August 26th, 2010
Our London office recently jumped on the bike bandwagon last month when the city introduced Barclays Cycle Hire; a revolutionary bike sharing system. Thanks to London Mayor Boris Johnson, the central city is now lined with Barclays Cycle Superhighways. These are textured, bright blue lanes reserved for London’s commuting cyclists. Following in the footsteps of other European cities, this program was implemented in order to meet the expanding demand for bike infrastructure. Barclays Cycle Hire will have about 6,000 easily accessible bikes along with 400 stations throughout the central city. As team member Jana Jakovljevic (REVV Marketplace Development Manger – EMEA) explained, “You simply pay £45 annually, you get an electronic key and you can use the bikes. Every journey up to 30 minutes is free. The docking stations in central London are every 300 metres so you know you’re always close to one”.
Our London team members are an active bunch. During the summer months, several of them have elected to use this bike service to get to and from work. Talk about a great way to reduce our carbon emissions and avoid London’s auto traffic! Look for our London team members cruising the streets (Rubicon Project lap top bags in tow). If you are in London and need to find a biking station nearby or want to know how many bikes are available, there’s an app for that (of course!): iFindBikes.
August 20th, 2010
Considering the weather here at our LA HQ is usually quite pleasant, it’s a bit difficult to not want to take advantage of the sun’s shining rays. One way to enjoy the nice weather, and squeeze in a dose of vitamin D, is to bike to the office. While there are many alternative ways of get to work, sometimes biking can be quicker than trying to battle the LA traffic. Not only do you spend less time sitting in your car, but by biking to work you’ll be reducing your carbon footprint, spending less at the gas pump, and as team member Brad would say, “some wind in your hair and a little sunshine on your face isn’t a bad way to start your day”. Anything to enhance the day’s productivity and also helps the environment is a win-win situation. So, dust off those fenders, pump up your tires, put up the kickstand and away you go!
“A little bit of exercise to get the blood flowing is a great way to start the day — I’m a believer that a healthy body leads to a healthy mind. At the end of the day, cycling home is a great way to decompress and transition from work mode to relaxation mode” - Sunny Ahuja (Engineer)
August 13th, 2010
Kings of Leon at the Hollywood Bowl
Music is essential to our office and day’s productivity – it gets our mornings started off right, puts an extra pep in our mid-day step and keeps us motivated as the day grows long. Each day here at the Rubicon Project, a team member faces the music and selects the Pandora station to be played throughout the office for all to enjoy – and if a few aren’t feeling the day’s Ace of Base mix then they simply (and quickly) throw on their headphones to enjoy a personal collection of hits. Our team members’ love for music goes beyond the realms of our Pandora stations at the office. Live music, concerts in Central Park, shows at the Palladium, Hollywood Bowl, Terminal 5, The Fillmore, Bowery Ballroom, The Showbox, Coachella and Stagecoach – our team has been there, done that. Since we can’t always rely on Pandora to be our office DJ, here is what our team members are spinning on the 1’s and 2’s:
tRP PLAYLIST
Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
Mike Snow - Silvia
Mumford and Sons - Little Lion Man
La Roux - Bulletproof
Rodrigo y Gabriela - Tamacun
Delta Spirit - Strange Vine
Salt-N-Pepa - Shoop
The Elected - Biggest Star
Bayside - Talking Of Michelangelo
Fat Joe Ft Lil Wayne – Make it Rain
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros - 40 Day Dream
Earth, Wind and Fire – September
Phoenix – 1901
The Police – Bring on the Night
June 23rd, 2010
On Monday, June 20th the amazing folks in our New York City office hit the pavement in their neighborhood to volunteer with One Million Trees New York City. Here is a post from our *awesome* team member Mike Baumwoll about the event:
This community service event was particularly interesting and educational. We were partnered with with two One Million Trees NYC reps who have us a background of the organization and explained their goal to plant an additional one MILLION trees in the city. The majority of the trees will be planted in the city parks and along the city streets (for every 25 feet of city block, a tree will be planted on the streets). We were taught the proper ways to care for the trees, which included aerating the soil and watering techniques.
It was a great event and we are looking forward to adopting two trees in our neighborhood and tend to them regularly. Hopefully that noisy neighbor who was really concerned with the watering of trees in front of his house leaking into his apartment and drowning his pets doesn’t sabotage the trees! He was wearing a Mets hat afterall 
June 21st, 2010
tRP team post Mud Run
MUD. Lot’s of it! That’s what the team of 8 Rubicon Project team members from the LA office experienced on Saturday, June 18th at the Camp Pendleton Mud Run.The Mud Run is a 10K race through mud, water, and obstacles. All proceeds go to the YMCA Armed Services- nice!
After a 5:30 am wake up call, we met at the office and piled into cars to carpool down to Camp Pendleton (close to San Diego). When we arrived, we joined 5,000 other trail runners, military personnel, people in costumes, and lot’s of smiling faces ready to get dirty! In the “chute” (the area where we all gathered waiting to take off on foot) there was a huge dance party and our energy was alive and kicking. After taking off, some of us ran for fun and others ran to compete (nice job Bill Willits who took 7th place!) but we all met up at the end to congratulate one another and relax.
It was a great bonding day for us and honestly, a ton of fun! The best part was the lake swim and the 30 foot Mud Wall crawl. Boot camp? Here we come…
If you or anyone you know is interested in doing the Camp Pendleton Mud Run, you can sign up here : www.camppendletonraces.com/. A great way to support our Armed Services!
May 27th, 2010
Tuesday, May 25th was a big day for us here at the Rubicon Project. It marked the date of an expansion of our family, in people and in location. SiteScout, a malware security technology provider based in Seattle, joined us in our quest to build a complete publisher technology platform. By joining our Rubicon Project team, they are leaving behind a lot of great memories and joining 150 tRP team members who are very happy to have them here! The whole team erupted in applause when their team walked through the door and into our office- now that’s not a bad welcome .
Since communication and transparency are cultural values for us (and something we live, breathe, and do) we called an All Hands on Deck team meeting the morning of the acquisition. It was a chance to introduce our new team members to the entire global company and learn the value that SiteScout is bringing to our business. People were able to ask questions of the SiteScout team and everyone left feeling positive about the partnership. While the new team members were kept extremely busy during the day (back to back meetings makes you tough!) we did take some time Tuesday night to have a happy hour event here at the LA office, so folks could meet the team and get to know their new colleagues.
Acquisition’s can be challenging. Great companies have suffered after not putting in the time and resources necessary to make sure things go smoothly. Here at the Rubicon Project, we are all committed to making sure our new team members feel welcome and can hit the ground running. Tuesday was, in all honestly, a huge celebration for us and a chance for the two teams to come together- a reward for a lot of hard work and great dreams for the future.
So, Seattle here we come! We will have a Rubicon Project office located in Pioneer Square- close to QWEST field and the home of the very beloved Seattle Sounders. We will be spending the next couple weeks getting the office “Rubiconized”, teaching our new team members how we communicate and get stuff done, and working on integrating the product and doing what we do on behalf of our publishers and partners! If you would like an invitation for our welcome shin dig in Seattle on June 24th email: events@rubiconproject.com
May 20th, 2010
Our tRP team watching Engineers demo their brilliance
On Wednesday, May 19th the Rubicon Project hosted it’s first internal project building and coding event called HACKDAY. One of our brilliant Engineers, Sam Tingleff, came up with this idea for an all out, no holds barred, frenzied coding day- all driven by our awesome Engineering team.
In the weeks before HACKDAY we solicited ideas for projects from our entire company. Everyone came out of the woodwork with creative ideas for features, products, or reports that would make their lives better or that would be downright cool. There were over 50 projects for our Engineers to choose from- representing all sides of the business. It was a really great thing to see the entire business get involved and passionate about HACKDAY- it shows how much we support our team and our technology!
So the morning of HACKDAY, we got the entire company in our big meeting room (conferencing in satellite offices all over the world) and let HACKDAY commence! The Engineers picked their projects to raucous applause and they were off and running. The plan was to meet back at 5:30 for them to demo and submit their projects before a panel of judges (leaders from all across the organization). So between 9:30 am and 5:30 pm there was a lot of building, coding, solving problems, status updates, group thinking, loud music playing, just straight getting stuff done. At 5:30, the whole company reconvened in our meeting room and the Engineers got to demo and show off their “babies”. We were all there to support them and celebrate! Afterward, a fiesta (tacos and beer!) took place in our courtyard- complete with *funny* awards for the HACKDAY participants. Overall, this was a huge success for us- something we can’t wait to do again next quarter!
We don’t like rules much at the Rubicon Project but HACKDAY had the best one: “There are no rules! Oh, except no crying.” HACK IT UP!
May 11th, 2010
Our Rubicon Project team at the Golden Heart Awards benefitting the Midnight Mission
On Monday, May 10th a group of Rubicon Project team members headed to the Beverly Hilton Hotel for the Midnight Mission’s biggest gala of the year- the Golden Heart Awards. Used to heading to their headquarters on Skid Row, this venue was much a different experience for us! It was quite a memorable evening for all of us. As a whole Rubicon Project team, we are proud to support the Midnight Mission and all the amazing work they do within it’s walls and out on the streets.
We joined hundreds of other civic minded folks who came from all across LA (plus we had one from NYC!) to honor the work of the Midnight Mission and the people who go above and beyond for the cause. The evening’s special honorees were Anthony and Stella Hopkins, who have truly been huge supporters and volunteers of the non-profit. Also honored that evening was the Nestle Corporation, who have put a huge focus on community outreach and volunteerism as part of their corporate values- a huge inspiration to us.
The best part of the night was hearing from a recovering homeless mother with 3 small children who came into the Midnight Mission’s family housing program with barely any clothes to wear, food to eat, and living in fear of losing her 3 children to social services. Throughout her time there, she received a roof over her head, job training, and a new chance at life for her family. Two year later, she is an accomplished mother with a full time job at a family legal practice and a place for her children to call home. Her quote “thank you for believing in us before we believed in ourselves” will stay with us.
We had a great Rubicon Project showing at the event- all of those who went walked away with a new found appreciation for the work the Midnight Mission does and ideas of how we can contribute. While Craig Roah, our COO, was devastated by his loss in the last round of the silent auction, we truly all walked out of there winners. Speaking of winners- maybe the Rubicon Project will win a golden heart award one of these days? Here’s hoping!
If you are interested in volunteering or putting together a corporate program (like we did!) with the Midnight Mission email Mai Lee at mlee@midnightmission.org.
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On Monday, June 28th 80 volunteers from our LA office and 120 kids from the South Los Angeles after school program 