02.17.2012 By Josh Nason
Gray & Joe’s Excellent San Francisco Adventure
“It started out weird and then, it got crazy.”
That was the quote from Dyn COO Gray Chynoweth following his three day trip to San Francisco this week, accompanied by VP of Finance Joe Raczka. A trip that was built around business was mixed with a lot of pleasure involving a Valentine’s Day dinner, Patron shots, a Mercedes Benz, a house of hackers and a multiple time Super Bowl MVP.
A tale best set for a Ben Mezrich book? Decide for yourself.
Read More02.14.2012 By Mike Taylor
ValenDyn’s Day: Contribute To Our Postcard Project
When I was little, my family would go on trips and we would send ourselves postcards from everywhere that we would visit and try to race them home and beat them.
This pretty much never happened, but when you’re seven years old and in the back of an ’85 Chevy van pulling a popup trailer in the middle of Nebraska with no air conditioning in July, you look forward to the little things.
Nowadays in a world where my tweet will get to you quicker than it takes to confirm that it sent from my phone, we don’t really send postcards anymore. We don’t take the time to pick out the perfect or most ridiculous one to send, let alone take a moment to share what is going at that very moment that we can then share with others.
So let’s change all that.
Based off an idea that one of our employees saw in an California office tour and in the interest of celebrating our growing customer community, we want you to send a postcard to us. Who are you and what do you do? How are the kids? What do you use Dyn for? What should we know? You know…stuff!
Send them to me at the address below and I will put them up on a very empty wall here at our Manchester office that needs some love. People are always touring our space and I think it would be very cool to show off that we have users from around the world that have stories to tell. Think about it: there are four million users of ours around the world. That’s a lot of great stories!
And as part of some random acts of kindness, I’ll send some postcards back and perhaps some Dyn swag for some that really make an impression. We’ll update on this project via social media as we go and hopefully, we’ll get so many that we’ll inspire another company to do the same thing. Who will be the first on the wall? Where’s the furthest distance someone will send someone from (looking at you, Antarctica)?
To be part of our old school social media experiment, send postcards to:
Mike Taylor
c/o Dyn
150 Dow Street – Tower Two
Manchester, NH 03101
02.13.2012 By Josh Nason
ValenDyn’s Day: Our 24-Hour Dinner With Dyn Contest
Duty calls at Dyn and sometimes, we get called away to work on holidays. It’s tough being the Internet Infrastructure-as-a-Service leader but that’s what you have to do to stay ahead.
In case you haven’t heard, Tuesday is Valentine’s Day, a day that is devoted to everything that is love. Two of our best and brightest — Dyn COO Gray Chynoweth and VP of Finance Joe Raczka — have to be in San Francisco for meetings and be away from their wives. While a romantic trip on a trolley may sound great to some, the two really want to spend it with other people…which is where you come in.
We’re holding a 24-hour contest from 12 pm EST on Monday, February 13th to 12 pm EST on February 14th for our DynECT Managed DNS / Email clients. Two lucky winners and their significant others will join Gray and Joe at COCO500, a fun & hip restaurant in San Francisco’s SOMA area.
All you have to do is tell us why you should be picked.
Read More02.13.2012 By Adam Coughlin
Dyn Sports Update: Dodgeball Team Remains Undefeated
Once in a generation, a sporting performance comes along that is so dominant and mind-blowing that historians can do nothing but take note. Jesse Owens at the 1936 Summer Olympics. Bobby Fischer at the 1963-64 U.S. Chess Championship. The 1972 Miami Dolphins. Secretariat at the Belmont. And now, Dyn’s dodgeball team team has joined that list.
While the number 13 might be unlucky for some, it was the margin of victory when Dyn crushed (harsh), mutilated (harsher) and eviscerated (harshest) their opponent Can’t Dodge These Shenanigans 13-0. The convincing victory moves Always Up – Better, Faster, Stronger to 3-0 and atop the NHSSC standings.
Ever the humanitarian, team captain Joe Stelmach wouldn’t kick a team while they were down.
Read More02.06.2012 By Adam Coughlin
Dyn Sports Beat: Soccer Club Picks Up First Win
Editor’s note: This is the first in a series that will chronicle the athletic exploits of some of Dyn’s employees, so make sure you properly stretch those hamstrings and then enjoy!
To say Chris Gonyea left it all on the field is an understatement.
Long known simply as the Senior Manager of Client Services at Dyn, Gonyea stepped away from the phones and onto the field of Bedford’s Edge Sports Center a week ago. Gonyea and his nimble footed colleagues dialed up a world of pain for their opponent and in the first match of the season, Team Wine & Dyn defeated Amoskeag, 3-2.
Jarrod Campbell, Brett Haynes and Ian MacDonald scored goals. However, the man of the match could go to none other than Gonyea not because of any particular athletic accolade but because he was the only member of the squad to vomit during the match.
Read More01.30.2012 By Lynda Elliott
Culture-Con Preview: Examining Dyn’s Culture And How We’re Different
In the business world, culture is defined as “a shared set of values, attitudes, practices and goals that make a company unique”. In essence, it is the character of the organization. Every company creates its own culture whether consciously aware of it or not.
Whether you are an employer or an employee, culture is very important and it impacts individuals as well as the company as a whole. For employers, culture affects morale, communications, productivity, growth, the bottom line and can ultimately make or break the company. For employees, a positive culture can motivate, inspire creativity, loyalty, cooperation and a desire to go above and beyond. On the other hand, it can erode trust, security and connectedness while increasing stress, indifference and job searches.
Dyn is definitely in the minority of companies ahead of the culture curve. Receiving regional recognition from Inc. Magazine as a winner in the 2011 Top Small Company Workplaces competition and being named one of the Top Small Businesses To Work For by Business NH Magazine for four years isn’t by happy accident. Dyn’s overall success and rapid growth is greatly attributed to the following three major culture factors:
- Dyn’s People: Priority One
- Dyn’s Practices: Transparency, Trust, Team Building, Timely Reviews
- Dyn’s Perks: Traditional and Fringe Benefits
01.27.2012 By Julie Parenteau
Five Tips For Creating Your Company Yearbook
Given that our yearbook was such a hit among Dyners (see some visuals in my previous yearbook post), I encourage your company to take on this endeavor and see what comes of it. It may seem like a daunting task, but to help out, I put together five thoughts to make your own yearbook creation process smooth.
Outline
We knew that we wanted each employee to have their own page in the book, so from the outset, we were looking at a 100 page book. Since we weren’t planning on making the book a part of the fitness program, we kept the additional content down to a minimum.
Remember to consider your bindery here. If going with a perfect bound book as we did, you’ll need to keep the page count divisible by 4.
Here’s how our outline looked:
Read More01.26.2012 By Mikel Steadman
Culture-Con Preview: From Disney To Dyn, Employees Matter
I have glanced at many of Dyn’s culture blogs recently and thought about a story I heard several months ago from a reliable source in the world of customer service, budgeting, planning, and business practice: my wife, Lisa.
It is about a company who had very humble beginnings, nearly closing its doors on a regular basis in its early years and then expanded beyond even the belief of its owner and board members. It is a business that is particularly good at driving a brand through every one of its employees, 133,000 and growing.
Here’s the story that you’ve also likely experienced.
Read More01.20.2012 By Kyle York
Fit & Hustle: Making The Final Call On Customer-Facing Positions
All of you potential candidates of Dyn looking to work in client services, biz dev, marketing or sales, let me tell you a little secret.
If you’ve made it through our phenomenal screening / interview process and got to me for a sit down, you’re in damn good shape but don’t drool on yourself when we actually meet up.
I’m literally just looking for two things from those sitting across of me: fit and hustle. Will you match the brand and culture and will you work your a$$ off to achieve big things? (Yes, those dollar signs are on purpose.)
Read More01.12.2012 By Julie Parenteau
Inside The Dyn Yearbook Creation Process
Wait, we’re going to create a what?
Yes, I was the first skeptic among many about creating a yearbook for Dyn, a project that came to life in early 2011 and kept growing as the year moved on. It was set to be a gift for Dyn employees at our yearly holiday party and a fun way to look at who is working here and commemorate 2011.
So yeah, I had more questions. Would people participate? Would people understand print’s high resolution needs and adhere to dimensions? And most important to me – would this wild conglomerate of pages even look good?
After the onslaught of employee pages began rolling in, I was still skeptical. It wasn’t until I started compiling the book that the magic of the project revealed itself. Much of the work that we do at Dyn is very intangible and since we do DNS and Email so well, it’s also quite invisible. A book though is obviously very tangible and visible. So for me, the yearbook provides a tangible reflection of Dyn’s essence and culture…and it is awesome.
Check out some of my favorite pages for yourself.
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