The Javelin Technologies Blog

Javelin recently moved into an amazing new office space in Oakville, ON.  With our new space we require a lot more furniture.  To help us outfit our new board room we would like to showcase a cool table designed by one of our customers using SolidWorks. So we are running a Board Room Table Design contest in April which is open to Javelin commercial and educational customers.

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Last day before we go officially live at 3457 Superior Court.  We do seem to be live already.  There are lots of people working here – Javfolk and all the tradespeople that are helping us get the office put together.  We have the mover/installers from Talisman, electrical from Deltro and the painters.  The hallways are busy.  We need traffic lights at some hallway intersections.

My first stop was Home Depot this morning.  It is 5 minutes away so it was a short trip.  I got my list given to me and I was off.  I came back with a good load.

5 Minutes Away ... Sweet

When I got back things were happening at full speed.  Orders were coming in.  Lights were getting installed and walls were getting painted.  Here is a pic of Ted double checking the installation of some lights in the customer bistro.  The bistro is a cool area for our customer who are taking training with us.  They can have a cup of coffee or eat their lunch in this spot.  It’s an area that allows them to take a break from the classroom.

Customer Bistro Build

You’ve heard of plumbers crack.  Well there is no such thing as network installer crack.  The team that did our network install were terrific.  They were very organized and efficient.  They did a great job.

Network installation

Speaking of terrific, our IT guy Ryan has been awesome.  As the trouble comes at him he deals with it and gets it resolved quickly.  He is pretty much a lifesaver for our team right now and he is doing a great job also.  Another person who has been really terrific is Shelley from our office.  Shelley has helped everyone and been involved in everything.  We could not have pulled this off without her help.  I know everyone from the JavNation would agree with this.

Our new training room at Superior Court is looking great.  We have taken care to set it up so that is good for the students but also easy to use for our instructors.  Here is a picture of some final installation work taking place.  We’ll be ready to go with our first class on April 11^th, a SolidWorks Essentials class.  I had a beer toasting the last class at Dorval.  I think I’ll be toasting the new facility with that first class the week of the 11^th.

New Training Room at Javelin

Ted showed off his electrical skills and even did a little training course for the guys from Talisman.

Ted wiring the new office

The last thing we did today was load a bunch of furntiture on the truck from Sew-on-Fire.  We donated extra chairs, plants, tables, shelves and whiteboards to Wendy’s organization.  The truck was filled up quite nicely when they left.  Here is a picture of Ted and I with Wendy from Sew-on-Fire.  Both Ted and I were sucking in our guts in this picture.

John and Ted with Wendy from Sew-on-Fire

Last note, we finished the quarter quite strong.  Even with all of the disruption associated with our move the Javteam was able to get our business done.  We helped many new companies get started with SolidWorks software and we efficiently handled customer support calls and emails with minimal downtime.  Having a hosted CRM system (we use NetSuite) really helps out.  We go live tomorrow!

It’s a bit of a blur but today is when the trucks started arriving.  They came fast and furious.  We had lots of help though.  Everybody pitched in and we made it through the day.  Josie and Neeta were there when the movers arrived.  Josie had the master plan and was the traffic cop.  Neeta had the camera and was our photojournalist.

Neeta and Josie directing traffic

Lots of JavFolks showed up at the new office on Wednesday.  So many so that I was surprised.  Mary and Barb setup in a meeting room to prepare for the end of quarter push.  New office infrastructure was a little rickety so they decided to head home and hunker down and process end of month orders from the JavSales team.

Barb and Mary

Everybody was super positive and helpful.  Where there were missing workstations we pulled some boxes together and made our own desks.  Anita had a nice station setup (below).  Not sure the ergonmics were terrific but we eventually tracked down and a chair and a table and had her working.

Anita's ergonomically challenged workstation

Mike V got the first couple of sales order in the new office.  He finished the day with three.  Way to go Mike.

Mike and the first order received at 3457 Superior Court

At times it did seem business as usual.  Charmaine processed our orders, the Fedex truck showed up and picked up our orders and got on their way.  The Javteam did great.  I don’t think we missed a beat.  Both Ted and I really appreciated everyone’s patience and support.

FedEx delivery at the new office

I decided to head over to the old office on Wednesday evening.  My office was empty except for my old table.  I loved that office and I loved that view out over Lake Ontario. The view was just spectacular in the morning when the sun was coming up over the lake .  I’ll miss it but I’m ready to move on.

Bye bye office

I took a walk down to the Tech Service area.  Over the years our team answered tens of thousands of calls from customers who wanted trouble shooting help and advice on best practices for using SolidWorks.

Javelin Tech Services Area at 700 Dorval

My last stop was the Dorval Room.  This was our main training room at 700 Dorval. We did some quick calculations and during our stay at 700 Dorval we trained over 3,000 design professionals in various SolidWorks training courses.  Our first instructor was John Brown who is now our Director of Sales. John  taught a four day SolidWorks Essential course.  Our last instructor who taught a course was Rob Greer. Rob taught the 2 day SolidWorks Routing course.

Dorval Room - Main Training Room for SolidWorks Users

More packing today at the old office and more cleaning and touch ups at the new office.  The grime has been removed from the windows and I can now see that it is a bright sunny day out there.   There was some purging at the office.  We had to force Ted to give up his homemade triple-decker 5 ¼ floppy super drive system and his Windows NT 4.0 system disks.  I noticed some moisture in his eye when he tossed in the trash.

Found on Ted's Shelf - Triple decker Floppy Drive and Disk

Dan Gamsby has been working hard on preparing our 3D theatre.  We feel have a good plan for the theatre and have been helped by our friends from Calgary, Computer Modeling Group.  CMG helped us with suggestions on how to setup the theatre.  We also have an audio plan and will be working with our customer, Canadian Speakertech on Friday to discuss how we can use their awesome Paradign speakers in the theatre.  Our plan for the 3D theatre is to use it for SolidWorks and 3DVia software demonstrations, presentations of 3DVia developed animations as well as the presentation of other new hardware and software products.  We also plan to rent it to our customers so that they can show their products in 3D to their potential customers.  We will help them do this and we hope we can help them win some deals.

That will be a 16' 2D/3D Screen in the Theatre

Major crisis at Javelin!  The coffee machine, that makes delicious coffee by the way, does not fit into our elegant cabinet system in the kitchen.  Whoops, missed this one.  We sweated this one for a bit but have come up with an acceptable Plan B.  We will be setting it up off to the side on a table.

Whoops.

I have cut over to the new office.  I worked there today and had the opportunity to take a nice walk outside to get some fresh air.  This was tough to do at the old office given that we were on the 7^th floor and had an elevator ride down and up.  I just never seemed to get away from my desk to take a quick walk outside.

I am fully cut over by the way.  I changed my Outlook signature to the new address.  Here it is.

Ted and I have been meeting for breakfast every Monday morning for 8 years.  That’s a lot of eggs and coffee.  For the last couple of years we have been meeting at Cora’s on North Service Road in Oakville.  Probably one of the best breakfasts in Oakville by the way.  We agreed that this was our last breakfast at Cora’s so a couple of pictures got snapped.  Thanks to the great staff at Cora’s.  I don’t think my coffee ever got cold there.

Coras in Oavkille on North Service - Great Breakfast

We drank alot of coffee at this table

Boxes are everywhere in old office.  It is a tough place to navigate around right now.

We are pretty much packed

Thanks also to the great team at Olivero’s (which is the sandwich shop on the first floor of 700 Dorval Drive).  They fed us well over the years.  I did the math and I think I might have been served about 700 tuna salad sandwiches (on brown, toasted with a caesar salad on the side) over the years.   Ted thought that he might have had about 300 luncheon salad specials.

We all loved the team from Oliverios

Ted really loved those luncheon salads

On Sunday the millwork team finished up the cabinets in the cafe, boardroom and the new print room.  This is quality workmanship.  These guys did a great job and the cabinets  look great.

Cabinets in the cafe

Boardroom Cabinets

Print Room cabinets

We met with Josie who is organizing the naming of our meeting rooms.  She has some great ideas that coincide with our new tagline, Aim High.  Our new tagline works really well for us.  It is a special message to our customers that we want to have them “Aim High” with their goals for process and productivity improvements in their business.  We use the tagline internally also.  All of our Javelin team members are aiming high with their goals of exceeding customer expectations and delivering results for both Javelin and our customers.

It was a sunny day and we know that we might have left one project task a little too late.  We need blinds.  We will be working on that first thing Monday morning.

There was a lot of action at the new office as well as at our current office on this day.  At the new office the setup of the new workstations were completed.  The stations are from our customer Teknion and they look great.   The ascent colours go really well with the colour theme of the new office.  There were plumbers, millwork guys, painters and electricians all knocking off their project tasks.  I’d estimate that there were up to 15 tradespeople in the office at a point in time.  Frank Sloan, our construction manager, was in as well making sure that critical jobs were getting done.

Teknion Leverage Workstations installed at new Javelin office

On Saturday we also had some of the ladies (and their awesome daughters) from Javelin help us out by packing up the front reception area, our kitchen and the print room.  This was great and we really appreciated their help.

Thanks for all your help girls

Boxes, boxes, everywhere there are boxes …

Front reception area packed up nicely

I am posting to our blog over the next couple of days to describe what is happening leading up to the move to our new office at 3457 Superior Court, Unit #1 in Oakville.

Seven days and counting (Friday, March 25^th)

Friday, March 25^th was the last Friday that we were in our office at 700 Dorval, Suite 700.  We had a couple of beers to toast the office and all the fun and good times that we had there.  We also had our last training course in that office.  It was the SolidWorks Routing class.  Rob Greer was the instructor. Here is a picture graduating students of the class saying a quick “cheers” to the instructor and our office.

Last Training Class at 700 Dorval - SolidWorks Routing

We had a special visitor come into the office today.  Wendy from Sew-on-Fire Ministries visited the office.  Any furniture that we will not be taking with us is being donated to Sew-on-Fire.  Wendy has a cargo container scheduled for South America and our old furniture and white boards will be setup at schools that they are supporting there.  Sew-On-Fire is a great organization.  Check out their website at http://www.sewonfire.com/volunter-donate.html

We also did our seating lottery today.  We are assigning seating in our new office by a lottery method.  So the luck of the draw gets the choice of the best seats.  We are also planning on an annual change to seating (that will happen on the first day of spring each year) to keep things fresh by having folks change where they sit.  We will also do a nice purge on that day every year also.

Yes, it’s true.  Javelin is moving.  On April 1st we will be operating out of brand spanking new offices at 3457 Superior Court in Oakville.  We are all very excited about the move and looking forward to the change since we have been at 700 Dorval Drive in Oakville since 1998.  Superior Court is located off Burloak in Oakville just south of the QEW.  Our new office is almost 12,000 square feet which is double the space that we have now.

We have contracted with Style Construction for project management and On-Sight Design for design services. Frank, Penny and Wendy are all working hard to ensure that the build goes smooth.  The space that we have leased is flexSpace and it is the first development in the Great Lakes Business Park.  Our next door neighbors are Canadian Tire Financial.

The space is brand new so we have had the pleasure of designing our own layout.  Wendy (our designer) has provided us with a great deal of advice and guidance on best practices for efficient office layout.  We have used Draftsight from DS SolidWorks (free and downloadable from the Javelin website) to view all of the plans to help make decisions on the new space layout.  See below.

Draftsight is being used to edit and review DWG files

Of course, as the leading 3D design software company in Canada we needed to have our building design as a usable 3D solid model.  Our team has used SolidWorks 2011 as well as BuiltWorks to model up the building and the structure. We have been using eDrawings and PhotoView 360 renderings to help us with decision making along the way in the project.  We will be doing more work using SolidWorks Simulation to model and test the interior, exterior and other aspects of the building.

New Javelin office modeled in SolidWorks 2011

You will notice a different logo over the front.  That’s new also.  The Javelin team has also undertaken a project to update our look and brand.  We will provide more information about that in follow-on posts.

We are hoping that you’ll come and see us in the new office.  In future blog posts I’ll share some great reasons to visit.  Some of them will be about awesome new technology we have and some of them will be just for fun.