It is time to move. Our headquarters has been in the same building near Boston for close to ten years. We like the space – good natural light, convenient location, near a bicycle trail, and more. But we need more room, and were fortunate to find a nice building right around the corner. An added plus is that we get to design the space. We decided not to do a full Google with free gourmet food – we aren’t large enough. I also thought about SASS, which has an impressive campus with day care, medical care and more in North Carolina. I would like to move in that direction, but again, they are a big company.

We look for ways to build community, and designing our new office seemed like a wonderful opportunity to do that in a creative way. Since in homes people often feel most comfortable in the kitchen, I wondered if we could reproduce that at Ipswitch. (Check out this song – I love the pop music from the early 80’s.) The kitchen is the hearth, a warm and comfortable place to gather while food is prepared and eaten.

We would like to create that feeling at Ipswitch, so we are building a nice kitchen to encourage employees, customers, partners and guests to cook together in small groups. We think that gathering around preparing and eating food will make for better relationships and a stronger Ipswitch.