Just a little update on our new office. We moved in just one month ago and it is a really cool place! 5 rooms and plenty of space for the whole team, a nice conference-room. Still a bit untidy as boxes standing around, kitchen missing and such. But it is getting better. At least the Nintendo Wii and the PS3 are set up.

See some of my coworkers in the IT-Dev-Room:

Another good thing is the location: 5 minutes over to the central train station, 5 minutes to get downtown, 2 minutes to get to our favourite bar and another 4 minutes walking to our favourite club… Couldn´t be better!

If you are around in Munich feel free to stop by.

There are also some news regarding our team: Britta and Birgit joined us on the first of March. Britta is our team-assistant caring for all minor and major problems except IT. And Birgit is just the opposite… caring for all minor and major issues only in IT. Birgit works as a Software-Engineer.

By the way, Tino got a new keyboard which he is really proud of. As Tino grew up in a small city (village?) in Franconia, he brought along his own dialect being slightly different to the way people pronounce letters like k and t over here. Therefore he was very happy that his new keyboard is in Franconia-style, i.e. no k and t but two times g and d… Edzadla

Well, it’s really sad, some of us really have tears in our eyes, but the end is coming close really fast.

A little over a year ago I started Refined Labs, trying to revolutionize Online Marketing. After a little while and thanks to some great minds I realized that an office would certainly help as it would be pretty hard to employ people otherwise. Therefore I signed the contract for a one year lease for Refined LAB I.

This is what our superb lab looked like after a day:

During day 2:

(see the pizza box in front? )

After day 10:

After 2 months we decided that it would be time for a beta test of the office and invited some friends & family to “Refined Lab I BETA” at the evening of SES Munich 2007:

And then we just started to grow into our office, had a wonderful summer with plants from friends and now have a very cozy home for eight people:

And tomorrow will be our last day in LAB I before we move over to LAB II, where we’ll have more space. But before that we had to visit some of our locals where we enjoyed great food over the past year. Our favorites were: Man Fat, Café Altschwabing, Alter Simpl and of course Lo Studente, the best Pizza in Munich. Tomorrow at 1:15pm we’ll go there for our last lunch to celebrate the “Maxvorstadt farewell lunch”.

Overall I feel like the entire team loved this office and I personally will definetly never forget this great spot! On the other hand we have more than twice as much space in the new office that we can fill with presents from our readers.

Bye, bye LAB I - We will miss you!

Thomas
(with a tear in his eye)

The countdown is on - not even 3 weeks, and we will be leaving the “Barer Strasse 53″. Due to our latest personnel acquisitions, our current office has become a little too cozy and is calling for a change into something bigger. Since the beginning of this year, our team has been strengthened by Stephan Daxberger, Markus Liedl, Melanie Grisch and Andi Liebig, thus almost doubling the headcount.

Stephan and Melanie will raise SEM to the next level. Markus will support Simon, Jochen and Tino in the development division. Thanks to Andi, as far as I have heard, our servers are now running smoother than ever.

The new office is thus urgently needed and will be available in February. We will then be able to stretch our legs in 5 comfortable rooms. The only catch is that it is not within my walking distance any more and we’re not sure where to put the shared printer…

So far - stay tuned. More about our new office next time.

We would like to take the chance to introduce you to the whole team of Refined Labs on a step by step basis. As someone has to be the first and I haven´t put a blog on our website so far, I´m about to start this series.

Well, that´s me I was born in a mid-sized town called Neumarkt, about 1.5 hours north of Munich, in 1980. After finishing school and joining the army for the cumpulsory 10-month military service I started studying law at the Ludwig Maximilians Universität München in 2000. Some years and plenty of parties later I finished with the degree “Dipl. Jur.” in February 2006, correspoding to a Master of Law. Until August 2006 I spent a couple of month in Australia, mainly in Sydney and on its beautiful beaches. After returning from Australia I started writing on a PhD on the Universität Regensburg - which still keeps me busy - and was working for the major law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer for a couple of month. I joined Refined Labs in October 2007. My job is anything in common with figures and non-IT-issues.

Some words on what I do in my freetime? I love skiing! Things were a bit easier when I used to be a student as I could just take a day off whenever I felt like it. In the summertime I prefer going for a run or playing a round of golf. And of course I like going out. Currently a good spot to see me hanging out with my mates is Munich´s 089bar.

So far so good. Feel free to add my profile on Xing. Cheers.

Yesterday we had the chance to attend and exhibit at CDTM Grow 07 in Garching, thanks to Holtzbrinck eLAB. We were really amazed by how many students were actually looking for jobs as well as the differences of their experience and knowledge.

As this was really our first time we were exhibiting somewhere our booth looked rather basic, but playing Wii Sports (Thanks to guut.de) was definetly the favourite thing for all students at CDTM according to our impression. I think bringing some of the sweets (Knoppers, Hanuta, Lollies, …) was also quite appreciated.

The contacts we made, as well as the feedback we got, I hope that we can fill our job openings soon.

As some of you might have heard from various rumors we were recently exploring various ways of growing faster to offer better solutions to our clients. This search has come to an end as of tuesday.

Refined Labs and Holtzbrinck eLAB, part of Georg von Holtzbrinck publishing group, agreed to a strategic joint venture for future developments. Holtzbrinck eLAB acquired a minority share in Refined Labs.

So much about the official part from our side. We are genuinely happy that we could find this agreement with an excellent partner that has a proven track record as well as great connections and expertise in this industry. We are extremely looking forward to work with them on creating tomorrows visions of the online marketing industry today. We went through lots of offers, possibilities and options in the last weeks and months and are confident that this was a good move for all parties involved.

One of our main goals was always to develop great services with happy employees in a fun environment. Looking into the office today I think that we achieved this goal so far and I am looking forward to welcome more great minds in our team soon. If you’re interested in joining, please have a look at our job openings.

After existing for more than 8 months we figured that Refined Labs should have its own blog so that you know what we do and where we’re going.

Our new homepage should be able to give you a very good idea of our team, what we do and that we like it a lot. Most of you probably don’t know what we are up to and that is not a problem as we’re still figuring that out for ourselves. In the meanwhile we work on creating tomorrow’s visions today. This means that we look into various areas of the online (marketing) world in order to find areas where we can contribute to satisfy tomorrow’s internet users demands today.

Our main goal is to make our users and clients happy by providing a unique and perfect solution to their requirements at all times. We are currently debating on how to use this blog. Suggestions reach from posting Nexuiz high scores, pictures of the company lunches, industry news or just general stuff that keeps our brain busy and us happy.