There have been a lot of changes here at Blue Flavor over the last couple of months. When we started the company last year not only did we forge into unknown waters but we did so without any initial investment… 100% bootstrapped. We funded ourselves exclusively on client work using our personal laptops, servers and even furniture. Somehow we built a company.
As we approach our first anniversary we have some great news about our growth, but not without first saying good-bye to one of the founding members and a dear friend.
Matt May is leaving Blue Flavor
After helping create Blue Flavor and serving as our Director of Technology for the past year, Matt May has decided to leave Blue Flavor. Matt will be focusing on his expertise in accessibility, podcasting and new technology full-time.
Matt has been an excellent technologist aiding Blue Flavor clients from everything from accessibility to back-end development. It is impossible to imagine where we would be without him for this past year.
Matt will remain a close friend to all of us and we wish him the very best.
Blue Flavor moves to the “Center of the Universe”
After a year in little more than a one room echo chamber in lower Queen Anne, Blue Flavor has moved to a “new office”:http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=920+n+34th,+seattle+wa&ie=UTF8&z=15&ll=47.648911,-122.348514&spn=0.015178,0.041928&om=1&iwloc=A in “Fremont”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremont%2C_Seattle%2C_Washington, just off the Lake Washington “ship canal”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Washington_Ship_Canal and the world famous “Fremont Troll”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremont_Troll. Our new neighbors are Adobe, Google, Getty Images and about dozen Thai restaurants.
The new office is a work in progress, but when we are done we hope to have a formal usability/listening lab and a podcast studio. Looks for more photos and videos as we settle in, but until then check out a few photos that Nick snapped.
New Employee: Kevin Tamura
As of September 1, our family got a little bigger, joining us is Kevin Tamura as our new designer. Kevin comes to us from the Nordstrom.com team. He is exactly the kind of designer we’ve been looking for since we started; an excellent eye for design, formally trained, understands the difference between great graphic design and excellent interactive design.
Nick, Keith and I have known Kevin for some time and have been trying to recruit him away from his Nordstrom discount for some time. I’m not exactly sure how we managed to snag him, but we are definitely a better company now because of it.
New Employee: Tom Watson
September 1 also marked the first day of new employee #2, Tom Watson, our new technologist. Tom’s role will to put his fancy computer science degree to work for our clients and maybe one or two skunkwork projects. How Tom ended up at Blue Flavor is a bit of a long story, but he came to us from Children’s Hospital here in Seattle, the same place where Keith and I first started working together four years ago. Finding someone in Seattle with strong web Standards chops was a huge challenge and one we’ve been working at for a long time. Tom brings a much needed boost to our production and development capabilities and we are looking forward to exploiting them as much as he will let us!
Please join me in saying hello to Kevin and Tom and if you are Seattle, drop by the new office anytime!
Congrats on all the success, guys! Matt, good luck with whatever you do next. Kevin and Tom, congrats — you’ve got great gigs with some great guys.
Congrats on all the changes. A toast to the future!
Congrats Tom and Kevin, I’m sure you’ll make great additions to the flava!
Congratulations to the entire Blue Flavor team!
Contratulations guys! I look forward to what you are going to share with the community in the future!
With your new office basically sitting on the Burke-Gilman trail, it should be mandatory you all bike to work.
Congrats on the new digs, and good luck to Matt, Kevin, and Tom.
“Finding someone in Seattle with strong Web Standards chops was a huge challenge and one we’ve been working at for a long time.”
Do you mean finding someone and recruiting them for Blue Flavor or just finding someone period? If it’s the latter, that’s at least mildly depressing. I just moved back to the area after nearly a decade away and was hoping to find a lot of Standards-minded Web people here.
Best of luck in the new office. And I agree with Tom. You guys should definitely bike to work… at least when it’s not raining.
Patrick:
I just moved up here from the Bay Area and had difficulty finding a job where web standards were more than a minimal afterthought. It was a wee bit depressing, but there are a few gems in the employment world out there - it just took a heck of a lot more looking that i was used to.
Congrats Guys! I’m really happy for you. Drop me a line when you get a chance.
Sorry to hear Matt is moving on — and wish him well, of course. Congrats on finding the new folks.
Thanks for a tour of the new digs while I was visiting, guys! You should post pictures of the conference room table ;)
Congrats to Tom and Kevin! You guys are in some great company. Nice meeting you at lunch, Tom!
All the best in the future.