Voxeo Talks

Voxeo is participating in the Downtown Orlando IOA Corporate 5K again this year, and we’ve signed up 27 Voxeons who are ready to make the five-kilometer trek around downtown on Thursday, April 12. (With all the great perks we enjoy around here like catered lunches every Friday, unlimited snacks and a barista station, activities that support our health and wellness are an important part of our balance!)

A little more about the Corporate 5K from Track Shack’s website:

The IOA Corporate 5k presented by News 13 and Bright House Sports Network is a 3.1-mile run/walk event held exclusively for Florida’s corporate community. Businesses and non-profit organizations form teams and participate in the Corporate 5k for camaraderie, friendly competition and celebrating with co-workers.

If you’re in the race, or if you’ll be out and about near Lake Eola that evening, give our team a shout-out – we should be easily distinguishable by our t-shirts! We’ll follow up with some photos and a recap after the race – but for now, check out our 2011 photo gallery and this great shot from 2010.

Voxeo’s 10th floor co-working space is home to a number of innovative startups, including Row Sham Bow, a game studio founded last year by a group of industry veterans who are on a mission to create direct-to-consumer games that are compelling, easy to play and downright fun, regardless of platform or technology.

Their first game on the Facebook platform, Woodland Heroes, is extremely popular, and Row Sham Bow recently announced their partnership with industry juggernaut Zynga as one of the inaugural partners in Zynga’s publishing-partner initiative, giving them an even larger audience for Woodland Heroes and the ability to focus on creating an even better in-game experience.

Row Sham Bow cares deeply about audience engagement, and in addition to in-game measurement and analytics, they recently put out a call for volunteers new to Woodland Heroes to spend a half hour playing the game and provide their opinions. Several Voxeons volunteered – including me, and I’d never played a social game before, so I was excited to check this one out. I spent a half hour getting started with Woodland Heroes, and Row Sham Bow created a video of my in-game experience and asked me a short series of questions afterwards – all information they can use to make the game more immersive and engaging for new users.

The mission in Woodland Heroes is simple: You’ve been pushed out of your woodland home by the evil Bear King, and the animals are counting on you to save them!

This trailer video gives you an idea of the game’s setup and style:

In getting started with Woodland Heroes, the first thing I noticed is that Row Sham Bow has built in all of the training for basic game play, and basic strategy, into fun, simple lessons that build the storyline. You’re immersed in the storyline immediately, even while still learning how to collect resources, aim weapons and keep your town in good order. Your character, and your city are immediately personalized. Additionally, social opportunities are built into the game in numerous ways – accomplishments can be easily shared and friends can be invited to join the game. The battles are highly reminiscent of Battleship, and a wide variety of weaponry allows you to exercise strategy even in the early levels.

Overall, Woodland Heroes is a cool game and we’re lucky to have such creative neighbors!

To learn more: check out Row Sham Bow’s website or give Woodland Heroes a try on Facebook.

Here at Voxeo we work hard … and we like to play hard, too! Recently, Andree Mora, one of the excellent photographers in our midst, took some great shorts of our corporate softball team in action in a local Orlando softball league. Check it out!

Here’s a team shot of the group that played last night:

P.S. And if you want to join a company that has fun like this… we’re hiring!

If you are looking to contact anyone this week from our Voxeo Germany office near Cologne, Germany… well… almost all of them will be responding to you from the US Eastern timezone!

That’s right… we just brought almost the entire crew of German Voxeons over to Orlando where they are getting a chance to check out our cool new office but more importantly are getting a chance to interact face-to-face with their US colleagues and participate in a number of planning and strategy sessions with peers.

Plus… we’ve got some fun evening social events planned and a number of the folks came early and got to explore the Orlando area over the weekend.

All in all it should be a great week in Orlando and a good chance to continue to build and celebrate the unique culture inside Voxeo. We here in the US are thrilled to have them here with us this week!

P.S. Want to join us and become a “Voxeon“? We’re hiring!

As we mentioned previously, a group of Voxeons were running and walking in the “Corporate 5K” race on April 14th. The results are in and we’ve got some photos. First, from the race website, here are some stats around the race:

The 17th Annual Corporate 5k presented by IOA, Orlando’s largest office party was the place to be on Thursday, April 14th, 2011. The 87 degree weather was perfect for a 5k through downtown, with record participation from local companies and organizations. Over 100 teams recorded their finish times and are listed in the 2011 results.

Runners/Walkers: 14,323
Teams: 703
CEOs: 296
Canned Food Collected: 2,500 Pounds

And here are some photos of our team. The T-shirt we had was the result of an internal competition and the winning design was from Samantha Seidman in our marketing team (Yea, Sam!). I wasn’t there myself, but everyone who was said it was a blast… and it certainly looks like that from the photos!

Enjoy… (click on the image to get to the full set of photos)

P.S. Want to join a company that does fun things like this? We’re pretty much always hiring.

P.P.S. And no, the two guys shown in the photo from last year did not reappear in their stunning outfits…

Are you joining the 13,000 other runners this Thursday, April 14, in Orlando, Florida, for the “Corporate 5K“? Building on our success last year (translation: we had runners in the race ), we’ve got an even bigger “Team Voxeo” ready to go Thursday evening!

The Corporate 5K is an impressive event – from their website:

The Corporate 5k presented by IOA is a 3.1-mile run/walk event held exclusively for Florida’s corporate community. Businesses and non-profit organizations form teams and participate in the Corporate 5k for camaraderie, friendly competition and celebrating with co-workers. Consisting of over 600 local companies made up of 13,000 participants that include employees, CEOs, vendors, friends and families, the community joins together in downtown Orlando for fun, networking, and a celebration of healthy living. Since 2006, Corporate 5k participation has grown 78% and continues to increase!

Everyone who participated last year said it was a great time and we’re looking forward to being back there again.

If you’re running or walking in the Corporate 5K, look for the Voxeons… word is that the shirts we have are very cool!

P.S. And yes, the two Voxeons in the photo really did run the race last year… apparently bringing many smiles along the way… and no, those aren’t the shirts (or shorts) we’re using this year

As “Voxeons”, we like to work hard… but we also like to play hard…  and part of our corporate culture is to hold events where we can all have some fun!  This past weekend our Orlando headquarters team headed out to a local park for a Voxeo BBQ… complete with smoked meats courtesy of our own bacon expert Blake.  Our second annual Chili Cook-off happened the and competition was HOT! Games, prizes… treats for the kids…

This year also brought the arrival of the Dunk Tank! Many balls were thrown and many leaders took a plunge!

Some photos are up in our Flickr account . Voxeon Andree Mora also posted a set of his photos to his own account.

P.S. If this looks like a fun place to work, we’re always looking for people to join the company.

So for a little something completely different on a Friday afternoon…

For those who don’t know, I’m actually a “Remoteon” living up in Keene, New Hampshire, about 2 hours northwest of Boston. Tomorrow, our little city has it’s 20th annual Pumpkin Festival where we will once again try to reclaim the Guiness world record for number of carved pumpkins from Boston who beat our count a few years back.

The Pumpkin Festival is a Big Deal up in these parts and we, like many families, carved up a number of pumpkins to contribute to the big event. Me being who I am, I naturally had to carve one with a Voxeo logo.

I thought it came out so cool that I just had to share it…

And… if you, too, would like to carve a Voxeo pumpkin with Halloween coming up, here’s a handy Voxeo Pumpkin Template you can use Just print out the size you want, tape it to a pumpkin … and get started!

(Tip: I didn’t even attempt to carve it with a knife… I just pulled out my portable drill and a 7/8″ and 1/2″ drill bit!)

If you do carve one, send me a photo of the pumpkin – or of you and the pumpkin – and I will post some here to the blog.

As to whether dear old Keene will beat out Boston… well, we’ll have to wait until Sunday to know. Stay tuned!

Our Beijing office recently took a trip to visit the MuLan Grasslands area in China. They nicely shot some great photos which are now available as a set on Flickr:

It looks like a great place to visit! I love this shot. Very cool to see the gnomes taking in the trip, too!

At our recent Voxeo Customer Summit 2010, Voxeo’s President Anne Bowman and Chief Culture Officer Ryan Campbell (yes, that’s his real title) gave a presentation about “Voxeo’s Unique Business Culture” (picture below). Our culture is very different from that at most other companies out there – and we’ll be writing more about that in the months ahead. Meanwhile, you can check out the slides from Anne and Ryan’s talk:

Here’s a shot of Anne and Ryan on stage (click on the image for the larger version):

There are many more photos from Summit available, too, as part of our Customer Summit Flickr set.