The Planet Blog

One of The Planet’s core values is integrity: “In all aspects of our business, our actions are ethical, honest and consistent with our values and can withstand scrutiny of the light of day.”

That core value is evident throughout our day-to-day operations, and recently, our managers reinforced it, reminding us that they keep their promises (costs to their dignity notwithstanding).

If you recall the epic Underdogs vs. Big Dogs dragon boat race, a last-minute wager made the competition pretty interesting: The losing team had to buy a meal and serve it to the winning team.

The Underdogs were victorious (a point that we often reference), so the Big Dogs kept their end of the bargain by serving us breakfast and answering our every beck and call … and we made sure they stayed busy. We were served an elaborate spread of tasty breakfast selections and the managers, led by head waiter Doug Erwin, poured our drinks, delivered our food, picked up our trash, and answered any and all of our absurd requests (back rubs, special orders, spreading jam on toast … you know, the usual).

As you can see, the Big Dog attire for the event was a unique blend of elegance and formality: tuxedo T-shirts.

The Underdogs gathered early, eagerly awaiting their “breakfast served with a smile.” Once the food arrived, an assembly line of “waiters” marched towards the table, each carrying different breakfast items. They all used proper manners, i.e. “What would you like, ma’am?” or “How can I help you, sir?”

Every request was taken with the utmost sincerity. When an Underdog requested milk, a Big Dog quickly headed upstairs to the refrigerator. They were patient as we decided on our pastry selections (and subsequently changed our minds), and made sure to fix our coffee just the way we liked it … we were even offered a variety of creamers. Our orange juice was hand-shaken and poured into our glass. And, once all 20 members of our team were full, each manager took a tray and headed to the call center to distribute the rest of food.

Some of the managers continued to wear their shirts for the rest of the day, and the extra shirts were distributed to the Underdogs to wear as a reminder of the stunning victory.

The team spirit and friendly competition have come to an end … at least for now. There is another Dragon Boat Regatta in October, and if the managers are up for it, we would be happy to place another friendly wager on the outcome.

May the best team win! (GO UNDERDOGS!!!)

- Rachel

P.S. Head over to our Flickr page for more pictures from the breakfast.

Apparently, a few folks here at The Planet have a knack for photography. On Monday, we asked everyone to send in their favorite photos from our dragon boat race last weekend. We assumed a few people would pass along a few snapshots from the event and we could quickly and easily organize the pictures on one blog page …

However, the floodgates opened and immediately, we were up to our ears in JPEGs — over 300 of them. The “problem” we ran into was that all of the pictures were phenomenal. We wanted to include them all, but entering 300 lines of HTML didn’t seem like much fun — especially when the lines of code look like this:

<a href=”Dragon Boat Large Picture URL”><img class=”centered” src=”Dragon Boat Small Picture URL” alt=”Picture Title”/></a>

With the help of a useful Wordpress plugin, we linked the blog to a newly created Flickr account, and we’ve been playing with the newfound functionality ever since. You’ll notice the new photostream widget in our sidebar, and you can click on any of our photos to see other pictures from our Flickr pool in a gallery layout or in a slideshow.

If you’re a Flickr user, come join our group and contribute your favorite pictures: www.flickr.com/groups/theplanet! I’m still getting pictures from last weekend and sifting through them, so keep an eye on our photostream for updates: The Planet’s Flickr

Check out the Dragon Boat Race photo set:

You’ve seen a few glimpses of our company culture in recent blog posts, so it’s only fitting that you hear about a little boating competition last weekend, care of the Texas Dragon Boat Association.

Our CFO Kevin Klausmeyer threw down the gauntlet a couple months ago in a team-wide email: “Let’s pit the managers against the rest of the company, and see who wins in a 250-meter dragon boat race down Buffalo Bayou.” Most of the folks around the office had never heard of dragon boating prior to Kevin’s email, but as soon as the inter-office challenge was put on the table, everyone made a point to find any relevant YouTube videos and Wikipedia articles and start training for what was sure to be an epic showdown.

The Texas Dragon Boat Association’s May Festival course accommodates three 22-person dragon boats at a time — each dragon boat having one “drummer,” twenty paddlers and one steersperson. Each team races at least three times and needs a minimum of 8 females and 8 males in the boat for each race.

Before you write off the athleticism of the event and start humming “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” you should note that these dragon boats can range from 30 to 100 feet long and only a few feet wide (just enough for one paddler on each side), each race is less than two minutes, and it’s a full-body workout. Teamwork and technique are the two most important components in a dragon boat race, so each of our teams had several practices to get everyone on the same page.

The managers chose to race under the name “The Planet Big Dogs,” so it was only fitting that the non-managers entered the competition as “The Planet Underdogs.” The other teams in the event couldn’t help but fear us as they read our team’s description in the program:

The Planet is widely regarded as an industry-leading IT Infrastructure provider. With multiple data centers, an incredible network and stellar support, we provide small- and medium-sized businesses with customized hosting solutions to fit their needs. We also harbor a secret: The Planet’s recent move to the Bayou Place in downtown Houston was not as innocent as it seemed … it was a strategic move to attract the former Olympians currently slated to paddle for us in the dragon boat races. Following a recent trip to the Yangtze River in China where we practiced our craft on the backs of real dragons, The Planet’s teams have consistently averaged 63 mph in nightly training races at a secret underground facility. In the interest of sportsmanship (and because we hate making our opponents cry), we will disguise our teams as a couple of rag-tag groups of first-time dragon boaters for this event. Autographs, training tips and a dragon boat DVD/Blu-Ray lecture series will be available to the losing teams at a nominal fee following the event.

Saturday rolled around, and everyone showed up to our luau-themed tent in their team shirts, and it was finally time to back up all the inter-office smack talk. Immediately prior to the race, the Underdogs were confident, the Big Dogs were creative: Doug came over to let us know “The winning team is accepting a 10% decrease in salary,” and the rest of the managers were quick to remind us that our yearly performance reviews were coming up soon.

Undaunted, the Underdogs took to the boat, and we made our way to the starting line. Apparently, the pride of the victory wasn’t going to be reward enough, so a last-minute wager was placed: the losing team has to buy and serve lunch to the winning team. The race was on: a team from Cafe Express in boat #4, the Underdogs in boat #5, and the Big Dogs in boat #6.

Always bet on the Underdogs.

The Big Dogs were very gracious in defeat, and we had a great time cheering for each other in rest of the day’s races.

In addition to the awards given to the fastest boats of the day, the TDBA gave a special “Spirit of the Dragon” award to the team that showed the most energy, involvement, and excitement. I’ll save you the suspense:

We won!

We had more than 100 participants, family, friends and cheerleaders throughout the day, so we’ve got a LOT of pictures from the event. I’ll be posting them on a dedicated “Dragon Boat Pictures” blog page so you can retroactively participate vicariously.

-Kevin