It’s a major break through moment for us. The tenants next door to our office are moving out this month. This is pretty exciting. This is our chance! This is our moment… to break into that space and commit to our explosive growth. It’s our opportunity to embrace change, and start to design the newly added space. (which is the really fun part).

So I am printing out floor plans of our current loft office and of the office next door for all of the staff to draw up what kind of space they need as we continue to grow. Do we finally need a full lunchroom? Do we need a game room? A creative brainstorm room outside of our kind of cool conference room. Someone mentioned huddle rooms? Do we need quiet rooms? Or maybe a nicer place for the fantastic contractors we know and love so they don’t have to work so close to the microwave and micro their brain waves out…

When we moved into this space 2 years ago I always envisioned that we would knock out part of the wall and make a curved archway into the new space. But after visiting the layout, I think the entire wall is going to have to go to really break through. My friend Ron told me that companies are the most efficient after a move, I’ll let him know how it goes.

We made the list – the top 21 list that is! We are so proud to be in Brill Street’s Top 50 Generation Y Employers Chicago. Yep, we’re #21 (hence the top 21 list). And they wrote a nice bio about our company on their site that really exemplifies who we are as a company, and what it’s like to work with us, and for us. They even mentioned our guacamole contest!

This recognition means a lot to me – and has easily become one of my favorite highlights of owning a business for the past 11 years. I am honored and proud that Sandstorm is a company and has a culture that people want to work for. That’s why I started Sandstorm, to build a place that I would want to work at too.

Welcome Jon Stahler, Technology Director – the newest addition to the Sandstorm Design user experience team! We are so excited to have Jon heading up our technology team with his unique skill set of savvy project management, application development, database development, and information architecture skills – not to mention his ability to fix our server issues on day 1! And even better than that – he can translate developer languages into human speak for the rest of us.

Welcome Jon. We can’t wait to work with you.

So how did we find Jon? He found us… from a blog post which turned into a phone call which turned into a few interviews. The untold success stories of our blog – recruiting.

The Web Marketing Association has honored us with the 2009 WebAward For Outstanding Achievement in Web Development and Design for National Association of Realtors’ Green REsource Council web site. The Green REsource Council was founded to make the knowledge of green real estate practices available to everyone and is the only environmental real estate designation addressing multiple specialties for agents and property managers.

We are very proud to be recognized for our green design work, and continue to strive to build intuitive online user experiences.