Voxeo Talks

The Orlando Business Journal recently interviewed our CEO, Jonathan Taylor, for an article about Voxeo’s growth. The story, which ran December 23, 2011, outlined Voxeo’s plans to hire approximately 100 new employees in the Central Florida area throughout the next five years. More immediately, 20 new hires are anticipated for 2012. This is all thanks to a 25 percent increase in 2011 revenue, as well as projected growth for the New Year.

Voxeo’s leadership team will be seeking additional software developers and technology-related professionals. According to the Orlando Business Journal, these will be competitive positions to fill due to local demand. The article also reports that approximately 9,400 telecom and related industry professionals are currently working in Central Florida.

Read more here.

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

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

Our Voxeo Labs team travels all over the world speaking at developer events and helping with “___Camp” events, hack-a-thons, and any other kind of event that can help grow the developer community in that region.

We also enjoy helping build the developer community in the regions where our offices are located and so we were pleased last night to host in our Orlando, Florida, headquarters a “Ruby 101″ class taught by the Jumpstart Lab team and sponsored by Envy Labs and our own Tropo cloud communications service.

As this photo from John Higgins shows, it was a packed session full of people looking to learn more about the Ruby language:

We’re pleased to provide this space and will be looking forward to doing even more of this in Orlando as we move into our new office space over the next few months.

As our CEO Jonathan Taylor tweeted out today and posted to Facebook, we just closed on a new 60,000 square foot office space in the Plaza complex in downtown Orlando which will be the new corporate home of Voxeo in Q1 2011:

It’s new office space so we are able to build it out to our specification – and Jonathan has a very cool plan in mind!  It will be more of a campus environment including an 8,000 square foot cafe/work space that seats up to 80 people (think like a Starbucks in your own office). There will also be a 7,000 square foot incubator / co-working space that will be available for 4-6 young, creative companies to use.

On that note, if you – or anyone you know – are with a startup looking for space, Jonathan is interested to talk.  The Plaza in downtown Orlando is in a great location with a wide range of restaurants all around and a cinema in the building…  drop him a note!

Stay tuned for more info on the big move… you can be sure we’ll have pictures and more up as the date draws closer.

We were very pleased this morning to have a visit by Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer to Voxeo’s corporate headquarters in downtown Orlando. Just yesterday in his “State of the City” address (which you can watch on video at that link), Mayor Dyer mentioned Voxeo as one of the “job creators of tomorrow” and an example of the high tech companies based in Orlando.

Here are two pictures of the visit with Mayor Buddy Dyer on the left and Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor on the right:

Voxeo announced today that the company made the “Top 100 Best Companies to Work for in Florida” list. As a marketing professional, I was happy to hear the good news and excited to share it. As a Voxeo employee, I wasn’t at all surprised. My colleagues and I have the good fortune to experience first hand what makes Voxeo a great place to work.

“Voxeons” tend to be highly enthusiastic about their jobs and this is a big part of why the work environment is so remarkable. Voxeo’s open-air office setup facilitates frequent communication and project collaboration. The fact that we share a common mission to create, market, sell and support a superior product further contributes to a consistently high energy level. And then there’s our 99% customer retention rate – a statistic in which we take great pride. 

Of course the power of great benefits and perks can’t be underestimated.  There are the little things – like our Friday lunch buffet and the Voxeo café, which is staffed by a talented barista and stocked with an abundance of snacks.  Because we have fun together, there are company parties and family outings like our trip to the Kennedy Space Center and our annual 4th of July party. And because at least 80% of us (if not more) are techies, Voxeons rank the fact that employees are outfitted with the best equipment, including MacBook Pros and iPhones, high up on the list of benefits. So what’s at the top? For me it’s 100% paid healthcare for the entire family and the flexibility I need to successfully balance work and family.

So, while I wasn’t surprised about Voxeo making the list, I was incredibly excited and proud to see the company recognized for its efforts in cultivating a great workplace. The news is in the August issue of Florida Trend and online at www.FloridaTrend.com. Voxeo underwent a two-part selection process that included an evaluation of workplace policies, practices, philosophy, systems and demographics, as well as an employee satisfaction survey. The combined scores determined the top companies.

“Having started companies in Silicon Valley, New York, and Orlando, I know first-hand the great advantages Florida and its citizens offer to rapidly growing entrepreneurial companies,” said Jonathan Taylor, Voxeo’s CEO. “Voxeo’s philosophy is to attract and retain the brightest minds in Florida and to recruit talent to Florida from around the world. This award is particularly meaningful because it recognizes the talents and contributions of our employees — incredible people who make Voxeo a great place to work.”

Click here to read Voxeo’s press release or learn more about working at Voxeo.

This Thursday, March 19, 2009, we are very pleased to be hosting the monthly meeting of the Orlando Ruby Users Group. We’ll be showing people the Ruby interface to Tropo.com, looking at some of the Tropo sample applications in Ruby and talking about how Ruby can now be used to create all sorts of different applications that interact with voice, IM and SMS.

The evening will start with gathering downstairs at street level in the Urban Flats restaurant at 6:00pm for dinner. At 7:00pm the group will head upstairs to our office on the 20th floor. In his announcement to the ORUG mailing list, ORUG organizer Gregg Pollack indicates that if you are arriving after 7pm you should call him at 407-754-5517 so that you can be let into our office.

Our office is at 189 South Orange Avenue in downtown Orlando, FL (the “Plaza” building at the corner of Church and South Orange). There is a parking garage in the actual building where you can pay to park – enter on Church Street. There are several other parking garages in the area. A map and directions are available online.

We’re glad to host local events like this and look forward to seeing what this group of Rubyists will do with Tropo!

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