Today is Caxy’s Sweet 16! We’re sharing 16 things we’ve learned along the way as well as some of our favorite memories.
Making the INC 5000 list – two years in a row.
We’ve grown a lot over the last few years, and we plan to keep moving up the list.
Moving into bigger and better offices.
We have steadily grown out of each office we’ve had. Our current office is our best yet, with whiteboard walls, group think rooms named after mediocre actors, a fancy-pants coffee machine, and a Jenga playground for Lego people.
Launching the new Field Museum site.
We were able to innovate the way Drupal is used for a large institution with many stakeholders.
Rented out an entire theater for the Star Wars premiere.
For our holiday party in 2015, we rented out a theater to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens the night it premiered. The team had a blast, and our costumes made some local news headlines.
Building a video gaming community
At good-gaming.com, we created an online community for amateur gamers to hone their skills and engage with other gamers…before destroying them in the next tournament!
Rebranding Caxy.
It took a long time to come up with a way to describe what we do in a simple way that makes sense. We think the shift from Caxy Interactive to Caxy Code Creative does just that.
Winning an Acquia Partner Site of the Year Award
In 2015, we won an Acquia Partner Site of the Year Award for our work on the Field Museum Drupal website. Our partnership with Acquia makes working with Drupal at scale much simpler as well as delivering the power and speed large sites need to be successful.
Learning from mistakes, the hard way.
Playing Whirlyball without a seat belt. Investing in the CD-ROM business card fad. Eating all of the Glazed and Infused doughnuts. All of them.
Having a business built on 800×600 Flash sites.
Yes, with spinning logos. No, we’re not making that up. Fortunately we innovated our way out of that product.
Saying goodbye to our concrete floor/metal chair setup.
We said good riddance to our loud concrete floors by simultaneously scraping our metal chairs across them. We then said hello to a group audiologist.
Focusing on data over hunches.
Over the years we have become more and more data-driven, and we’ve adapted our strategies based on those findings. We’ve also taught our clients to make decisions and follow recommendations based on data, which is far more successful than working off of guesses.
Focusing on culture fit over skills alone.
We discovered that culture fit means everything, so ensuring that our team is the right culture fit has become just as important (if not more important) than skills set.
Lunching and Learning on Fridays.
We’ve covered everything in our Lunch and Learns from looking at code reviews to discussing design hires at Apple to watching Kitchen Nightmares.
Embracing Agile.
More than just a company operating system, Agile is ingrained in our culture and our values systems. If Agile was a type of food, we’d eat it every day for breakfast. Note to self: make Agile cereal.
Calling Chicago home.
We’ve invested in being a Chicago company and making Chicago a tech powerhouse. Chicago is our home, and our goal is to make ourselves more well known in the tech community here to make a bigger difference in the city and the growth of tech here.
Investing in The Alliance.
We recognized that we are part of people’s careers, and maybe not all of their careers. We want Caxy to be the best place for people to work, but fully understand that it might not be the only place they work in their careers. We incorporated the Alliance so that we work with each and every team member to make sure they are learning the skills they need for right now and the future, whether or not that future is eventually with another company or not.
Thank you to all of our clients, partners, and team for helping to make the past 16 years great. Looking forward to a new year and new things to learn and create here at Caxy!
