We are forging ahead with our first major interactive project for the Spanish market, more precisely for Group Santander’s new HQ at Cuidad Financeira in Madrid.

Read more about it here.

Moving to the new building in the FCT campus was a very important milestone for the company’s corporate culture.

Our old offices couldn’t keep pace with the company’s growth, people were sharing desks and the Alcântara’s office (central Lisbon), albeit strategically located, was slowing creating the feeling of a YDreams that was physically divided into backoffice (Production and R&D) and front office (Sales and Marketing). Project Managers where in the middle, almost literally, since they spent more time going back and forth the Tagus bridge than anyone else.

So it was great when all the company came to be reunited on one building. Moreover, it was a building that we designed and conceived to fit our own needs – band studio included.

Nevertheless, after the reunification joy settled for a bit, we realized that with the explosive growth, new people constantly arriving and frantic work rate, we were in danger of losing a bit of the DNA that defined us as a company.

Looking around at all the shiny gray walls that were now surrounding us, some YDreamers realized that they needed some life and provided a great canvas for some funky signage to shake things up. Moreover, why keep the initiative to walls and not devise a series of actions to shake everything up? This is how YShakeIt – Project 363 was born.

Entrance to the Quality Test Room (left) and the Sound Studio (right)

Staff Only Door

The project is really a series of activities aimed at keep corporate culture and foster creativity, involving people from all departments which “lead” each activity. There’s a Project Manager also, of course, someone needs to keep an eye on the budget.

Some of the stuff we’ve been organizing so far:

- Close Encounters Sessions

Close Encounters are small internal weekly conferences we have. The format varies, it can be a round table discussion, a talk about a specific topic or an artistic presentation. Speakers can be YDreamers or external guests. Nuno Artur Silva (Produções Fícticias), Artur Arsénio (Robotics), Manuel Lima (Data Visualization) or Prof. Rui Aço (Oficina do Desenho), are some of the guests we were lucky to have so far. Internally we’ve also had people speaking about Interactive Narratives in Cinema, the Power of Collaborative Tools, Digital Art, Finances for non-financial People, among many others. As you can see the idea is not to discuss work, but to inspire and inform in different ways.

- Cinema Sessions with commentary and discyssion

Kicked off recently, some of the movies included Switching, by Morten Schjødt and Man with a Movie Camera, by Dziga Vertov.

- Friday After Work Caipirão

I think this one is pretty self-explanatory.

- The Other Side of the YDreamer

YDreamers often have hidden talents, this way they can share them with the rest of us. The photography exhibition is a good example.

There are many others kicking off or in production like podcasts or arduino workshops, and maybe Close Encounters will soon have an external format. Keep tuned!

Patrícia Martins, young Portuguese tennis hopeful, stopped by the other day and interacted for a bit with our YVision platform. The result is the video below, and as you can see, it’s kind of a different ball game than the one she’s normally used to, but she still excels.

Patrícia’s tennis career is relatively short (she is only 14) but shows incredible promise. On top of that, while visiting us, she was very courteous and nice to everyone around. It’s striking how much focused she seems regarding tennis, but genuinely passionate for the sport. You can see she’s having a lot of fun. Talking to her mother, you could also notice that her other priorities, like school and growing up as a teenager, are also kept in line. It was an honest pleasure having her here, and being able to support and witness her early steps into tennis fame.

Eduardo Dias, one of YDreams co-founders, has recently started a blog called “ATREVE-TE” (in English, “dare to”).

It is written in Portuguese and will focus on Eduardo’s experiences as a young entrepreneur and the company’s building up towards the external investment, among other topics. Eduardo will also shed some light on what he calls the three major assets on which the company was build: the people, the product and the image.

Check it out!
http://senaotentaresnuncaconseguiras.blogspot.com/