SwitchGear Update

Yesterday we finally signed the lease on our office space. You can find a few pictures of the space over on Flickr.

Man, was that a protracted process.

Finding the space was only half the battle. Then it was lease negotiations…

We had the legal guy we were using to get the company’s operating agreement set up to look over the lease. Don’t skip this part - it was worth the money…

As the space was recently renovated, we got choice of carpet, colours, cabinets, a new kitchen, etc… It’s also in a great location with plenty of parking and lots of natural, but not direct, sunlight. All in all, I think we did well.

On Tuesday, the phone lines come in and over the upcoming week the landlord is installing extra power outlets and our low-volt guy is coming in to install Cat5e cabling everywhere.

We’re using Cat5e for the phone lines as well as for the network - don’t skimp on this. It’s only a few bucks extra and you never know what you might want to run over those lines.

Then on Friday the final city inspection happens and the process should be over.

So now we need some stuff to put in it and today Joe and I did the trip to Ikea.

It felt like buying stuff to kit out a new apartment! Desks, chairs, kitchen table, table for server stuff, bookcases and cups (I’ll bring in my own teapot). Whee! It all arrives on Monday.

Hopefully by this time next week we’ll be fully operational in the new office.

Not that a ton of progress hasn’t been made in the meantime.

As far as technical stuff goes, the source tree, build system, bug database and internal wiki are all up and running. We’re writing code and getting the full architectural underpinnings in place - stuff is actually running. Finding time for that in amongst the myriad of meetings has been interesting to say the least!

Also, I forgot to mention it when it happened, but we finally signed the LLC’s operating agreement (more on that aspect in another post), accountants are engaged and most importantly we believe we’ve found a cool law firm to work with.

Why do I say most importantly? Well, other than the obvious need for good legal help, those guys come loaded with connections.