Voxeo Talks

What a week. Here’s a little recap from “behind the scenes”…

Monday
People were betting against us…there was still a lot to get done, and several inspections to pass with the city. Tony (our superintendent) said not to worry, but the strain on his face made you wonder a bit.

Tuesday
Richard Wilson, our project’s managing partner at L2 Studios (our architects) called me. He had been over and walked the space and wanted to warn us that he didn’t think we would make it. There was just too much still to be done, as well as a possibility that the inspectors would catch items we missed. Jonathan Taylor (our CEO) was with me, and simply replied “Richard just doesn’t know me that well yet. We’ll make it.”

Wednesday
Our final inspection was scheduled with the fire marshal to be conducted after 5:00pm, so that we could test the fire alarm system after hours. His main priority would be that we met all the requirements for Life Safety. We had our superintendent, our architects, our mechanical engineer and Jonathan all there waiting, ready to make recommendations and decisions if any issues were to arise.
 
At 5:15, Tony came to me and said “I screwed up…I just realized I never ordered our fire extinguishers!” In normal Voxeo fashion, he was on the phone, found someone a few miles away that had enough extinguishers on hand, and convinced her to keep their office open for us. We jumped in and sent Ben Souders, one of our IT guys, on his way to pick them up. (In case you’re not aware of Voxeo’s culture, Passionate Problem Solving is our 2nd Core Value, and being honest about our mistakes and having others jump in to help is at the heart of who we are…Tony really fit in well with us for this entire project.)
 
A few minutes later Tony received a call from Danny Anderson the fire marshal, saying they were on their way, but were stopping for a snack first. Someone was obviously looking out for us. Ben got back, and Tony got the extinguishers setup around the new office space just as the inspectors arrived. They spent probably an hour with us, walking the entire space looking things over in detail, then gave us the word…we could pick up the Certificate of Occupancy from the City the next day and move in!!!

Thursday
Tony emailed the request to the city. At 2:00pm, he had not yet heard back from them, so he and I decided to head to City Hall. Upon arriving, we were told that the CO wasn’t ready, and that they would call when it was. We weren’t taking any chances and decided to just camp out there until we had it. After many intense months…by 3:30 we had what we had been working towards…the document saying we were ready to go.
 
Our 15 or so friends at Envy Labs (who share our space with us) got all of their stuff down and setup by the end of the afternoon. By 5:00, the Orlando Voxeons (how we like to refer to ourselves here at Voxeo) had their work areas packed up. The movers arrived and we shut down the office on the 20th floor. By midnight, we were setup in our new space, and a few of us sat around with Jonathan reflecting on our experience over the last many months. We had actually made it (not that Jonathan ever doubted we would)!!!

Friday – April 1 – No fools here!
Orlando Voxeons showed up to begin occupying their new home on the 10th floor. They found their new desk locations and were able to get settled in. Rob Patton and his team, along with Lincoln Anthony had our corporate network all moved and working. Being predominantly paperless, our folks were able to sit down, open up their laptops and get right back to work. Overall, an incredibly smooth move of nearly 100 people. While there’s still a lot to get done, we met our goal of moving in by April 1.
 

A meeting in one of our new “stand up” meetings rooms. I think we need to change the name.

One more thought…
There are so many people that worked hard and were truly passionate about making this happen…all the trades that actually built the space, the folks at Interstruct our General Contractor, the people that designed it at L2 Studios and Buholtz Professional Engineering, the reviewers and inspectors with the City of Orlando, and many of our own Voxeons. Without their commitment, we never would have made our move-in date.

We had a fantastic team and appreciate everyone’s dedication, but there are a few folks that really went above and beyond and deserve a special thanks:

Timothy Johnson with the City of Orlando
To begin, I want to thank all the reviewers and inspectors at the City of Orlando, especially Timothy Johnson – Division Manager for Permitting. It’s their job to protect us. It’s a tough job, because they make sure construction conforms to accepted standards at a time when everyone else wants to hurry up and get the job done. They take their jobs very seriously and I’m sure they’re often viewed as the “bad guys”, but it’s up to them to keep us all safe. In our case, with such an intense project with a very compressed schedule, they were really great about helping us move things along. In particular, Tim was always there to jump in and help give an extra push when we ran into snags (of which we certainly had a few).

Tony Hanson with Interstruct
Tony is our superintendent. He was hired out of the homebuilding industry and assigned to this project as his first venture into the world of commercial construction (it would have scared the heck out of me). He truly demonstrated Voxeo’s #1 Core Value – Customer Obsession. He hit the ground running, and was always on top of things. He made it happen – what more can I say.

Jeffrey Lurie with L2 Studios
Jeffrey is our main architect/designer. Not only did he work to define Jonathan’s vision, he was there with us every step of the way. Whatever issue came up, Jeffrey was there to help solve it.

Rob Ballentine with Ballentine Electric
Probably the largest part of this project, and certainly the most intricate was the power and lighting systems. Without question, Rob had the biggest challenges. While many people carried a lot of stress, other than perhaps Tony, I think Rob probably had the most. In spite of that, he was always committed to “find a way”.

Voxeo’s Rob Patton and his IT Swat Team (Ben Souders and Lawrence Sweeney)
During planning, there were many times I heard Jonathan say “don’t worry…we’ll take care of that”. Translated, this means “we’ll get Rob and his guys to do it”. Unfortunately, Rob wasn’t always there to say “But wait!”. Rob had (and still has) an incredible amount on his plate, but like always, he came through and we had everything we needed to make the move.

Voxeons Ashley Dooley and Sarah Morales
They took on the task to coordinate everything regarding the actual move. I couldn’t imagine that we could move 100 people and have it go so smoothly. Great Job!!!

Jonathan Taylor – Voxeo’s CEO
And finally…Jonathan. He had the vision and was always there catching the little things. We had video cameras throughout the space during construction, and you could see him roaming the space examining every little detail day in and day out…frequently at pretty strange hours when his daytime schedule required it. When he wasn’t there, I had the feeling he was playing “Big Brother” wherever he was, keeping an eye on the cameras. (In fact, late one weekend night my wife and I were there to check on our painter. My cell phone rang and it was Jonathan telling me that there were strangers wondering through the space…then a laugh.) Jonathan has given all of us Voxeons a really great new home…something fun, and something to be really proud of.

Thanks everyone!

Photos
We were too busy for new photos this week…we’ll try to post some next week. Here are links to the ones that were posted previously:

Photos on Flickr

And the panoramic shots Andre did (use your mouse to rotate right and left)

Voxeo 10th Floor Panorama1

Voxeo 10th Floor Panorama2

Today is the BIG DAY! As Denny has chronicled so well over the past few months, there’s been an insane amount of work focused on getting ready for today…

In just a few short hours, the move of Voxeo’s Orlando office begins. The contents of the entire 20th floor start to be moved down to the massive space on the 10th floor. Early this morning, I grabbed a shot of the security cameras showing things coming together:

Tomorrow it’s going be a whole different space!

Stay tuned for more photos, video and much, much more…

There are glass walls everywhere, the lights are burning, the A/C is cooling, and even the WonDoors are working. All that’s left is to finish up all the loose ends and get it all cleaned up. And oh yeah…pass our final inspections! It’s hard to believe, but this week we’re moving!

Not to say that everything is complete, but we’re about ready to pass final inspections and get moved in. After that we’ll still have a ton of little things to finish up, and a lot of settling in to do. Hopefully it won’t take too long to get everything finished and furnished, and ready to show to our friends and families.

In my previous posts, I’ve mentioned the Town Square with our own Barista, the two theaters for customer presentations and X-Box at night, and of course our state-of-the-art lighting system with no light switches. Here are a few more interesting features:

Anne happy with our new marker board walls

Writing on the walls – You’re never far from a place for creativity and/or brainstorming. All of the concrete columns are wrapped with dry erase marker boards, and there are 6 large, free-standing, double-sided marker boards scattered throughout the main office area. But best of all, there will be many, many walls painted with dry erase marker board paint…making the entire wall writeable and erasable. Video – It will be everywhere! There will be 7 meeting rooms with rear projection screens, 7 rear projection screens surrounding the main office area and quite a few large screen TVs throughout.

So what’s a WonDoor? As you know by now, the design for the space is very open. It begins from the moment you step off of the elevator and into the Town Square. But the city officials (and their building code) want to make sure everyone is safe. Other floors in the building (like the 20th floor we currently occupy) have big fire doors to block off the elevator lobbies. Unfortunately, the doors and their supporting walls severely detract from the openness we want. Enter the WonDoors – The WonDoor is a folding door that rolls away into a pocket. When open, you barely notice it. When closed, it meets all the fire safety requirements. But what’s really cool, is that they are motorized and tie into the fire system. If a fire alarm is set, they automatically close and secure the elevator lobby. If you need to exit when they are closed, you simply push on an exit bar and they open wide enough to exit.

Be sure to check out the latest photos…

Photos on Flickr

Here’s a few panoramic shots Andre did (use your mouse to rotate right and left)

Voxeo 10th Floor Panorama1

Voxeo 10th Floor Panorama2

South side of Town Square

The countdown continues…2 weeks to go…and yes, we’re still on track to move to our new offices on the 10th floor at the end of the month.  To look at the space today, you might not believe it.  To talk with Mr. Patton (our in-house guy with the team responsible for getting a lot of things ready), you might wonder how we can do it.  But if you’ve been watching everyone’s progress the last few weeks like I have, you’d certainly be encouraged by how everything is taking shape.

For the first month of construction, you really had to look hard to see the progress.  It was there, but you had to look up to see most of it; pipes, wires and vents were going up and being installed on the ceiling throughout the 60,000 sq ft space. You knew things were happening, but there was nothing to help visualize what we were creating.

Next, a lot of framing went up, and electrical conduit and wires were dropped inside.  At this point, you could start to get an idea of what we were building, but it was still hard to envision what it would be like.

Over the last few weeks however, things are finally shaping up.  You no longer have to use your imagination!  The drywall is almost entirely complete, and a lot of it is painted.  In the last few days, framing for the glass has been completed in a lot of the main areas such as around the boardroom, much of the Town Square, and around the main conference and training rooms.

Jonathan Taylor, Voxeo’s CEO showing plans to Michael Codini during his visit here from Germany

Over the next week we should see everything starting to come together…most of the glass will be going in, the majority of the space will be painted, ceilings should be dropped into conference and phone rooms,  installation of the main lighting should begin, and the life saving WonDoors (more about them next time) will be installed.

Be sure to check out the new photos Andree shot of our new space…

Photos on Flickr

In case you missed them, here’s links to my previous postings about our new office space:

Moving to the 10th…Voxeo’s new Corporate Headquarters

Moving to the 10th…Turning on the lights

The countdown has begun…target date for the move to our new offices on the 10th floor is the end of this month…less than 4 weeks away!  Here’s an update on our progress:

Most of the drywall has been hung throughout the office Most of the ventilation system has been installed Low walls with lots of power outlets have been framed out in the Town Square (for using laptops) Translucent panels are being installed near the ceiling, which will eventually be lit with colored LED lighting Framing for the glass walls is being installed throughout, and the glass panels are quickly following 30 racks for our power and network cabling have been assembled 100 doors and 400 legs have been delivered so we can start building 100 new doorsks (our desks made from doors)

Private corner of the Town Square

Last time I wrote and gave you an overview of our plans, and told you about the Town Square and the theaters.  Today I thought I’d take a moment to tell you about the lighting system.

The culture and environment at Voxeo is somewhat unique…or should I say very unique for a company in Central Florida.  From the time Jonathan Taylor (our CEO) started to work with the architects to design our new corporate home, it was obvious he had a vision that would raise the bar and put Orlando on the map of “cool” corporate offices (can you tell I was around back in the 60s?). One of the “coolest” features will be our new lighting system.

My first conversation with Jonathan about lighting last fall went something like this:

• Jonathan: “No switches!”
• Me: “What about the closets?”
• Jonathan: “They can use their iPhone”
• Me: “What about the cleaning crew?”
• Jonathan: “We’ll have motion sensors.”

Well, it’s no longer just a conversation…it’s now being installed.

All of the lights in our new office will be computer controlled…yes, all thousand of them (give or take a few).  Voxeons (how we refer to ourselves) will be able to bring up a screen on their computer or iPhone and control the lighting throughout the office.  Most importantly, each light can be controlled individually.  I personally like to have some light in the evening as it gets dark, but the engineers that sit 15′ from me seem to prefer sitting with the lights off while staring at their laptops (probably another sign of my age).  In our current office, the majority wins.  In our new space, I can have my light while leaving my neighbors in the dark.

To make it easy for the nightly cleaning crew, motion sensors will be located throughout to control ambient lighting for a zone.  When someone enters the area after hours, the lighting will go on and remain on as long as there’s motion.  A few minutes after they leave the area, the lights will go off.

It’s amazing that with all the advances in technology over the last 50 years, in most cases we still turn lights on and off the way my great-grandparents did.  This week we are planning to setup a test system in our existing office with a computer and a few lighting fixtures to see how the software works.  Being Voxeo, before long we’ll probably be calling an auto-attendant or sending them a text message to “dim the lights”.

Be sure to click this link and check out Andree Mora’s latest photos of our new space…
Photos on Flickr

In case you missed it, here’s a link to my last posting about our new office space:
Moving to the 10th…Voxeo’s new Corporate Headquarters

You may have seen the blog entry a few weeks ago with the video of Rob Patton’s WiFi Quadricopter flying in Voxeo’s new office space. I thought it was a good time to tell you a little more about this new office.

I’m sure you know how Voxeo has grown over the last few years. What you may or may not know is that we’re outgrowing our headquarters space in Orlando. We currently occupy the entire 20th floor of the south tower of The Plaza…downtown Orlando’s finest office and entertainment complex. The Plaza has two office towers, a residential tower, first floor retail/restaurants, a 12 screen movie theater and a parking deck.

Over the next few months we will be moving down to the 10th floor, the only floor that spans both office towers, as well as across the top of the parking deck…about 60,000 square feet. The new space will continue with our open office theme, but will crank things up a few notches.

As you exit the main elevators, you will walk directly into our new Town Square. This large gathering area (over 4,000 square feet) will be like our own in-house Starbucks, complete with our full-time barista! It will be a place to work in a more relaxed atmosphere or to casually meet with a few others. From the Town Square, there will be restricted access into our main office area. In addition to our doorsks (desks which we make by mounting legs onto heavy doors), our main office area will include a large boardroom which overlooks the new Amway Center, several meeting & training rooms, a dozen small rooms for privacy and phone calls when needed, and two theaters for presentations (and Xbox and movies in the off time). The theaters will each have 16 seats, with a folding wall between them that can be opened for larger groups when needed.

As of last week, we’ve passed our rough-in electrical and plumbing inspections, and a large portion of our framing inspection. Drywall is starting to go up this week and close in the walls (of which there aren’t many). We started construction just three weeks ago, and the goal is to be moving in at the end of March. We’ve made great progress quickly and should continue to do so week-by-week.

Here’s a link to a few photos we shot recently. We’ll add more as we move forward.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/voxeo/sets/72157626067146622/

We’ll try to keep you posted here so you can follow the progress with us!

P.S. You can read our posts related to the move at this URL:

http://blogs.voxeo.com/voxeotalks/category/10th-floor/

Would you like a birds-eye view of the 60,000 square foot office space that Voxeo will be moving to later this year? Voxeon Rob Patton recently brought his AR.DRONE WiFi Quadricopter in and recorded a flight through the 10th floor of our building in Orlando. Watch for the shadows of the quadricopter and also an appearance of a second quadricopter later in the video:

Rob plans to make other flights through the space as the construction progresses.

Voxeon John McDaniel also recorded a brief video showing the actual quadricopter in action:

Fun, fun, fun!