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.