The first team trip, for me, was one for the books! This was definitely a lot of fun and a great way for us to regroup before the end of the year, and the perfect time to reflect on Workshop of One’s Own.
WoOO is a two-day workshop that Reclaim hosts, to introduce and train our Domain of One’s Own schools on the three parts that make up DoOO; WordPress, WHM, and WHMCS. This was our first time running a workshop in this capacity, but we want to continue to offer this to the schools we support through Domain of One’s Own. I thought this was successful. We spent the two days talking about each purpose of the trio that makes up Domain of One’s Own and how to support the program. We created a website that we hope becomes one of the go-to options for DoOO documentation. We reflected on what we could do to improve the workshop for the next go around in the car on the way to the airport just after finishing the final talks.
We decided that just talking to the participants wasn’t enough. That can get boring quickly. We ran an ‘escape room’ where we posed a series problems to fix a troubled website. We gave the participants 2 lifelines to ‘support’ where they could ask us questions. The group was determined to not use the lifelines, and they successfully made it through the room without using them! This escape room quickly became one of the favorite activities.
Another thing that came up was the size of the group. We opened registration to include 10 people total. But as things moved along we ended up with 6 participants. This was honestly the perfect size. We wanted this to be a focused group of individuals where they could get all of their questions answered, and hopefully, they could learn all they could about supporting Domain of One’s Own. We decided as a group that a smaller group like this would be a better option.
Once we arrived in NYC, most of our conversations shifted towards how we felt as a group, and what the future holds for Reclaim. We even talked about where the company has expanded since the last team trip, to Portland, around this time last year. Lauren and Jim both wrote about on their blogs, oddly enough both called Reclaiming Portland.
reclaiming nyc! @jimgroom @meredithfierro @ReclaimHosting pic.twitter.com/gzCa7vzeQ6
— Lauren Hanks (@brumface) November 4, 2017
So what does the future hold for Reclaim? Cloudron is definitely a cool one, Tim wrote about this on his blog, but I’ll give a short description of what Cloudron is. From their website “Cloudron is a platform to host apps on your server and keep them up-to-date and secure.” And this is a super seamless way to install a single instance of WordPress and Ghost. This is so simple, There’s no need to worry about remembering passwords when installing the application, you can access this with the one password you set up when you log in.
Continuing on the future of Reclaim, we talked about a potential new marketing campaign… I think this will be an awesome addition to Reclaim and let us reach new schools. Be on the lookout for more on that!
Talking through the future of Reclaim over breakfast this morning! #4life @jimgroom @meredithfierro @ReclaimHosting pic.twitter.com/isJgeOqJth
— Lauren Hanks (@brumface) November 5, 2017
Oh, and the future is bright! #4life https://t.co/UlAqSjmi4V
— Jim Groom (@jimgroom) November 5, 2017
This trip was also very inspiring. On Sunday morning, we found ourselves in SoHo and close to Chinatown for brunch. It dawned on me that one of my favorite Youtube Creators, Casey Neistat, has his office in this area. I only know this because it is literally a place on Google Maps. Casey is a filmmaker, entrepreneur, and content creator. He started a business called Beme, which is like Snapchat. Recently, this company was bought by CNN but the headquarters is still on Broadway in NYC. We decided to take an adventure to the office after brunch and it was honestly so surreal. I happened to look up just before we got to the office and there it was! I thought it was pretty cool see where someone works when I only see that in their videos. Taking away the screen as a barrier made this all so real.
We may have left Reclaim’s mark in NYC as well…
One last thing we talked about during our time in NYC was how we felt as a company. And I think we’re all in agreement when we say that things are going well. I’ve been on the team fulltime for two months now and I have no complaints. Yes, we all have those super boring days where nothing happens and then there are days when we’re getting new tickets left and right. We also talked about where we’d like to see the company go in the next year, and for me, I’d like to take on documentation as a project. I’d like to use writing documentation as a way to have an understanding of how everything works. When writing an article about something, it kind of forces you to learn about that topic before you publish the article.
So that’s what Reclaim is looking towards in the future! We definitely are growing, and this weekend in New York was a great time for us to get to know each other a little more and a great chance to see where everyone is at this point in their Reclaim career. Here’s to the future!
The escape room sounds like such a cool idea! Also, HI JIM! Glad to see your NYC take over was so successful!