We Like to Wear Hats: Overview of Projects

You may or may not have noticed, but I’ve given this site a little facelift! I’m hoping that it will give me the motivation to blog more often. ;)

I’ve been in a huge period of transition over the last month. Flying home from an 8-week stay in Madrid, pulling my stuff out of storage & moving it to Fredericksburg, unpacking & purging everything, attending multiple graduations & birthday celebrations for family and friends, and switching from a remote to office schedule. << I realize that’s a bit of a run-on sentence, but my entire life has felt like a run-on sentence! May and June are always crazy busy, am I right?

Having said that, I have never felt more connected to my job than I do now. I wear many hats, and my title as Operations Manager feels truer than ever.

As mentioned above, I moved back to Fredericksburg so I could be on the ground floor of something really cool called CoWork Fredericksburg. I’ve blogged a few times about this, but here’s the scoop: At the end of last year, Reclaim Hosting took over a seriously out of date coworking/office space. Over the last few months, we’ve broken down walls, ripped up floors & lifted ceilings. We’ve rebranded and are now opening the space back up to the public in a soft launch. My primary roles with this project have included helping with making a lot of the design decisions for the space, building out CoWorkFXBG.com, and working alongside Tim to set up furniture, chat with new members, and manage our social media accounts & membership software.

We’ve actually joked on several occasions while in the middle of ripping up carpet or moving a ridiculously heavy table by sarcastically saying the following phrase: ‘This will be a low-key computer job,’ they said.

I think I can speak for Jim & Tim here too when I say that it has been so fun to watch the space transform. We will have plans to add artwork, a completely renovated kitchenette, more lounge furniture, and another screen for larger presentations. We want to add lockers for members to store their belongings, and vintage p.o. boxes so we can receive mail for them as well. But for now, the important stuff is here and that feels good: countless desks, a large (gorgeous) custom farm table & laptop bar set from Frasier Wood Elements,  a vintage phone booth, the cutest little succulents, and plenty of snazzy tech gadgets. This is where I’ve started coming to work every day, and I count myself pretty lucky.

When I’m not taking care of my Reclaim or CoWork to-do lists, I’ve been spending a large chunk of my time planning for the Domains 17 Conference that’s taking place at the beginning of June. All the behind the scenes details like catering, liability insurance, furniture setups, security regulations, t-shirts, website & twitter management, travel & room reservations– I’m your gal.

I’ve planned for conferences & events in the past, but nothing of this magnitude. We’ll have roughly 80 attendees when its all said and done, and I can’t wait! It has been a brilliant challenge so far, and I owe a great deal of my organizing to Asana. I honestly feel like my master to-do list in my Asana project is my most prized possession at the moment. Haha!

The other big project that Reclaim Hosting has taken on in the last couple months is our new sister hosting company, Rockaway Hosting. Since both CoWork and Domains17 come with a “here and now” mentality while Rockaway sort of runs itself, it has been put on the backburner in a lot of ways. But that doesn’t make it any less important or awesome! While Reclaim Hosting tailors to the needs of educational institutions, faculty & students, Rockaway was born out of meeting the needs of the non-educational folks. We kept large businesses and organizations in mind when creating the hosting plans. Rockaway offers SLA agreements, phone support, and video training. While the infrastructure remains entirely the same on our end, Rockaway is priced per month instead of Reclaim’s annual renewals to accommodate for the ebb & flow of a business.

I was able to build out the Rockaway site with the incredible help of Bryan Mathers‘ artwork. (His art is actually on the sites for Domains 17 & Reclaim Hosting as well. If you can’t tell, we love him.)

In what free time I do have, Tim has been teaching me different SSH commands. You have to remember that I’m an English major turned full geek, and all geekdom has been brought on my own personal doing or Reclaim’s doing. I currently know just enough about SSH that I know how much I don’t know. Does that make sense? I find logging into the servers via SSH on the terminal so completely fascinating. I’ve been introduced to a new world– a new challenge to conquer! Tim works at lightspeed using SSH, so that’s where I’m setting the bar. (#LOL)

I suppose the last (but definitely not least) item worth mentioning is that Reclaim Hosting is soon to be bringing on a new member to the team! Meredith Fierro just graduated from the University of Mary Washington this past weekend and spent the last semester of her senior year interning with us. She blogged about her experiences here! Meredith will be joining us in OKC for the Domains conference, and then begin her position at Reclaim in mid-June.

Good stuff all around, and I don’t see it slowing down anytime soon.