When last we checked in on our friends at Rise of the Cubicle Farmer, our friends AJ, Tony and Michelle were headed West. Armed with laptops, caffeinated beverages and a couple of videocameras, they’re on a 65+ day journey around the US and Canada stopping along the way to chat with entrepreneurs, workshifters, freelancers and the companies that help them do their work wherever and whenever they need it.
They’re even using our recently launched BatchBook iPhone App to build a database of all the cool folks they meet along the way. See what AJ had to say about the App here:
Today is an exciting day for us here at BatchBlue: we’re pleased to announce the official launch of our very own iPhone app for BatchBook. Ever since we first got our hands on the original version of the iPhone (way back in 2007!) we’ve wanted to get BatchBook its own spot in the App store. And now we’re there, free and available for our BatchBook users!
We went through a couple different iterations on the app but ultimately are glad we took some extra time to make sure we produced a solid first version.
Lets get to the features of version 1.0 (to see it in action, check out our fun iPhone commercial shot by two local kid filmmakers):
We’ve spent the early part of this month painting, painting and a little more painting of the two new floors of heavenly blueness that is now BatchHaus, the new home of the @batchblue crew. We’re still in the same eclectic Providence neighborhood that we’ve called our “communal space for the virtual team” for the past few years. But with five new hires in the past four months, we had outgrown the part-time meeting space and needed a proper office.
We found the perfect new home for our growing BatchFamily in the top two floors of a large brick Tudor home turned cloud-computing idea factory. Luckily, it just happens to be across the street from the local Starbucks, around the corner from The Edge cafe and near one of our favorite restaurants Red Stripe. Plenty of caffeine and good food to keep us motivated!
Co-working Thursdays at the BatchHaüs
To keep the same informal, tech-talking, coffee-sharing vibe that our virtual team has grown accustomed to, we’re opening up the new BatchHaüs common room as a co-working space for any local designers, entrepreneurs or other engaging geeks who care to join us once a week for some co-working action. We launched our first co-working day last Thursday and were thrilled to have local cultural leaders and fashion icons TJ Sondermann (@tsondermann), Anisa Raoof (@kidoinfo), Allan Tear (@aptuscollab), Jen Robbins (@jenville) and Jan Dane (from @tizra) join us for the inaugural event. Yummy Seven Stars pastries were enjoyed by all thanks to Jan!
Though we will always be a virtual company at heart, we’re excited to be putting down a few more roots and growing into our new home-away-from-the-home-office. Pam Slim wrote a great article explaining that her move into an off-site office was a dream come true. We could not agree more!
Last week was a milestone week for us. It was the two year anniversary of the launch of BatchBook and the starting week for our three (!) newest employees.
It’s a very exciting time here at BatchBlue. We’ve seen rapid growth not only in BatchBook, but in our weekly Twitter chat SBBuzz and our SaaS coalition the Small Business Web. We have some related major new launches coming up and to help us prepare, we were lucky to have found three amazing new employees.
Allow me to introduce:
Mikey Hougland (@lamikey) is a local artist about the town and our new on-staff designer. We have known Mikey for a couple of years and have attended many Providence Geeks meetings and even SXSW parties together. Not to mention her dog (and Twitter user!) @scoutsprout is a t-shirt wearing BatchBlue fan. We’re thrilled to have Mikey’s help in making the BatchBlue world visually interesting and useful for our customers.
Scott Blitstein (@scoblitz) is living proof that online relationships are the real thing. Scott was an early beta user of BatchBook, he has been one of the most frequent non-employee contributors on our forums, he’s written about us on a number of different blogs, participated in every contest we ran, regularly attends and periodically guest moderates on SBBuzz and helped us develop our new Experts Program. I’ve never actually met him in person, haven’t seen his resume or CV, didn’t ask for writing samples and yet when he expressed an interest in working for us, I knew immediately we had to hire him. And we’re lucky he said yes! He’ll be joining the Customer Experience team, working over on our forums, writing for the blog and just generally being the helpful guy that he is.
Global climate change is obviously a big, big issue. So what can we as small businesses do about it? As part of Blog Action Day 2009, BatchBlue turned to our resident experts in all things small business (our customers and our contact network, of course!) to find out what they are doing not only to bring in the green, but also to be green in their business practices.
During Tuesday’s small business Twitter chat #SBBUZZ, we discussed how there are many small steps you can take to help green up your business (and thus help do the big work of saving the planet!)
We were fortunate to be joined on #SBBUZZ last night by green expert, author and professional organizer Candita Clayton, who helped guide the discussion about what small business can do to save energy, reduce waste and fight climate change. Here are some simple, easy-to-implement tips that came out of our discussion:
Recycle: Make it easy to recycle paper, glass and plastic. Set up separate bins where they will be seen and used. If your business doesn’t have a program in place, start one! It’s worth it to be the squeaky wheel on this issue since it’s so important. And many communities have programs in place where you can drop off unwanted computers, printers etc. Keeping these hazardous items out of the landfill will go a long way in helping to halt pollution and resultant climate change.
