This week Sherry aka ? flew all the way from NY to Colorado to tour the Webroot offices as part of her reward for achieving Silver VIP status on our community.

 



 



Tuesday afternoon I picked her up from the airport and drove her to the hotel where she’d be staying for the length of her visit. After a quick stop at the shoe store for some new boots (it had started to rain that evening – everyone joked that she’d brought the weather with her 🙂 ), we headed over to the Zolo Grill restaurant to meet with James and several other Webroot folks that Sherry knew from the community for a welcome dinner. We had a fun time and Sherry’s nerves at meeting so many new people were quickly calmed. A few drinks didn’t hurt either :)



The next day her tour started. It began with Mike Malloy, our Executive VP of Products & Strategy, meeting her for breakfast and then bringing her to the office. First up was a meeting with several support, escalation and QA folks from Webroot. We had a lively discussion about all things Webroot, especially with regards to the Mac. Next we got to sit in on a development planning meeting and watch the developers and planners in action as they selected which items from their list were going into the next development cycle. A lot of the technical discussion went over our heads, but the devs did their best to explain as they went along.



For lunch we had pizza in the community & social team area, with lots of people dropping by to say hello (and grab a slice of pizza too).



Next up was a more in-depth meeting with the developers and product managers in the recently named TripleHelix room. ? was the first to reach Silver VIP and visit Webroot. When he was also the first to reach Gold VIP status, we decided that part of his reward would be to have a conference room named in his honor. During the developer meeting we discussed features Sherry would like to see as well as issues she’d had in the past with Webroot’s products. We even got to a custom demo of some Webroot for Android features that neither Sherry nor I had discovered, right from the developer who’d created them!



The grand finale was a party in the lobby with coffee and cake. Many Webroot employees got to greet Sherry and express their appreciation for all the work she’d done on the community to help Webroot customers and improve the product. After the party I gave Sherry a tour of the behind-the-scenes aspects of the Webroot community, then we headed out in search of some dinner. We discussed what sight-seeing she’d like to do with the rest of the evening and settled on the Halloween pumpkin carving exhibit at the Denver Botanical Gardens. It was a bit drizzly but not too cold, and we had a great time walking around the venue and seeing the elaborate pumpkins and decorations.



Her return flight was delayed, so we hung out in the offices for a bit the next morning and took some team photos (which we’d forgotten to do the day before). Then it was time to head back to the airport and back home again.



Thanks for coming to visit Sherry. It was a pleasure hosting you and getting to experience your sunny disposition in person!