New Year, new people, new gaff!

Hello all,

It's a new year (and a very happy 2015 to you all from us) and to make things more interesting for ourselves, we have some big news to share with you all...

In the beginning, there was Boards...

Then came Daft.ie with it's interest in expanding their business and they acquired 30ish percent of Boards and so Boards joined them in their office on Golden Lane. Then came the split between Boards and Adverts and as they created their own team and started off on their own. Then BoardsDeals started and they needed a space of their own, the place became crowded. At that stage we'd already taken over all of the 3rd floor (there used to be another company here) and we were eyeballing the 4th when TheJournal became a lot more than an idea.

Round about then, the idea of the Distilled Media brand/group came into being - shared resources for things like sales, design and of course our offices. That went very well for a while, but it also brought some limitations, so that idea's had its time and the individual companies in the group are once again operating as single entities rather than sharing resources. This means some good changes for us.

Up until the end of last year, we lived on the 4th floor of Latin Hall on Golden Lane along with TheJournal. When Seán arrived back in June, he asked about making our part of the floor separate and all ours so that we had our own corner and so we wouldn't be as disturbed by the active newsroom that is TheJournal's office (it is a bit noisy, but it's not like they are trying to be bad neighbours, it's the nature of their game). Given they're planning on significant expansion of numbers for 2015 (I believe they've announced something in the region of 35 new employees in the next 18 - 24 months), an idea was put forward that maybe we don't delay the inevitable and get a place of our own.

So, we've got one! We're in it right now and it's kinda like a new house that the builder assured you would be ready for the Christmas but clearly wasn't - there are desks being assembled in one corner, the kitchen needs a floor, the boardroom needs furniture, we haven't even got a proper supply of tea or coffee (although Niamh being an excellent person at all times has made sure to bring tea and milk with her for us this morning).

On top of the new digs, we also get 2 new "official" employees. You may have seen Chris posting on Site Dev and Feedback - he's been a part of the Distilled Sys Admin team for some time and in the last 12 months, he was our go-to guy when we needed someone to help with something on our servers, so he is now officially a Boards.ie employee and we're really happy about that. Furthermore, we have Matt who has been our main Sales guy on the group sales team for a while also join us as a full time official Boards.ie employee which means that he will be able to spend 100% of his time on us and us alone.

So there's the news! I will be posting pictures up of the office later on, when we tidy up a bit