Team VIP meetup in Miami

The nature of a distributed company is such that you rarely get to see your colleagues unless you make an explicit effort to do so. Team VIP is eight people in Portland, San Francisco, Toronto, Milan, and Sofia, Bulgaria. Fortunately, working for Automattic means we get to meet up, socialize, have fun, and collaborate in person at least a couple times per year. This past week, we relaxed (somewhat) in South Beach, Miami.

Highlights from the week include:

• Great conversations with everyone on the team. Our support workflow is really hitting its stride, and I think we have a much better sense now of where we want to take our internal tools.

• Relaunching LIFE Magazine on WordPress.com Tuesday night at the steak house. When I pulled my laptop out at the dinner table, I thought the waiter was going to ask me to close it. Instead, he offered a wifi connection.

• Figuring out how to “fix” rewrite rules for VIPs. Now, to finish and test the implementation…

• Sunset boat ride through the Miami harbor. Ultimate chill out session.

• Lots of great food: Cuban, steak, sushi. I took a semi-break from veganism and allowed myself to eat meat one meal a day.

• Awesome daily runs along the South Beach boardwalk, with a seven miler on Thursday.

All photos, except for the group shot on the boat, were taken with my fancy new Canon S100.