When work stuff becomes useful in your personal life

A couple weeks ago I changed the title of my wedding blog from “Greg and Rachel are Getting Married” to “Greg Baugues and Rachel Lazelle Are Getting Married”.

Small, unnecessarily formal change… right?

If you Googled me prior to the change, the top result would have been a cheesy interview I gave to an entrepreneurial website seven years ago. Our blog was buried half-way down the page.

Why? Because on a site full of information about Rachel and I, only a single page had the phrase 100% of people use when looking for me online — my full name.

By simply changing the name of our wedding blog I created forty pages of content with “Greg Baugues” and “Rachel Lazelle” in the title, establishing our blog as the definitive source for information about us and boosting it to top of search results for our names.

What shows up when people Google you?

Lucas is Leaving

Tomorrow will be Lucas’ last day.

Lucas was the first full-time Table XI employee. For the last couple of years he has been working remotely from Victoria, BC where he and his wife completed their post-graduate education. He will be relocating to Vancouver to take a job with TaskTop, a software process management company founded by the researcher with whom he almost did his PhD.

For all intents and purposes, this is Lucas’ dream job, and while we are incredibly sad to see him go, we can’t help but wish him all the best.

Obviously time for him to go.

Table XI Bikes

Here’s a shot of the bike racks right outside our office. From front to back that’s Erik’s bike, Samantha’s bike and my bike.

Erik and Samantha are hardcore and ride to work all winter long.  I’m kind of a little girl when it comes to the cold, so I just started riding again a couple weeks ago when the temp rised above 50.

Riding my bike in Chicago is one of my favorite activities.  There is no better way to get around and experience this incredible city.

Matt went and got himself an iPad

He’s only had it for a couple hours, but his initial review is that it’s “pretty sweet.”

We are hiring

We’re blowing up over here. Business has been good and we are about to start a couple of really large projects that will be keeping us busy for a long time.

And since work/life balance is very important at Table XI, we are looking to hire a developer so that John, Erik and Rich can continue spending time with their significant others.

Perks of taking a job here:

  • You get to work at Table XI
  • Umm, just skim some of the past posts on this blog and you’ll get the idea

Check out the job description and drop us an email if you or anyone else you know might be interested.


Table XI does well by eating well

Medill Reports wrote an article about us called Tech consulting firm does well by eating well.  The article gives a background of who we are and what we do, but the highlight is the video of Ellen putting on a cooking demonstration.

Speaking of cooking, yesterday Ellen made for us Tortilla Espagnola with Spanish potato, caramelized onion, and piquillo pepper omelet. The salad had sherry-mustard vinaigrette, and the dates were stuffed with manchego and wrapped with serrano ham.

Ridiculous, no?