Roaring Exoweb :

Exoweb, the dynamic and geeky company I have been working for during the last 1.5 years has been growing quite significantly - while I, fossil in the meantime, was still “ExoMate 25” when I joined, we will soon be welcoming our 54th colleague.

Rocking? Sure! One issue we had to tackle, however, was one that everyone shaping up faces: with increasing muscles even a shiny T-Shirt starts to tweak. Yep, our loft like office space needed some serious expansion, since, hey, reducing chillout space to cram in more people was simply no option.

What followed provided me with ample insight into what renovating in China can imply. Yes, speed is not a major problem (except if you wish to convince a neighbour that an office on the second floor instead of in our immediate zone of expansion is a great idea..^^) and yes, you can have and afford 30 workers to work in parallel on a space no larger than 400m2. But when it comes to orchestrating them, things can become very tricky and intensive, especially for relative rookies like myself. At the end, finding a toilet mounted, meaning cemented onto a pipe in a way that the toilet's opening does not 100% flush with the pipe below won't reeeally surprise you anymore.. We were immensely happy to have Holden and his great experience and insights aboard! ^^

Let there be no doubt about this: the office was a hostile zone for all living creatures during just about a month. Dust was thicker than Beijing smog, smells intoxicating and the noise at times louder than Mick Jagger and Angus Young could ever get, combined. While our branded headphones and masks reduced the suffering slightly, it was not quite enough. Yes, the few mates working at the office during this time suffered and Deyatech, our partners in crime, moved out for a bit. We are happy they are back and still consider us friends. ;)



But hey, IMHO, it was worth the suffering. The stinky toilet is history (eg. pic above), the relaxation area is extended, featuring Nintendo Wii, bigger library and (small) bar, whiteboards are everywhere (the ones in the toilets, meaning to brainstorm when you really have the time, are about to be put up), our new colour, “sweetpotato”, complements the others, Starbucks-like once nicely (IMHO.. I know some are not quite sure about it yet.. ^^) and we even got 3 BBQ equipments for our pimped up rooftop terrace.

Yes, some issues are still not quite in sync and need to be worked on to complete our journey from good to great, but what we have reached was definitely a valid pretext for a party..

Party! How? We thought: “hostilities” belong to history, armageddon-like dust has settled and we are in this strange mood to celebrate.. “Roaring” it had to be, Swingy.. A theme party, the "Roaring opening of the new ExoOffice”, the 1920s on May 25th 2007 in Beijing resulted.


Yep, I won’t lie: I love theme parties. I love to see people switching into roles they do not normally play. And this party was… well judge for yourself:




BBQ and swinging on our rooftop terrace profiting from a warm summer night, bluffing our way to the poker jackpot, sipping cocktails or whiskey, straight (I still have my doubts about that stuff.. ^^), enjoying homemade music by Tim and Greg – don’t shoot the pianist – Jakacki, singing (resp. trying to) playing the Wii or simply chatting the night away while looking gooood.. ;)



Mates, friends of mates and AIESEC gang: you rocked and were looking damn good! Let’s hope we Exoweb will continue growing, giving us more reasons to expand our office space and.. celebrate! ^^

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PS: if you want to see more pics you can turn either here or here. If you are living in Mainland China, where Flickr services are currently "facing problems" you might want to use this.

roaring twenties, party, beijing, python, software, exoweb