The time has come for me to wish you adieu as today is my last day at JOBY. It has been a great ride and it has been fun getting to know you and being inspired by the amazing things that you do.

Never fear – I am leaving you in the capable hands of Emily (she is the one doing the snorkel) – who already made a guest appearance on the blog last week.

Cheers!

Eileen

The GorillaTorches and contribution will help support the disaster relief efforts of Second Harvest Japan to deliver food and other much needed items to the affected areas of Japan following the earthquake and tsunami.  Second Harvest Japan’s mission is to provide food that would otherwise go to waste, orphanages, the elderly, emergency shelters, single mothers, the homeless, migrant workers, and many others. For more information, or to donate to Second Harvest Japan, visit www.2hj.org.

In advance of the event we spent time cleaning up the space and sprucing it up to make it look just right for the intimate event. Heidi and I bonded as we hung pictures and struggled to get it just right (yes, it is harder when the floor is uneven).

And so the event begins….

Eric shoots fabulous shots… which unfortunately will never be seen due to a theft in our office:(. Boo to thieves.

Forrest introduces Patrick Trefz and his beautifully filmed work.

Patrick sets the tone…

…and the film begins!

Some seats are better than others.

Check out more photos from the event in our flickr pool!

We were thrilled to see some of our closest friends in the design community take home top honors. It doesn’t hurt that two of them in particular have been integral to making our new office space so amazing. Last year, the brains and skill behind our great white table; Council Design, took home top prize for furniture design. This year, Joby friend and designer of the wonderful orange lights that illuminate our space, Peter Stathis won for the lighting category.

Congrats!

Recently, we celebrated our new office space with a lively and fun filled party aka Joby Lab Launch + Liquor. Over 200 people joined us to eat, drink, mingle and even dance a little. The drinks flowed liberally as we feted our lovely new setup designed by Philip Wood & CITIZEN: Citizen along with Derek Chen the rest of the Council design team who crafted the amazing white tables that you see in the pictures below.

In addition, we inaugurated the Joby Inspired: Wall -  a curated space which showcases creative work whose goal is to inspire and foster new ways of viewing. Philip Wood blessed us by setting the bar high with the showcasing of his new work titled The Pattern of Security series of objects derived and inspired by data protection envelopes. In Philip’s words:

The Pattern of Security, a collection of products and a book, together form what we see as a first draft, a response and an observation on our concerns (both real and imagined) with security in the contemporary age.

Philip Wood - The Pattern of Security

Our space was further enhanced with a collection of found photographs (visible on most of the walls) by Rich Hansen from Indicate Design Group. Thank you Rich!

We even created some fun pictures ourselves  with the help of an instant back resulting in a cool vintage feeling photographs.

Mingling

See more photos from the party in our  flickr pool.

How Many Joby Employees Does it Take to Move  a Bookcase?

Here at Joby we continue to move into our new space. Last week, we took on what seemed to be an easy task of moving a bookcase…apparently that was a little deceptive.

Gorillapod Magnetic Does the Rounds

Gorillapod magnetic flitted its way across the internet this week…ooh magnets! Of particular interest:

Engadget test drives the Gorillapod Magnetic on a golf club and discovers that hanging cameras in all directions is fun.

Gorillacam Soars to 1.5MM Downloads and Gets Top Reviews

As reported earlier this week Gorillacam, built by Apptight, Joby’s iPhone camera application reached a new high by reaching 1.5MM downloads. Finishing off a lovely week, Tempting Magazine selected the Gorillacam app as one of the Top 5 Best iPhone Apps.

Flickr Gorillapod Love Favorite Photo of the Week

This great image by Jez Page in the Gorillapod Love flickr pool caught my attention. I love the hint of the Ferris wheel behind the beautiful building, a little bit of modernity poking into the photograph.

Spring has arrived here in sunny San Francisco and it seems like the appropriate time to spring the blog back to life. At the risk of extending the metaphor too far, we also have lots of new stuff going on around here. We recently moved to a sparkling new office space (see photo below) and I am now here to keep you informed about all things Joby, interesting happenings and hopefully not too random musings.

Scenes from the new Joby office

So to give you a better sense of who I am, these are a few of my favorite things (trust me, you should be grateful, you can’t hear me sing).

*Creactive (n): [ Creative+Active=Creactive ]

1. A person who lives a creative and active lifestyle.

2. The community who influence and inspire Joby products.

We’re looking for someone awesome to join the team in Joby’s San Francisco office.

Check out all the details on our jobs page.

But this bicycle wasn’t just made for riding around our huge SF loft space. Nope, we’ve got pretty big plans for our little fixie. We can’t give away the secret yet, but let’s just say that our engineers and designers are going to be transforming her into something fancy.

But first, WE NEED YOUR HELP! Specifically, we want you to help us name our fixie!

Click through to our Flickr page and leave a comment with your suggestion for our fixie’s name. We’ll pick a winner from the submissions we receive by 5pm PDT on September 18, 2009. If we choose your name, you get a FREE Gorillapod SLR-Zoom. Pretty sweet, huh?

So let’s see those names!

Required legal disclaimers: Contest void where prohibited. The winner will be contacted via Flickr message. If the winner doesn’t respond within 5 days after Joby contacts him/her, the prize will be forfeited. Questions? Email stories [at] joby.com