Behind the scenes at open box, thoughts, discoveries and musings.
Yes - ordinarily “casual” means board shorts, t-shirts and slops. Except we wear that everyday (well, most of us anyway). So, at Open Box, “casual” means “not in uniform”, which, if you consider our everyday attire to be a “uniform”, would then be not casual (i.e. formal), right?
Our resident ninja, B-boy, was even kind enough to show off some of his ninja ghost-impersonation skills. 
And there you have it - proof that we can clean up nicely (if and when we want to, of course 
).
The Open Box Action Cricket team recently earned bronze medals in the “end-of-season” tournament.
Pictured below is the winning team:
Back (from left): Rob (man of the match), Ian, Dale, Mike M, Hannes.
Front: Irfaan, Craig, Doug.
The new league has just begun, and we’ve gotten off to a great start by winning our first game. Next stop - bring on the gold!
So on 13 and 14 August, Richard and I went to visit Rhodes University in Grahamstown.
We flew up early Monday morning and after an hour’s drive from PE; we managed to find our meeting rooms with 15 minutes to spare before our first interviews commenced. After the first couple of interviews really flew by, we met up with Lydia, Dave, Kevin and Chris from the Rhodes IS department at The Yellow Piano for lunch. The food was awesome – even vegetarian guy Richard wanted to go back there again. The company was also great – we ended up having a couple of beers with Kevin later that evening at The Rat and Parrot.
On Tuesday morning the first interview was at 8am. I decided to walk from our hotel – an idea that ended up not being that great with the branded bottle openers and a laptop on my back. When I arrived, I went straight for the meeting room I used the previous day, only to find myself barging into the middle of another company’s interview. Esh.
In total we ended up chatting to a total of 22 people. Not bad considering the Honours IS class isn’t much bigger than that. We went back to Rat and Parrot the Tuesday evening – a decision my head is still regretting as I sit here back in Cape Town 3 days later. That said, it was great to interact with the students on a social level and I did manage to bum a bottle of red wine off of one of them.
All in all we were very impressed with the university – the campus, organisers, lecturers, students, and the R&P of course.
A challenge we had as a relatively unknown entity was that we had to spend about half of every interview (i.e. 30 minutes) telling the candidates about us. This translated to about 11 hours of “sales talk” – some of which was done by Rich, some me, and for most interviews, both of us. As you can imagine, this could become quite exhausting.
Which brings me to my point. It was such a pleasure telling people about Open Box! From trying to describe our dress code by using Diana as an example, to discussing career paths using Michelle’s progression from Astrophysicist to feared and respected Project Manager. From telling them about the awesome powers of The Oracle, to portraying the adventurous voyages of TS CDT Support. The “company events” that so often gets in into trouble. Our liberal interpretation of the term “working hours” and our even more liberal consumption of biscuits and caffeine.
And then of course that there’s nothing better than waking up in the morning knowing that you’re working with intelligent, friendly, driven people who are all sharing an exciting journey together.
Now that’s selling with a clear conscience.
Well it’s that time of year again, the time when Open Box goes out into the field looking for new recruits to sign up with the company. This year Open Box even had it’s very own stand at the UCT Graduate Recruitment Open Day. The sessions saw our stand attracting attention from students from all areas of the university. We managed to attract some geneticists, many engineers and of course the accounts, computer science and information systems majors. Our stand looked awesome as can be seen in the picture below!
Following on from the theme of our AGM I thought that I’d post the Open Box Way that was discussed at length and presented at our AGM feedback session.
Why have this you may ask? Well, (and I’m cribbing from a rather large unnamed global technology company here) we felt it important to communicate what we, Open Box, are about. What we are so passionate about protecting to ensure that we have a company that we want to work for.
This is therefore what shapes our decisions and actions. In fact I’d go even further: they are the guidelines by which we test all decisions and actions. Are they consistent with this? If not, then we don’t do it. Simple as that.
The Open Box Way:
When I first presented this, a comment was made about the fact that there is a conspicious absence of any reference to staff or clients. This is for good reason because the points apply as much internally as externally - clients and suppliers.
This isn’t perfect, and it is something that needs to live and breathe as we do, so I look forward to comments and suggestions.
It was that time of year again - another Open Box birthday goes by, another AGM week sees management hogging the boardrooms and being generally unavailable while scheming and plotting for the year ahead, and then it all comes to a head on the grand evening at the end of AGM week, with the AGM trifecta: feedback, fines, and food.
The AGM feedback itself involved another stirring and informative oration by the commanders-in-chief, Malcolm (looking deadly in his tux with fake martini in hand) and Richard (just looking dead with his newly-aquired head injury). A new addition to this year’s analysis of forward coverage and backward musings was a formalisation of the “Open Box Way”. It was high time for us to put forth our manifesto for what it means to really be Open Box, in slightly more detail than ‘work hard, play hard’. I think the full “Way” deserves a separate post, but in short it may be expressed as follows: Open Box, like Soylent Green, is people.
Directly following the AGM feedback, Mike L (with the assistance of Craig D) took over administration of the biannual fines. Highlights included the CTO being fined for succumbing to a phishing attempt, the infrastructure manager being fined for shift-deleting his inbox, various awards for baring chests inappropriately, falling asleep in inappropriate places, not fitting into the shower, being noobs, being legends, running into walls, throwing cats over walls (yes, Hannes, video evidence does prove something), and demonstrating the best Blue Steel. Then barman Steve flipped it around and handed out fines to the Fine Master himself, as was only appropriate.
Having ensured that a number of personnel were suitably pre-heated for the evening, it was off to local restaurant “Tarragon” to celebrate in true Open Box style. There was much eating, drinking and being merry, as well as several people ensuring that they wouldn’t be passed over at the next round of fines. Richard made a valiant attempt at a speech, Craig D made an even more valiant attempt at answering support emails on his BlackBerry, Malcolm’s wife Amanda arranged for a number of young lads to make well-photographed, career-limiting moves (all part of a larger plot, I’m sure), and the restaurant staff and the other patrons were remarkably patient with us. A fantastic time was had by all, for which we certainly have the Open Box admin team to thank… and a number of people ended up at Tiger later that evening, for which they certainly only have themselves to blame.
A new year at Open Box dawns, albeit with a mild hangover, and we have much to look forward to. Christmas, for example, is practically around the corner…
Sunday Morning this past weekend saw a couple of us tackling the Tokai Forest on Mountain Bikes. After what seemed like an age of hill climbing, those who hadn’t been out till the early hours the night before seemed to take it better, the fun could begin. The spate of recent rains had left a couple of awesome muddy stretches on the single track downhill. Rich got a chance to test out his new wheels, and Dex got the opportunity to get his front wheel replaced. An unfortunate incident with, well I’m not quite sure what, left Dex’s front wheel buckled, and a slow ride to the finish. Luckily it was nearby…
The picture below was taken at the end of the ride, to be repeated soon I think.
The Open Box Action Cricket team did us proud last night with yet another victory, this time over a team called the “8 Balls”. The match was well played by both sides with a few tight moments that kept the supporters glued to the action. With the season just beginning, there’s still plenty of play to catch if you are interested in supporting the team.
The photo below shows the focus the team had moments before taking a wicket from an unsuspecting victim:P
Quite often it’s the case that we have representatives of the Open Box team offshore, however very rarely is it in the same place, and even less frequently at the same time. About two weeks ago we managed to have four guys in New York City, at the same time no less. With such a rarity we decided to take a quick snap at a dinner celebration at Rockefeller Center Cafe.
Brendan shows us how it’s done, with the magic of cloning:
