As Highgroovers slowly trickle in to our brand new digs at the Stoveworks, I’m happy to report that this “Iteration” of the office is awesome.

How did we go from having no office (a few years ago) to this?

A long time ago (back in 2006 to be exact), Highgroove had no office. I worked from home, from coffee shops, or traveled to our clients. About 2.5 years ago, I came to visit a friend, Mike Landman of Ripple IT at his office. I met with him, and remembered having to take a phone call, and asking if I could just plop down at one of the extra desks in his office for a few minutes to take the call.

Two hours later, I realized that having a desk at an office was a nice change of pace, and made me super productive. I asked Mike if I could rent a desk. “Sure thing,” he said. Pretty soon I was renting 2 desks, then 3, then 4, then a tiny room, and then the front section of his office. When it came time for Ripple to move, they asked if we wanted to go with them, to share the next office. We were ecstatic to share another office with a great company.

Fast-forward to a few months ago, and we out-grew our space. It was time to leave the nest. We started looking for space, and even gave up on our first search. Nothing quite fit the bill. We knew, because we had a document outlining the needs of the first office space (at Ripple), and the next Iteration – this space. It had all the things that worked, and all the things that didn’t quite work. It also had a list of the top things we wanted, and we sorted that list to the top priority (kind of sounds like Iterative Development of software).

We are so proud of this space. It truly reflects our amazing culture of personable developers, optimistic and trusting – true craftsmen (and women) iterating on everything.

We’ll be posting more pics today and all this week of our favorite features of the new office. Come stop by for a tour.

Image credit: twotoneatl (Jon Woodroof)