The Planet Blog

The year is winding down and the holidays are around the corner. As a nice reward for a year of hard work, the big bosses decided we’d have fantastic holiday parties in both Houston and Dallas welcoming our families, friends and business associates to The Planet. Thus The Planet Holiday Festival was born.

Tuesday was the Houston party at headquarters downtown. We had tons of activities for the entire family. You could hear Santa’s “ho ho ho” and children’s squeals all over the building.

Outside we had snow! Yes, it did snow in Houston – but that was the day after the party. On party day, we imported it. We had a fun snow pile for snowball fights and a great big snow hill to slide down. I can honestly say the big kids had just as much fun as the little ones.

Santa was a big hit. He got everyone’s gift requests, posed for pictures and brought smiles to everyone’s faces. We were all very thankful that he could take time out of his busy schedule to visit our little soirée.

CEOs have holiday wishes, too!

Just like little girls do.

There was food everywhere! Kid-friendly snacks like pizza and chicken nuggets were available in the break room with more “adult-friendly” fare fair in the Bayou Room and out on the patio.

Other activities include face-painting, balloon animals and gingerbread men cookie decorating, along with a professional photographer who was on hand to take family photos.

Like father …

Like son.

Big kids!

Here is a shot from the professional photographer of a few of us in the Marketing department. Go figure … of course we’d be the ones to do a group shot and ham it up!

By the end of the night, I saw lots of little ones crying because they were tired and didn’t want to leave while very happy parents waited for their cars. It was a wonderful party that really showcased what the employees of this company really mean to senior management. This is a fantastic place to work, and this is just one of the examples of it!

Happy Holidays, everyone!

-Ali

For more party photos visit The Planet Flickr page.

Bayou Place, that is. Home of The Planet’s corporate headquarters.

Warning: This blog will contain strange language that those outside of Louisiana might not understand. I’ll provide definitions and maybe someday I’ll do a video blog so you can hear how these words should be pronounced. If you know what a Cajun accent sounds like, you should read this blog in that voice. Cuz Sha, it sounds a whole lot betta dat way.

Being a native of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, (or a “transplant” as we so often get called) I love me some crawfish. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was one of the first grown-up foods that I ever ate as a child. I can still remember my momma peeling a bunch of tails for me at family crawfish boils. She’d make a little sandwich with some dip made with ketchup, mayonnaise and Tabasco sauce. Yes, Tabasco. I was probably around 2 or 3 years old. I don’t ever remember not eating them.

You see, Breaux Bridge happens to be the crawfish capital of the world and my family raises them. It’s my heritage and in my blood. So imagine my glee when I was asked to create an invite and flyer to pass around the office for the crawfish boil we were having. I did a little dance to Wayne Toups in my head.

So we sat out on the patio downstairs grubbin’ on crawfish on a breezy spring afternoon in downtown Houston. For those of you who have never had them, you are seriously missing out. They are boiled with spicy seasoning and usually have potatoes, corn and sausage thrown in. They are messy little suckers so don’t wear your Sunday best while eating them. You’ll probably even need a bib and lot of wet naps. It takes some patience and work to fully enjoy crawfish. It’s an art, really. Best consumed with an icy cold beer, but we were at work so we had to make do with iced tea and lemonade. I could go into the graphic detail of eating them (sucking the heads and all that) but maybe I’ll save that for an instructional video the next time we have one.

See? Messy.

We mixed and mingled, and everyone enjoyed themselves. I’m sure we were a sight as the cars drove by; a bunch of people eating crawfish on the sidewalk/patio outside of a downtown office building at lunch. I can’t imagine the myriad of banks, accounting firms and oil companies that surround us doing the same thing. But this is The Planet and that’s how we roll.

Some folks here aren’t really crawfish kind of people. (I don’t really understand that but I pretend to.) So we had hotdogs and Frito pie for those who weren’t, along with chocolate cake and carrot cake for desert. To really add to the atmosphere, we ate to the sounds of Zydeco music. We almost had a fais do-do going on here. I wanted to get my Cajun two-step on, but I didn’t have a dance partner. Maybe next time I’ll teach someone in advance.

Also, as a bit of lagniappe, CEO Doug Erwin announced the beginning of Hawaiian shirt weather. We had a few people eager to participate.

A beautiful day, good people and good food. What a fantastic way to kick off spring. As we say in Louisiana, laissez les bons temps rouler (let the good times roll)!

-Ali

And boy do we know how to throw a party! Well, at least our customers do. New Year’s Eve Nation, a new startup company out of New York, plans for one event 364 days out of the year: a national New Year’s Eve party spanning four time zones and eight cities. That’s one hell of a party.

Ex Spin City producer-turned-entrepreneur Jann Yogman has been throwing New Year’s Eve bashes in Manhattan since 1997 and is the genius behind the event. Last year, he decided to go national with his soirée and did just that using live feeds via the internet. Yogman connected five cities and allowed party goers to interact with each other via text messaging and video — all of which is broadcast on plasma screens at each location.

Last year, there were five cities. This year, it was bumped to eight, including New York, Los Angeles, Denver, Dallas, Seattle, Philadelphia, Boston and Detroit. 8,000 people attended the party billed as “8 Cities. 4 Timezones. 1 Outrageous Party.”

So what hosting company with world-class datacenters and the most reliable network powered the event?

That’s right.

Not only did this party welcome in 2008 with a serious bang, it also gives back by donating 10% of the net profits to Micheal J. Fox’s Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

You can read more about the event and the goals for the future on CNN.com or the New Year’s Eve Nation website.

Happy New Year, Y’all!

-Ali