It was fun to write and it’s getting a few comments and suggestions which is very pleasing! Take a look – Coffee in the USA.

Of course he couldn’t take it off all night for fear of what his hair might look like underneath and even walked all the way home wearing it! We invited Kara and James (who manages the shared office space) along to dinner as well as a couple of new staff who’ve just been hired but don’t start until the New Year. It was a great evening of pizza, wine and ice-cream. It’s going to be a big year for us next year and it was great to go out as a group and all get on so well.

This year I made cupcakes for the office – my first cupcake baking experience here (they went down well with the office buddies, several of whom were Vend boys visiting from New Zealand who couldn’t resist Edmond’s banana cake in cupcake form) and I baked them in Santa Claus cupcake papers I’d been saving for a special occasion. I made The Mister stop work and have morning tea with me.

I was very surprised the next day to come out of a meeting to find a pink box on my desk, filled with mini cupcakes with orange frosting arranged by my boss in New Zealand – so lovely!

And finally, 5 years on with Xero and one of my dreams to be moved to an overseas post has come true! Very humbling to be trusted with such a core move for the company as we set about building a US team and breaking into such a big market. It’s pretty cool working here – I don’t get out of the office much (well, except for that rash of conferences in November) but with the 101 (freeway) just out the window and all the tech companies around San Francisco it certainly feels like we’re at the start of something big. It is strange not being in the Wellington office with all the people we’ve come to know over the last 5 years but we’re all so connected online and my job hasn’t really changed that much, that it just feels like carrying on as normal.

Now then, I wonder where I’ll be this time next year? New York perhaps?

We were there for a very full-on 3-day conference where Xero had an exhibitor’s/vendor’s booth which saw us getting up really early to be on form at our booth at 7am while the conference delegates wandered around with their breakfast, then manning the booth and nipping in an out of conference sessions (about accounting … just to keep up with the current thinking and trends) but always being on hand for demos on into the evening sessions then going off out to dinner with other vendors we’ve made friends with – laughing and telling stories about the lack of coffee and various booth visitors before snatching an hour or so to check email before falling into bed rather late. Repeat. Repeat. Rod was in town for the conference and made a couple of presentations which seemed to go down very well – excellent news given we were at a conference for people who belong to a group of experts and advisors for our biggest competition here in the States, QuickBooks.

So, aside from that, before I forget, here’s my random list of observations and experiences in Las Vegas outside of the conference:

Casinos

• smoking is still allowed inside at the casinos – which are in the lobbies of most of the hotels, including the brand new hotel we were staying in. My eyes and skin are suffering – you never get used to the smell
• lobbies are wall to wall slot machines, card tables, bars and a section for high stakes players. There really are people slumped over the coin slot machines waiting for their lives to change at any hour of the day or night
• it wasn’t really anything like the movies – I didn’t find it particularly glamorous and aside from the total over the top bling and enormity of the hotels I didn’t really feel any money in the room. No-one was dressed like a high roller, there were lots of tourists in multi-colored sweaters and groups of friends in the 20’s and 30’s.
• You’re not allowed to take photos inside the casinos … unless you grab one from a walk way

• some of the older casinos are gross – doors open out into the strip with girls pole dancing to entice you inside, sticky carpets, free booze, tacky palm trees

Hotel

• our hotel, the brand new Cosmopolitan (where the conference was held) was spectacular – I was like the little girl being taken into the fairy store – everything was shiny and big and our room was amazing

• we had a sofa/coffee table/desk area
• a huge shower with a seat in it that you could watch one of the 2 TV’s from
• clever lights with labels that said ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodbye’ and dimmed on or off the entire room lights
• there were orange accents everywhere – the hotel guide, trim on the robe and slippers, wall hangings
• we had a deck with a little double sofa and amazing view over the Bellagio fountain

• the closet knew when you were approaching, even before you opened the door, and turned it’s interior light on
• the hotel had a Pillow Butler and despite The Mister not enjoying any of his 4 huge dumpy fluffy pillows he was too nervous to ring the butler in the night to try out some other pillows

but

• the toilet door automatically closed which meant it could me stuffy and wiffy
• the Hello Goodbye dimming lights became a real nuisance because only certain lights could be individually controlled. And the ones that could didn’t have an on switch but rather repeated clicking of an up dimmer and down dimmer so you never knew if the light was one of the individually controlled ones until you’d spend a fair amount of time clicking
• there was a family sized microwave and a dishwasher in the room but not a bowl, cup or fork in sight. Just 2 tumblers, 2 wine glasses and an ice-bucket. You wouldn’t microwave anything in those but I suppose you’d put them in the dishwasher
• there were no mugs and no coffee maker and no kettle. They really want you to go to the expensive cafes and restaurants for your food and drink. We’d take our own travel grinder, filter papers and hario knowing that that’d be the only way to get decent coffee but making it was a challenge – save that for another blog post
• and the biggest downfall of all was the failed upgrade of their network in the wee hours of our first morning there. The upgrade was to be finished by 5am Friday to the system that operated the TV, phones, cable and wi-fi internet but it wasn’t – we were in a hotel for a reasonably large technical conference where the internet and cloud solutions like Xero were being promoted to 700 accountants and there was no internet. Until about 5pm on Wednesday when the conference closed. We had a portable Mifi device that we used when we could but with everyone having to use their phones and Mifis over 3G that network was flooded and gave very poor and unreliable connections. The hotel rushed out to the nearest Radio Shack and bought a whole lot more Mifis but that didn’t really solve the flooding problem. It was painful and shed Xero in such a bad light at times – how can we get these accountants who use desktop software to consider an online solution when their fears of downtime and inaccessibility were being played out right in front of them? Thankfully it was the whole hotel that was affected so there were some very frustrated people around so I don’t think anyone was too critical of our product

Outside

• You can drink anywhere and alcohol is free if you’re gambling so there were streams of tipsy people out on the street or in the shopping centers carrying glasses and other garish vessels shaped like some casino theme or yard glasses with straws
• People bundled up against the cold (yes it was cold this time of year there) were in oversized t-shirts and hoodies advertising girls were in groups on street corners handing out pamphlets and cards for strippers and shows – they had this knack of flicking the cards in your face to try and draw attention to them and pushing right into your personal space to take one
• If you weren’t drinking or gambling or spending your winnings in a lavish shopping centre (all the huge brands had individual stores there Prada, Tiffany, Tumi, Louis Vutton …) then you were being encouraged to buy girls. T-shirts, placards and mobile billboards being driven around on trucks advertised “Girls Girls Girls ready for you in 20 minutes”. Gross
• The fountain is pretty special – here’s a video of it

• Just a block either side of The Strip, the buildings stop suddenly and give way to a barren wasteland, brown land with rows and rows of houses where everyone who works in the casinos and shopping malls lives

Coffee

• None worth drinking – not around The Strip anyway. Take your own beans and machinery. Even if you have to make it at a conference table looking calm and not desperate and addicted

The place is kind of surreal. Over the top. I had this strange feeling of everything and everyone being kind of fake. Or full of dreams based purely on luck and will-power if they had any – although I’m told some gambling requires skill and knowing the temperature of the table.

I worked in the hotel and cafes but during The Mister’s presentations I knitted in the back row or out in the foyer while I waited for him to answer all the questions afterwards … Jif caught me!

It’s fairly rudimentary at the moment but every other day something new for the office arrives whether it be a water cooler, giant poster of some All Blacks, white board markers, cutlery or hooking up the front door intercom. We sit in our corner

with a view over the freeway.

Great to have somewhere so quickly to base ourselves.

http://clients.wedo.net.nz/p1011807437/h299d72bf#h299d72bf

Oh! And here’s one the photographer caught of me watching The Mister’s presentation … that’s NOT boredom on my face, it’s awe

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wdcnz/sets/72157627228634772/

Thanks to WE DO Photography.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wdcnz/5941653694/in/set-72157627203741560

1. focussed work on one project
2. control, central knowledge of project – specialist position
3. some hands on e.g. enough to know basic workings of a system
4. technical involvement even if at a high level
5. writing specs/guidelines
6. control of work and workload
7. implementation work – client side i.e. working with clients as they understand and use a new system and feedback/suggest modifications to development company
8. self-delegation and responsibility
9. processing feedback and requirements
10. flexible work hours and telework environment

A process or system gives a sense of expectation.

20 March 2000

At the time I was working at Innovus which had recently bought out Extrados/Spunk Media so having our small web services company swallowed up by a larger corporate probably brought on my evaluation.

Now, as the Community Manager at Xero I’d say this list if applied practically is flipped on its head – I probably still value all these things but in reality:

• I don’t have focussed work on one project, in fact my work is not a project
• My days are interrupt driven by whatever comes my way from a selection of social media sites so in any day I could do one thing or a hundred things. I have no control over my workload in that sense but I also have a manager in a different location and not much contact so am totally autonomous in that regard
• I do work remotely quite a lot but always feel terribly guilty about it
• My entire days are filled with processing feedback and requirements with a certain amount of helping our customers understand how to use Xero and interpreting/translating/feeding modifications back to our own product and development teams
• I don’t have control at a project level or control over my day but I do feel in control (mostly) of Xero’s social media – I am totally responsible for Twitter and other means of responding to customers using social media sites
• I’m getting less and less hands on but I still know the product. I don’t write much any more, let alone specs and guidelines
• My work is all public now like it’s never been before, public and attributable, not just content on a website
• I’m developing a thicker skin – everyone’s watching, colleagues are questioning, the CEO sees what I do

Interesting. Would be good to see this again in another 10 years.