After two years in the Jiaotong University incubator center it was time to move on for Spill Group Asia. We moved into the incubator center in May 2006, at that time with just 7 employees. Two years later we have about 70 employees, and we needed to look for a bigger space. We found a good and affordable one in the Si Hang building, located next to the Suzhou Creek at the Xizhang Lu bridge. This is the building where Tudou used to have its office until about 2 years ago. A good building, close to downtown (People’s Square), two subway stations, and with mainly creative industry companies. And also a building with an interesting history.
Over the past month the office was completely redecorated, among others with an additional floor, and this week we moved in. Moving was quite a hassle with so many people, but after some of the staff worked for almost 48 hours straight everything was ready by Monday morning. The new office is big enough for all people to be in one space (in our old office we occupied two separate offices), which is much better for communication. Also we finally have a bigger meeting room, because until now we had a problem when we had meetings with more than 10 people.
In case you also have an office in the Si Hang building or in one of the other warehouses along the Creek close to our building, let me know. I plan to organize the June Lunch 2.0 event in our office, so everybody who plans to join that, can see and hear about our activities during that lunch. For more info about Lunch 2.0 check with George Godula from MHDirekt (georg (dot) godula (at) mhdirekt (dot) com). George, if you already have a website for Lunch 2.0 Shanghai let me know and I will link to it here.
welcome web 2.0 wave, good bye new economy hype! what next? toilet 3.0? same s***, money burners.
Xiang? Is that you? Get back to work!
If you need an account on the lunch 2.0 blog http://lunch20.com/
Contact me and mark: tychay at php.net and markjen at tagged.com 🙂
Hi, I’m a little disappointed by this new office. What catches my eye:
– small old-style CRT monitors
– extremely little work space around the PC.
Why not invest a little bit more in an office with more workspace and better equipment?
I do like that everyone is in the same room, makes communication much easier indeed.
@thijs I run Spill Group Asia like a start-up, it’s not a multinational like QQ where you work. I have limited budgets, and have to use these in the most efficient ways. This means I do not buy expensive flat screens if we still have good working CRT monitors. The space for the people is sufficient, even if it may seem a bit limited in Western eyes. In my experience providing people with a luxurious office environment does not always lead to a higher productivity or better results. In case you’ll ever become an entrepreneur you’ll probably understand what I mean.
@marc, you have a good point there. I asked my girlfriend and she said in many other Chinese companies it is similar to the offices you have. It’s not worse for sure! I think this was indeed an example where my expectations were perhaps a bit high. Still, LCD monitors are dirt-cheap nowadays and I love to be able to put a notebook (the paper kind) next to my PC to write stuff down or make sketches. Research has also shown that using multiple monitors actually increases productivity, so in the long run having several LCD screens might actually lead to increased revenue. But you are definately right that you have more experience in such matters than me, and the past has proven you right. I just intended it as some well-meant advice.