Heading Off To Mexico With Lullabot's New Hires

Retreating

As a distributed company, our annual Team Retreat has become a very important part of what makes Lullabot work. We all get together in one location to hang out and gain a better understanding of one another. We do a great job of tele-connecting on a daily basis, however this chance to meet in-person fills in all the gaps lost over the internet - sense of humor, personality quirks, and all the peripheral stuff that we might miss during our work-focused communication. So we get together to talk about the future of the company, to eat good food, and mostly just to hang out. This year, the team will be oceanside near Cancun, Mexico soaking in the sunshine and celebrating a banner year for Lullabot.

Since the Team Retreat is such a good energizer for the company, we often find ourselves trying to squeeze in new hires so that these new people won't need to wait to get to meet the rest of the team in person. This year is no exception. So in addition to the great people we've added to the team in the past few months, we'll have several brand-spankin'-new people at the retreat. Toes in the sand on a Caribbean beach – nice way to start a new job!

The New Guys & Gals

Jeff Eaton posted our first-quarter hires back in April. Since then we've been steadily growing Lullabot's talent pool. It's hard not to gush when I look at the amazing people who have joined our team. Let's list 'em off:

Emma Jane Westby

Emma Jane Westby (née Hogbin) has been a well-known figure in both the Drupal and the larger Open Source communities for some time. She has received many accolades and awards including being recognized in 2010 by The Google Diversity Programme for her efforts in increasing female participation in software development. Emma joins the Drupalize.Me team as its Education Development Coordinator. This basically means that she's thinking about training, curriculum, marketing, and just about everything else that Drupalize.Me needs to keep kicking ass and knocking out great content.

Adrian Young

Adrian Young is a talented Drupal developer who lives near Minneapolis, Minnesota. Adrian spent his formative years pursuing a master’s degree in architecture. He’s always loved the combination of art and science, creativity and precision engendered by the discipline. Somehow, along the way he discovered Drupal and web design and realized it was an even better fit for combining his left-and-right-brainedness (yes that’s a word). Adrian brings his considerable enterprise experience with both front-end and back-end Drupal to Lullabot’s client services team.

Justin Harrell

Justin Harrell is the new superstar designer on our Drupalize.Me team. We had a lot of really great designers apply for this position and we were honored when the best of them agreed to join us. Justin lives in Cleveland where he cranks out amazing design work, awesome illustrations, and superlative HTML and CSS. Justin has already overhauled Drupalize.Me's social media design. Drupalize.Me subscribers will soon have their eyes blown out with more visual awesomeness courtesy of Justin.

John Albin Wilkins

I first became aware of John Wilkins (known to Drupal fans as JohnAlbin) when he started working on the Zen theme with me. He soon outpaced me doing things like casually creating his own CSS layout system and other magical feats which left me in awe of his front-end development skills. I happily handed over the Zen theme to him back in 2008 and he turned it into Drupal's most popular base theme, a position it has maintained for the past 5 years. John wields his ninja-level front end development skills from Taipei, Taiwan, where he works quietly at night while his wife and children sleep.

Dave Reid

I believe that at one time or another Dave Reid has been the maintainer of just about every module on Drupal.org. That may be an exaggeration, but he has certainly made a huge impact on both the Drupal module repository and core Drupal where he has been the maintainer of the path system, contact module, and the token system. Needless to say, Dave is a rockstar developer with some deep Drupal mojo.

Jesse Mathewson

Jesse Mathewson is our new Executive Assistant. If you ever stop by the Lullabot Activity Center in Providence, she'll probably be the one to greet you. Jesse spends her days keeping lists, shipping things, scheduling, booking, researching, and generally making sure that everything is where it needs to be to keep Lullabot running smoothly.

Kris Konrady

Kris Konrady joins Lullabot to help with HR and Bookkeping. It turns out that as the team gets bigger, this stuff gets more complicated! She helps keep us organized and on track. When there's a form to be filled out, check to be sent or received, or employment laws to be considered, Kris is probably involved in one way or another.

Amber Himes

Amber Himes joins the Drupalize.Me team as its latest trainer. Amber lives in that hotbed of Lullabot employees – Portland, OR, where she helps in a variety of ways at Portland’s four Drupal-related meetups. She has also hosts a regular Google Hangout called DevMunch, which takes a look at cool developers tools for people of all experience levels. She brings 2 years of Drupal development and training experience. Look for Amber in upcoming videos from Drupalize.Me.

Lisa Kastner

Lisa Kastner is Lullabot's new Marketing Manager. Her experience includes marketing positions at Canon, Billboard Magazine, and most recently the Specialty Food Association. Lisa lives near the sandy beaches of Long Beach, NY. Sometimes we can get so caught in our work that we forget to tell people what we're doing. She's going to make sure that we remember to share our great work on our projects, sponsor events, and generally interact with the world more!

Joe Fender

Joe Fender joins the Drupalize.Me team as its second "Joe", but primary developer. He will make sure that Drupalize.Me's technical needs get full-time attention. When we met Joe, he was living in Japan, however he is British citizen and now lives in London. Like so many great British world explorers before him, we don't expect Joe to stay put long. He can continue to work from Lullabot wherever he goes. And we look forward to following his travels as he rolls out new features for Drupalize.Me from around the globe.