoo went from an idea in Seth’s head to a profitable business and the 14th fastest web site in 2007.  They’ve always had a lean strategy, and early-on that meant hiring Viget.

“To keep our staff as lean as possible, we considered several options, ultimately leading to a partnership with Viget Labs, who helped us build version 1.0 of Squidoo.  Hiring in-house employees vs an outside consulting form can be a difficult choice for any startup. On one hand, hiring employees can be a great (and sometimes inexpensive) way to ensure dedication to your project, but the security of fixed cost development and no long-term employee commitments proved to be the right choice for us.”

It’s great to get an inside perspective on both the good decisions and the mistakes that an online start-up is making.  He touches on the benefits of short iterations and frequent releases:

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Thanks to Emily’s creative recruiting tactics, Computerworld contributing writer, Mary Brandel, contacted us about an article she was writing (Rock Star Coders) in which she wanted to “take a look at the growing subculture of developers who’ve gained (or think they’ve gained) something along the lines of ’star status’ in the world of programming.”  We were happy to talk with her (trade emails, mostly), and she got particularly good insights from Clinton, a Senior Developer at Viget.  She left off my favorite thing that he said, though:

“When I saw an ad for Viget, the phrasing appealed to me: it showed that they cared that their developers were *people* as much as code-writing machines. They realized that speaking at a conference - I spoke as O’Reilly’s OSCON last year - is a good quality: it shows you seek to expose your thoughts. Maybe that’s the core of being a rockstar programmer: you aren’t afraid to show your code and your ideas to the world, and that lack of self-consciousness propels you to greatness.”

Of course, he wasn’t responding to our rock star post.  That came a bit later. 

I like the article and appreciate Mary’s work on it.  Since we came off as the pro-rock star term slant, I’d hope that anyone who reads the article takes the time to read the job post.  I would think you’d “get” that we are in fact pretty light-hearted about the term. 

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I’ve blogged about Viget’s Third Third Thursday tradition before, and this past week it was that time again.  We embraced the season and set out in style for ice skating downtown in DC.  I was excited by the forecast — snow — but initially less excited by the reality — semi-frozen rain (with a bit of snow mixed in) — because I thought it would discourage the fun.  Boy was I wrong.  Even though we all got a little wet and risked serious injury, most of the group got out on the ice and had a blast.  Those who decided not to skate hung out and watched us skate gracefully try to avoid falling.

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I don’t.  Yet.  But you might!

We’re looking for a great senior designer who wants to keep designing while leading our design group and helping our already-awesome design team become yet even more awesome. 

This is a rare opportunity at a small (we’re 28 people … ) growing (… going on 30) company and it’s a perfect fit for that super talented and ambitious designer friend of yours.  So tell her him that person about it.  She’ll He’ll That person will thank you for it, and so will I.

I just posted on viget.com about VigetRocks, this year’s annual Viget gift.  Every year I think we might decide to not do it (since it’s no small effort) but I’m a sucker for tradition and it’s just so much fun …

Congrats to the Razoo team for their coverage on the front-page of the Washington Post business section yesterday. 

Social Networking for the Socially Minded
District Firm Razoo Joins Other Web Site Builders Trying to Reinvent How People Give Money to Charity

The WashBiz blog also picked it up in the post Social Networking For Social Causes.

Viget has been working with Razoo, which launched a public beta this past summer, for more than a year.  It’s always a thrill to see clients earn major coverage like this.  I expect this is just the beginning of this kind of press for Razoo.

I’m lucky enough to work with some really talented people at Viget.  Our design group came up with a great concept earlier this year to launch a recruiting microsite specifically for the design community called TeamViget.  Today, the site was featured on Nick La’s Best of CSS Design 2007 post over at Web Designer Wall.  Congrats to our entire design team for the recognition, especially Rob Soule and Thanny Le Young.

It has nothing to do with Thanksgiving. 

When we started Viget in 1999/2000, we expected that we (the whole staff) would be working crazy hours all the time.  The dot-coms were going nuts and there was more work to do than hours in the day.  I remember thinking that we’d need to force ourselves to take a break at least once a month … and Third Thursday was born.

If you check your web start-ups timeline, though, you’ll recognize that pretty quickly in to Viget’s existence the “unlimited work” with dot-coms went away.  With it went the late nights for everyone, replaced by a couple years of struggling to find billable work.  One of the many good things that came out of that tough period was balance.  We’ve always worked hard (9-5’s are for the uninspired, if you ask me) but we do a pretty good job of balancing work-time and non-work-time — even now, when we’re back to a seemingly endless amount of great work to do.

Over the years, we have scaled back Third Thursday to be quarterly rather than monthly (hence it’s new name, Third Third Thursday), making them easier to plan for and more fun to participate in.  We have a lot of traditions at Viget, but TTT is easily one of my favorites.  Like everything else in the company, it evolves over time — I’m excited to see where it goes.

I’m wrapping up a long weekend here at Viget, but before I sign-off for my pre-real-work-day nap, I wanted to get some more thoughts down on how it all went.  Hosting Startup Weekend was exhausting, in a good way.  As hyped, we started the weekend with 70+ people picking a business idea, and finished tonight last night by launching a site at midnight.  I can honestly say that it went better than I’d expected in almost every aspect.  Some examples:

• It launched.  I have to admit, I thought all along that we’d end up not launching, but to the credit of the dev team, at midnight tonight there was a somewhat functioning site live at holaneighbor.com.  It didn’t work well exactly, and it’s not really a compelling feature set yet, and the nicely designed screens aren’t in there yet, but technically we launched, and that alone is impressive.
• People stuck.  There were times Friday night, before there was any clarity in the concept, that I was sure we’d have no one back on Saturday.  The night ended on an upswing, though, and the vast majority of people decided to give it a shot on Saturday morning, which fed into the evening and beyond.
• I met a lot of good people.  I made new friends.  I got to know some folks I’d met before.  There’s nothing like collaborating in person with people on a project for stuff like that.
• Viget HQ held up.  Having recently moved in, I wasn’t sure how the space would hold up to all the people.  There are a few bumps here and there, but the space plan (big conference rooms, various huddle / collaboration spaces, the lounge, etc.) worked great for the distinct teams and break-out sessions. 
• It wasn’t about the company.  People were passionate and excited and wanted to get it done, but my perception was that it was more about having a chance to work with good people.
• Negative conflict was rare.  With so many talented, opinionated people crammed together forced to make group decisions quickly, I was prepared for some major blowups.  There were heated debates here and there, but things seemed to work themselves out with generally positive outcomes.
• The group had manners.  Pretty much everyone pitched in to help with the grunt work of keeping the office in shape (thanks, guys!). They appreciated Viget putting up the space, and they helped get it back to working order before leaving.  Even Andrew Hyde, founder of Startup Weekend, was here cleaning white boards at 1 am (4 hours before his departing flight).

Not surprisingly, just like with the first weekend in Boulder, it all came down to the dev team.  There’s lots of valid hype about how you can quickly build web apps these days, but the fact remains that it just takes time to build a really good product, and a lot of that time goes to writing good code.  Having launched anything at all is an accomplishment, especially given the potential complexity for the concept we chose.

What now?  Good question.  The group decided to decompress for a few days before figuring out a core team to take HolaNeighbor on to the next level.  There’s still a lot to do to make it a viable business, and I hope it has a life beyond today.  Can the passion for the concept that was alive this weekend carry on?  Only time will tell, but regardless, the experience of the weekend was certainly positive for me.

Update: checkout the article about Startup Weekend in the Washington Post.

A few quick updates:

• Viget South hosted the innagural Refresh the Triangle meeting on Thursday in our Durham office.  Jackson Fox gave a talk to a packed crowd.  From the looks of it, a good time was had by all. 
• I managed to make it up this morning to chat with Geoff Livingston and Hart Rossman on John Hrastar’s 8 am “Business Destiny” radio show on WTNT 570 AM.  We talked about how Web 2.0 is impacting business - a bit of a precursor to next week’s New New Internet conference (both Geoff and Hart are speakers).
• Startup Weekend DC is in full swing here at Viget HQ.  Photos are going up on Flickr and we even have a real idea in the works.  More soon …

Now that we have all this space, we’re excited to fill it up with smart folks.  We’re hiring passionate people, and I predict you know someone who would be a great fit at Viget.  If you think I’m right, have them visit viget.com and send a resume to jobs.va@viget.com.  If we hire them, I’ll buy you both a beer (or soda, if you prefer).  Some roles we’re looking to fill:

• Office Manager - someone to make our sweet new office hum like a well-oiled machine by doing everything from reception to event planning to supporting little ol’ me in all kinds of work adventures.
• Rails Developers - both senior and less senior.  Come work with our guys who speak at events and conferences and build some seriously great apps.
• Designers - again, both senior and less senior.  Again, we have an awesome team, and we’re looking to make it even more awesome.
• Front-end Developers
• User Experience Designers

We’re actively interviewing for these roles.  If you know anyone who would be a good fit, please send them our way.  We have some very cool work going on and it’s a great time to join us.

It’s official.  Today we announced our move into our new space at Viget.  I wrote about it on the Four Labs blog.  Kudos to Andy for making it happen on-time — it’s no small miracle that we managed to pull it off.  It’ll be another few weeks before all the furniture is in and we’re really settled, but for now it’s a thrill just to be in our own space.

SXSW 2008 is happening next March 7-11 in Austin, Texas.  I went for the first time this past year, and had a blast.  I thought it would be fun to do more than just mingle and enjoy the presentations this year, so we put our heads together over at Viget and came up with a few panel topic ideas.  Now they’re up on the SXSW Panel Picker, where anyone can come and rate them.  I invite you to do so:

• Web Start-Up Mistakes: 10 to Avoid and 5 to Make
• How Traditional Businesses Can Leverage [Stuff Like] Social Media
• Everything a Designer Needs to Know About Rails
• Beyond the iPhone: Embracing the Mobile Context

We tried to pick topics that we know a lot about, we think are particularly relevant, and we would want to attend ourselves.  We’re good sports, so even if our talks don’t get picked you can expect to find some Viget folks there.