The LA Times is running to the “Topless Meeting” Article with a picture of a developers meetings from our office.

Screenshot from the LA Times 3/31/08 “Silicon Valley meetings go ‘topless’”

See the details on the story here.

We recently had a design position we were ready to fill. We had two totally qualified job candidates and it seemed from our collective hours of interviews that either would have been a big score for the team. When it came down to the final decision, the four of us on the interviewing team found ourselves at an impasse. Both were friendly and a good cultural fit. Both had strong resumes and portfolios. We were really stuck.

Then I remembered back to my days at Travelocity-Sydney. Whenever we hired an engineer we gave them a take home exam that required writing some code with a few hairy recursive functions. The test took most about an hour or two to complete and it was always really easy to see who was the best candidate. A few follow-up questions were made to make sure they wrote the code themselves. It always worked.

Back to the two design candidates… The hiring team liked the idea of giving a simple test. (Well, we tried to call it an “exercise”, but both candidates figured it was a “test”.) The ‘exercise’ had to be short and not something we would use on the site immediately (so that we were not looking like we were getting work done for free). It had to be pretty open as to judge creativity, but also something similar to the work they would be doing if hired. Finally, it had to have a deadline.

The results were dramatic and clear. One candidate got her files back to us within a day (we had asked to have them in three days). The other candidate had to be asked after the deadline if he still wanted to submit - he definitely did. The first candidate was very creative, organized, obviously loved animals and had an excellent design sense. The other candidate, while not awful, was–when it came to execution–clearly nowhere near as competent as the first. The decision was made unanimously and with real excitement for the new team member. After six months, we could not be happier that Yuko is on team Dogster/Catster. She has exceeded all of our expectations and in retrospect it’s frightening to think that we might have offered the position to the other candidate and lost her.

So, if you are ever having trouble deciding between two candidates or even if you just want to validate your opinion of a certain team member to-be, try a test.

About a year ago John had the smart realization that when laptops and PDAs are at meetings participants were less focused and meetings took longer to complete.

So he proposed a no-laptops-at-meeting policy which has been a huge improvement. Meetings stay far more focused and end on-time or early far more often. Of course laptops are needed at some meetings, but they are used to help the meeting, not offer distraction from it. Honestly, if you are too busy to be fully engaged at a meeting, it’s not worth being there.

Last week Jeremy Zawodney
wrote a blog entry on the appearance of no-laptop meetings at Yahoo!. I chimed in on the comments about how successful it’s been for us only to be contacted by a journalist wanting to know more.

The article came out last week in the San Jose Merc and it turns out we’re part of a trend that the author was unable to find anyone the found fault with. No surprise the folks at Adaptive Path already had the catchy name for it of “topless meetings” (They coined “Ajax” too).

Here are some quotes by John that went in the article.

Dogster.com and Catster.com, decided to cut the cord about a year ago. The decision was in keeping with its philosophy of creating a collaborative culture, said company co-founder John Vars.

“You can tell meetings go quicker and there is also just a shared experience. People are communicating better, the flow is faster.”

Update: the Modestos Bee ran the article too.

Zappos.com considers core values and company culture to be as mission critical as earnings and company growth. I’ll post my notes from Tony Hsieh’s talk at SXSW, but this list should be plenty for any company to consider.

Tony said it took them a year to finalize this list. They started with a list of 43 and distilled it based upon the input of all employees and senior management.

I‘m so pleased to announce that Dogster/Catster are co-sponoring a party at SXSWi for the first time. It’s open to all attendees but bring your badge.

This really means a lot to me even though this will be my 6th year in a row. The first year I arrived knowing no one and slept on a couch. Same goes for the second, but I made a number of contacts that were instrumental to Dogster’s early maturation. By the third year Steven and John were going and I led my first panel on DIY Web Development (note a pre-Lifehacker Gina Trapani joined me =) and Dogster.com won the People’s Choice award.

Last year we brought 4 employees and this year we are taking 8! Each year, each person has left with an overflow of great insight, research, connections, inspiration and free maragaritas. We are very pleased to be able to give some back this year.

So come to our party we’re co-hosting with our good freinds at Get Satisfaction, Laughing Squid, Pownce, 30 Boxes, Joyent, ComicVine and Rocketboom. The venue is huge, the bar is open and there will be some killer local acts. It’s a little far from Convention Center but you can walk (I did last year) and you won’t need to leave once you are there.

Oh yeah, we’ll be paneling and conversing again.

A big Dogster fan showed her big Dogster love last weekend at the start of this year’s Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. The Iditarod, called “The Last Great Race on Earth”, is the 1,150 mile sled dog race across Alaska. It’s also the only sporting event that has a dog liveblogging the competition.

Thanks DeLynn for braving the bitter weather to show your true colors. We love ya right back!

<3 Dogster.com

For the first time ever we have worked with an advertiser to skin one of our homepages. Sharing our homepage with an outside party is something we take very seriously, but when you are working with Disney, you know it’s going to be special.

We built the sites from scratch to be a special place for people that love pets and the advertisers that love them. Early on I foresaw how important it would be to work with advertisers like Disney that get it. It’s about sharing the fun, the love and passion. Campaigns like this are fun for members, fun for first time visitors and it’s great for Disney.

Click to see full size