Never underestimate the impact of freshly vacuumed studio. We started the week by rolling up our sleeves and cleaning up – something we were in dire need of doing, as the office was looking like the result of a high-speed crash between an Apple shop (because we’re all mac-heads), a Lego Factory (don’t ask) and a paper recycling station (well, it’s an office, and the paper-less revolution isn’t really here yet). Attractive things work better.

Decisions, guts

Monday’s highlight, however, was not the smell of clean floor tiles, the renovated color of our carpets, or the pixelated video-game-inspired posters that were hung on the walls. On Monday, right before dinner, we hit an odd milestone – one I briefly mentioned on twitter: We said no to a candidate that hit the mark on 99% of our hiring criteria.

As you might have guessed if you’ve been reading our weekly notes, we’ve been rethinking the way we work for ourselves and our clients (we’ve recently decided to only take 4 consulting jobs in 2010 to make sure we’re completely passionate about everything we do – more here). So we’re not hiring until we have everything figured out. It was tough saying no to someone when our gut said yes but we believe it was for the best. If you’re hiring and looking for someone who’s revealed to be extremely passionate, a great PR person and an inspiring individual, get in touch and we’ll connect you.

Preparing for a stint in the valley

Anyway, we’re making big plans for the future and it seems like we (the whole team) may be spending a few months in Silicon Valley soon. Me, I can’t wait to go back, and the rest of the guys can’t wait to see how things are like over the pond. The whole idea is still in its embryonic stage – and there’s quite a few things, namely with immigration, to figure out -, but we’re all very excited about the prospect.

If you have ideas on how to solve the problem of hosting 6 or 7 people in or around San Francisco for about 4 months, please let us know. Housing is our number one concern at this point. But honestly, we see this as a good problem to have. We can’t wait, really.

Being a team of user experience enthusiasts, we were extremely excited when we got word of Ux-Lx, a user experience conference, in Lisbon, organized by one of our friends. We got even more excited when we saw the line-up. People like Pete Merholz of Adaptive Path, Jared Spool, Dan Saffer, Luke Wroblewski or Manuel Lima are always inspiring individuals, so a chance to see them all (and get back in touch with a few of them) isn’t an opportunity we’d easily miss – so we’re not missing it at all.

We’re bringing the whole team to Lisbon for three days packed with great talks and what we hope awesome inspiring conversations. And we’re not only bringing everyone down, we’re also – through our project management and online collaboration app, Goplan – sponsoring the event. We’re giving everyone attending the conference 6 months free of Goplan’s professional plan – which we believe will make a few people quite happy. It’s a great way to give back to a community we love, and to hopefully get feedback from likeminded individuals.

We do hope to see you at the conference, and if you’re not attending, we hope you’ll keep an eye on our blog as we’re planning on some really exciting ways to cover what’s being said on the event. Cheers!

You’ll notice this post is a few days late. New years got in the way of a timely post, but I believe the material herein makes up for it.

This was a slow but important week. 2009 is done – it’s funny how time flies. The office stood still as we gathered with families, friends to celebrate the new year. Ourselves, we’re concentrating on 2010 – it’s going to be an important, career (and company) defining year.

Important decisions were made. As I briefly mentioned last week, we have always struggled with the question of whether to focus on our products (which we love) or to help other people with their own through consulting (which we also love to do). We’ve reached a conclusion, we’re happy with our decision and we’re sticking with it.

The decision is to do both, but with a twist: we’re taking a very limited number of consulting projects each year from now on – we’re thinking of about 4. This is the best of both worlds. When we’re consulting, we’re inspiring and getting inspired by other people. When we’re working for ourselves, we’re reinventing our ideas and hopefully building special products that you can use.

I wonder (and the others do too) how clients will receive the idea of us only doing a limited number of projects. We want to make the best out of the time we dedicate to other people. We want to be completely passionate about it, so four projects seems like the sweet spot. We’ll see how it goes.

If we have one new year resolution, it is to bring passion back to our business. If you want to work with us (or to have us work for you) in 2010, get in touch – we’ll try to help. Thank you, and happy new year!

It being christmas, the office has been a little slow. Planning the future seems to be on everyone’s mind these days – future being the year of 2010, now desperately close. Time doesn’t necessarily slow down (it just bends slightly).

The question of whether we should keep building products and providing consulting services or just focusing on our apps keeps coming back (it did again when we went out to the Google dinner last week), and we often debate where we should go. We love building products and we love talking to other people about their ideas – and making those a reality whenever possible. If I may be allowed the exercise of predicting 2010, I’d say we’re going to try and balance the two (consulting and products) again. Still, the whole team is excited about Goplan’s growing numbers, so there’s at least a tendency to expand in that area – we have a few things lined up.

I’ve been dividing my time between designing the experience for Goplan’s mobile app and writing a series of articles that I hope to be able to talk about and publish soon. Finding more time to read (a list of what I’ve been reading is on my blog) and write has been a blessing. Inspiration is on a local high (it seems like the all time high is hard to beat) and ideas are popping up all the time. Exciting, no doubt.

We’ve had a friend over working with Tiago from the office for a few days which is always great. Being fans and advocates of co-working, we encourage our friends to show up at any time. There’s extra chairs and desks (heck, even monitors), so feel free to join us if nearby. We’re usually in the office until late hours (or early, depending on what 7am is in your bio-clock), so showing up at night is quite acceptable – bring pizza, we have the beverages.

You’ll hear more from our weekly updates in 2010. Have fun on the 31st – it’s the last day of the decade, and we don’t get a lot of those.