Thanks to everyone that came to Lunch 2.0 last week at Plaxo! Over 300 of you showed up to eat, drink, converse, and check your pulse. A bunch of people grabbed plaxo pulse t-shirts, and we even saw people wearing them at BarCampBlock this weekend. Best of all, everyone was enthusiastic about opening up the social web and putting users back in control of who they know.

There are already some great write-ups posted by Jeremiah Owyang, John McCrea, and others, and of course there are lots of photos to browse. A big thanks to everyone at Plaxo who worked so hard to make this event great, and thanks to everyone in the Lunch 2.0 community for joining us and eating our lunch! :)

It's hard to believe it's been over a year since we last had a Lunch 2.0 at Plaxo! After all, three of the four founders are current or former Plaxites! (read: a bunch of us liked getting free food at other companies, heh.) And so much has happened since then: we released an all-new Plaxo, we moved to a new building, and we built a new social web app. So it's high-time we had everyone back over to celebrate with us!

You can get all the details at lunch 2.0 and then RSVP on upcoming. You'll have the run of the office, the food will be yummy, and you'll get to hang out with a bunch of fellow tech and food enthusiasts. See you there!

--Joseph Smarr, open lunch hacker

Well, as crazy as it sounds, we decided to move our office the same week we were launching Plaxo 3.0!

The new office is really great. It's bigger, with lots of room to for now and for future growth. It's all ours, not just a floor of a shared multi-story complex. And it's not next door to Google, so we don't have to fret about when they will buy the building!

There's a lot of excitement at Plaxo these days, with a totally new version of the service, rave reviews from the press, a very interesting jump in user growth, and a new office. Why, it practically feels like a new company.

Of course, if you know people here, and you use Plaxo, you already know that our new address if 203 Ravendale, Mountain View, because your smart address book would have already been updated -- automatically and quietly. (Now, if only I can figure out how to get the address and logo updated on this blog!)

Here are a few shots I took on Friday...

The space has lots of natural light pouring in from the sides.

There's plenty of room for everyone -- and lots of unused space, ready for future growth -- or parties!

There are plenty of seating options, ranging from the zebra bench, to the big blue ball (that's Cam's choice), to the more conventional office chairs.

And what Web 2.0 office would be complete without an electric scooter to accelerate the pace of collaboration? I'm sure it will lead to a hilarious mashup in meat-space at some point!

The founders of fleck.com--and organizers of The Next Web conference--were visiting Silicon Valley from Amsterdam, Nederlands. They camped out at Plaxo for an afternoon and a fun time was had by all.

Pictured: Arjen Schat (fleck), Joseph Smarr (plaxo), Patrick de Laive (fleck), me/Rikk Carey (plaxo), and Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten (fleck).

The white suits are the fleck.com trademark. Fleck.com enables people to annotate any web page and share it with others. So, when they unveiled their first product, they attended a TechCrunch party hosted by Michael Arrington, and wore the white suits so that everyone at the party could annotate them!

A group of us from Plaxo found out last night when our own Glenn "Fiddich" Dixon from HipCal competed in the Guitar Hero tournament hosted by Meebo. His challenge was formiddable: if he lost in the first round, he would suffer embarassment; if he won the entire tournament, he would be embarassed for a different reason. His goal was thus a solid middle-of-the-pack performance, and that is exactly what he delivered.

The tournament drew quite a crowd.

Glenn (left) plays his heart out.

In his opening performance he won convincingly over his opponent on the song "Cherry Pie". Of the 16 competitors, he clearly showed a talent level that put him near the top. His second round song choice was "Can't You Hear Me Knocking?" and his opponent was one of the favorites to win the tournament. It was a seesaw matchup and ultimately Glenn suffered a narrow and nobel defeat. The contestants that made it to the final round were indeed masters of their game, and we were humbled by their performance.

All in all it was a fun night, and it was particularly nice to see so many Plaxites come and show their support for our guy!

During our recent Haxo day I decided to help one of our less productive employees contribute more to the company. For the past few months we’ve had a Nabaztag keeping us company by our desks. He’s a little plastic rabbit who connects to wifi and can be configured from the web. It can check your email, tell you the weather, let you know how the stock market is doing, and even practice Tai Chi. We thought it’d be really cool to have him read out Plaxo statistics every day, especially since we knew the 15 million member milestone was approaching quickly. Luckily for us, this guy has an open API you can use to send him text to read and directions to position his ears.

After only a week of practice he announced that we’d reached 15 million members. Swoot! In celebration, and since we enjoy the sound of his voice so much, we thought it’d be fun to let you send him messages too. We welcome compliments as well as criticisms.

So go ahead, send us a message!

Update: Thanks to everyone that sent us a message so far! By now, everyone in the office knows all-too-well the Nabaztag's "I'm about to announce a message" melody! :) Keep 'em coming. Here's a selection of the messages we've received so far:

• Hooray for over-priced wifi-enabled geek toys.


• Get back to work and stop messing around. You've got 15 mill subscribers to support.


• Do you really hear this in your actual office?


• Mark Foley was framed!


• I wonder how long before you turn this off .....


• thanks for the great product (ical/vcal support please)


• So what's the ratio of plaxo spam emails sent out to number of users?


• You should write a Plaxo calendar module for Google home pages.


• Hey guys, You rock, Congratulations


• Who's in the office so late? ;) Thank Mark Jen for this!


• Congrats Plaxo, it is nice to see you grow.


• Please tell your users how the Hip Cal integration is going!

But our favorite message so far came from the Nabaztag creators themselves (I wonder how they found out):

Hello, it's Marvel in Paris from Violet, we wanted to congratulate you on your achievements. What is Plaxo exactly about ? Did you look out the window of your office today ? By the way what is the name of your Nabaztag ? Take good care of each of you. Aurevoir !

In response, Plaxo is a "smart address book" (learn more), yes we did look out the window today, and our Nabaztag's name is jsmarr. Thanks for asking, and thanks for making such a cool and lovable gadget!!

We had quite the kickin' party at Plaxo last night; there were a ton of people visiting from various tech companies in the area. Here are some pictures from the event:

Here's Tawheed and Pete doing what they do best ;)

And Jeremiah, who also blogged about the party

Thanks for all who came; hope to see you at the next Lunch 2.0 event! :D

-- Mark Jen, Product Manager

There is a lot of “tech talk” on this site; for a change, I wanted to take a moment to do some reflection about a new Plaxo benefit. During the past 8-weeks, I have researched and designed a new paid Parental Leave policy here at Plaxo.

I want to thank Mischa for volunteering to be Plaxo’s “test case”! Mischa is our newest mom, at Plaxo. Mischa worked with me in order to help me “come up to speed” on the issues. Mazel Tov and congratulations to you, Mischa! Also, thank you, Ben, for championing this new policy, approving of one of the most generous and unique paid parental leave policies in Silicon Valley for a new Internet startup.

So, you might be asking, “what is the problem”? Did you know that parental leave is guaranteed as a result of federal and state legislation? California has led the way in the U.S. and has one of the most progressive parental leave standards in the U.S. However, this is poorly paid or unpaid leave! Have you ever tried to live on your state disability insurance? The U.S. is the only industrialized country in the world that doesn’t have fully paid parental leave other than Australia. There are 163 countries in the world that give women paid leave with the birth of a child, and 45 countries that give fathers the right to paid parental leave.

As I researched Plaxo’s new policy, I found myself sort of blazing new territory on this one, especially when it came to defining a fully paid parental leave policy. Some of the local Silicon Valley profitable firms offer paid parental leave. But how many pre-IPO startups offer fully paid parental leave to their employees?

In California, the only way for a parent to take paid parental leave is to file for State Disability Insurance or Paid Family Leave. However, when you calculate it all out, these sources of income are dismal at best. So, we decided that parental leave, before, during, or after the birth of a child, for whatever reason, isn’t necessarily a disability. It is natural (did you know that a vast majority of all women become mothers?) and we, at Plaxo, believe corporations need to support our parent’s and children’s needs. And, we mean really support them, with financial support.

We decided to look at supplemental approaches to state disability insurance. One way we came up with is to provide fully paid parental leave to supplement their state sponsored disability and paid family leave insurance. We will pay our Plaxo parents an amount equal to their current salary (minus whatever the state or feds give them) for up to 6-weeks in order to care for their newborns before, during or after birth, for whatever reason.

Although we lose our employee’s productivity during their paid parental leave, we believe they will become more thoughtful and more productive Plaxo employees when they return to work.

So that’s it. I work for Plaxo, a leader in paid parental leave. If you wish to sponsor such a policy at your own company and you would like to chat, please feel free to contact me directly.

Respectfully submitted,

Stuart Liroff
Sr. Director of Human Resources
stuart@plaxo.com

I’m the 7-day-old Director of Product Management at Plaxo. I've blogged a total of 67 words in my life - and not because of lack of opportunity. But these Plaxo guys believe strongly in transparency- so here we are.

Starting a new job is a little like starting to use a new application: You've heard some good things about it, some bad things about it, but you've decided it’s got something for you - so you take the plunge.

Four months ago, all I knew about Plaxo were the emails I had received (need I say more?). Then I learned while doing some peripheral investigation that it could free my Outlook data from my work computer so that I could see it from my home computer – or anywhere for that matter. I quickly downloaded Plaxo.
That night - I went home, logged into Plaxo Online, and saw my calendar and contacts (13 years worth from my now-previous work) now available to me without lugging and logging into my work laptop. WOW. Next I downloaded the toolbar for my home machine where my husband uses Outlook Express. Now all our contacts were in one place, and we created a calendar with the kids’ schedules. My life is now less split – if you know what I mean.

By coincidence, Plaxo came up as a career consideration. PERFECT. A product manager's dream: a great product, all kinds of opportunity for more functionality, as well as room for improvement ;-). After what seemed like 60 interviews (actually 12 - these guys are careful), things were looking good. In addition to the functionality, and the promise for MORE, and more better, the team met my criteria. They are very technically progressive, completely up-for-improvement, even if it means change, and basically, passionate about doing great things right. They also meet the bill in abilities: opinionated rocket scientists and inclined to move (VERY) fast. They even passed the good-time-over-lunch test.

So here I am.

Back to where I started - Starting a new job is a little like starting to use a new application…

When I started using Plaxo, I was confused - and anxious. I loved the synch and the access. But I was terribly worried: will this email my friends? Or worse yet, my old boyfriends? (The answer is no.) I worry. And finally – after years of perfecting my ability to worry – I am getting paid for it.

The Plaxo team is in the middle of an overhaul of sorts, and the office is talking about my old boyfriends (or those potential emails, to be more precise). I can’t wait to unveil the many exciting things we have coming out later this year – the worry free – only great value – Plaxo. (Note – I’m not in marketing)

As it probably goes without saying, I’m still using Plaxo. I love seeing my kids’ soccer schedule right next to my work schedule, and ALL my current contact info across all my applications. I can’t wait to do more. My usage patterns, fears and confusion are the subject of well deserved scrutiny around here. And soon – not only will I not need to worry, but I’ll actually stop worrying – at which time I’ll have to find something else for them to pay me for.

Heck – I may be so excited I’ll want to let my old boyfriends know… but I doubt it.

-- Laurel Lee, Director of Product Management

Next Tuesday (5/16) we're throwing a party to officially welcome the HipCal team to our family. Join us for free pizza and beer from 6PM - 9PM. To RSVP, leave a comment here or on the event's zvents page.

We only have room for about 100 people, so RSVP soon (and include your real e-mail address in the comment form so we can confirm you).

In addition to the blast from the past Todd just mentioned, we just uploaded a video that was created at our third Haxo day a few weeks ago. Here's the YouTube clip:

All throughout the day Redgee ran around with a video camera and took short clips of us holding up these blank whiteboards; we had no idea what he was doing with the clips until last week when he unveiled his masterpiece at the company-wide Haxo show-and-tell.

If you liked the clip, Redgee also tried a few other songs; check out these alternate versions too!

This time around we focused the hackathon around building cool little tools that we could actually ship (yup we heard your feedback from our last Haxo post). We've got a few that are almost ready to go live, so stay tuned for when we launch Plaxo Labs! :)

-- Mark Jen, Product Manager

Bambi Francisco from Marketwatch sent a quick note letting us know that she posted a video segment on Plaxo to her blog. This piece was filmed about two years ago when we were searching for a CEO and originally aired on CBS. In start-up time it feels like forever-ago, but should give an inside glimpse in to what it took to find Ben.

You can find the video here (2nd story down)

Answer: HipCal (www.hipcal.com).

Plaxo announced today the acquisition of HipCal, LLC, based in Troy, NY. You can read the formal press release at: Plaxo's website. However, I wanted to give you an insider's view of why we joined forces with these young guns from upstate New York.

You'll have to read the entire article to find out what we both have in common with pimps. ;-)

Plaxo has a calendar?

You may not know this, but Plaxo has had an online calendar for some time. Yup, we really do. As a matter of fact, we were using AJAX techniques two years ago before it was called AJAX (RSI thanks to Terry Chay and Joseph Smarr).

But, to be really honest, we did not put the same amount of effort and resources on our calendar as we did on everything else. Our users have been asking us to do for calendars what we did for address books--not just make them available everywhere, but make them easy to coordinate with friends, colleagues, and customers. This has been bothering us for awhile and it's one of those things that we put into the "someday" category. Well, this is that day.

Exploding calendars

So, it all started while we were watching with amusement as startup after startup announced their jump into the "new, Web 2.0 calendar" space -- the list is long. But, one of them caught our eye, HipCal (and apparently the Web 2.0 Awards and SXSW festival's eye too). I should mention that a few of the others look quite impressive as well -- 30 boxes also appears to stand our from the crowd.

Note that a good friend of mine, Mark Fletcher (ONElist, eGroups, Plaxo, Bloglines), says "Whenever you have more than one funded company in the calendar space, you know you are in the bubble." :-)

Anyway, back to the story...

So, the first thing that we noticed was that www.hipcal.com was extremely fast and simple. The design had a natural ease about it that appealed to everyone here and it was extremely snappy. The second thing that we noticed was that the team was very engaged and dedicated to their users, even though they had classes to attend at school (RPI)!

Garret Heaton

So, on a whim, I sent Garret Heaton, [the guy who started it as part of school project], a simple email: "Hey, love your site. Interested in talking about working together?" Garret replied fairly quickly with enthusiasm and we got started.

A few days later, during a conference call with the HipCal guys (all five of them), we quickly got into a discussion about joining Plaxo. And, at some point during the conversation, I said: "Think about it this way. Would you rather be in Troy, New York, in three feet of snow, working out of your parents' garage OR would you rather be sitting in a nice house on the beach in sunny California with all the beer you can drink and parties every night." After about about 15 seconds of silence--in which I was thinking that I made a huge tactical mistake--the other end of the phone burst into laughter and the group screaming "we like the second option better!" :-)

So, we flew the guys out to California, but had some trouble with the car rental since most car agencies require the driver to be 25 or over. Once we cleared that up, we got down to business. By the end of the day, we all realized that this was meant to be (i.e. they are five amazing, talented, and nice guys) and left us with a great feeling.

That was easy, now for the hard part

We signed the deal a few weeks later and have been making plans for a new calendar ever since. The guys will be moving to California in June. [Note: I failed to mention that buying a home on the California coast would cost a small fortune. ;-] The guys will be looking for a house to rent in Mountain View/Palo Alto very soon -- let me know if you have any leads.

Stay tuned for the big changes coming from Plaxo's new calendar team.

btw: The original name of HipCal was MyPIMP.com. And, in case you didn't know, "PIM" is a common acronym for Personal Information Manager.

Garret Heaton, Tawheed Kader, Pete Curley, Glenn Dixon, and Chris Rivers

More photos of the HipCal guys

Here's a photo of Pete Curley. We haven't figured out what he does yet, but we know that it has somethng to do with refilling the kegs. Oh, and Pete designed the cute little hippo on the HipCal site.

Here's a photo of Chris ("Silent Chris") Rivers. He's generally ....., um, er, ..... silent. But, once you get a few margaritas into him, watch out because he turns into "Crazy Chris"! He is rumored to have a very large shoe collection.

Here's a photo of Glenn Dixon. When we first met, I thought that he was "Silent Chris" and kept wondering "he talks a lot, I wonder why they call him Silent Chris...?" Glenn just recently got out of prison, but don't let his tatoos and rough exterior fool you... he's a teddy bear on the inside.

Here's a photo of Tawheed ("Wheed") Kader. He's sorta like the George Harrison of the HipCal group. [Not really sure what I meant by that, but it sounded good when I wrote it.] We don't understand what his nickname means yet, but he sure seems excited about moving to California.

UPDATE: Looks like we've got some initial reactions coming in :)

• Om Malik
• Techcrunch
• Red Herring

A few of us plaxors have started a weekly poker night. From the trash talking, to the bluffing that you're bluffing (or are you?), to the gut wrenching all-in moments, it's a very fun diversion. I could tell you about the time Michael's flush got beat by Mark's full house, or when Ryan doubled up with quad jacks on the very first hand, or when my 9-6 beat Mark's 9-7 in an all-in battle for first place. And that's only from the first three weeks.

There has been some debate about how constructive the game of poker really is. I think it actually reinforces some useful skills. You can talk about bluffing, betting, and pot odds all day, but when it comes down to it, poker is a game about decision making. The best poker players are the ones who can gather the most information and make the best decisions based upon it. Can that be applied outside of poker? My bet is yes.

More photos here...

-- Russ Davis, Plaxo Client Engineer

I've always been fascinated by old photographs. Besides being a transport back in time—Brando is skinny, Steve Jobs is wearing a suit, Bill Gates looks like a nerd, well, a young nerd—I find the oldness of the black and white photos intriguing. Men wore hats, kids' clothes weren't smattered with logos, apricot orchards blanketed the valley, and those black and white prints had a timeless quality that insta-matics couldn't touch.

I've been shooting pictures in and around the office here at Plaxo since I started three months ago. The office has a few partitions, but mostly it's a big open floor with islands of desks and computers. Without the protection of walls, people are easy to shoot. Sort of. The monitors get in the way, but if people have an impromptu meeting on the other side of my desk I'll shoot them. I have a silent trigger and I can swivel the back of the camera so I shoot looking down, like on a Hasselblad. This let me get the odd shot of Rikk making faces.

He thought I was just setting up. He doesn't like that picture, so figured I had to find a way to work it into this blog. I like candids—catching people when they forget they're being photographed and let their 'IS' be taken. The people here at Plaxo are a friendly, animated, likable lot. For a company of 40 plus people, I've heard, we're perceived as a much larger entity—a behemoth, a faceless corporation even. Not even. Take a look for yourself.

My Dad always had a 'You're On' face. He put it on just as anyone squinched one eye and with the other took aim through a viewfinder. Every shot of him? Cocked head, toothy grin, and a look in his eye that seemed to say, 'What's it going to take for you to drive home in this car today?'

Four years ago I got my Cybershot and I took snapshots: on vacation, smile-it's-your-birthday kinds of snaps. I was visiting my Dad and was looking down, seeing him on the glass my new digital camera and my son said something that made 'Grandpa' laugh. And I pulled the trigger. This time it wasn't a snap. It was THE shot of my Dad. 'My eyes are closed and I need a haircut,' he'd say. He didn't like it. Everyone else did. My Mom liked it. She had a print made to set on the altar at his memorial service last year. I love the shot because it IS my Dad. And it's my Dad in THE shot that marked the moment I went from taking snaps to aiming for photographs.

-Michael Rowley, Visual Designer & Resident Photographer

(My Dad: Don Rowley)

At Plaxo, we believe in empowering our employees to do the best work they're capable of. From flexible hours to telecommuting options to no-questions-asked sick days, Plaxo treats its employees with respect. In return, our employees understand and accept the responsibility that's inherent in the trust they're given, and consistently go the extra mile in their work.

Our environment is one in which self-motivated team players thrive. So whether you're an outstanding engineer, UI specialist, or product manager, there's room for you to join in. If you're interested in helping Plaxo help millions of others to stay connected, drop us a line with a cover letter and your resume. We'd love to hear from you at jobs@plaxo.com.

Here at Plaxo, we think it�s crucial that we connect to each other and with the outside world. One of the ways we connect internally is by having lunch brought into the office twice a week. By avoiding the typical lunch time scatter, everyone can sit down, have a meal together and talk about what�s going on in their lives. Once in a while, we even talk shop; we�ve found that oftentimes, switching up the environment and context lends itself to great �out of the box� ideas.

Join us for lunch through these pictures from one of our lunch hours :)