The BrightGauge Blog

Are you making the most out of the data at your fingertips? If you’re like most of our customers around the globe, then maybe you’ve caught yourself wondering what everyone else is doing with their BrightGauge. After all, viewing someone else’s work is sometimes the best way to inspire yourself to think outside the box when it comes to your own projects. Learn how to model the masters With this idea in mind, plus plenty of you asking to share ideas within the community we’re thrilled to share our first webinar that was hosted by a BrightGauge power user! Shann Bosnell, VP of Technology at TUC Managed IT Solutions joined us recently as he led a show and tell of sorts filled with custom gauges, dashboards, and insights on all the best practices you need to know. The webinar was originally a live event, but you can still access the full recording using the link below. Some of the topics Shann covered: Learn how TUC uses data for their ITSM team See real-life examples of dashboards used by TUC’s Sales Team Walk through some of the custom gauges that help TUC uncover sales opportunities across their client base and so much more! Access the webinar recording here:

We’re thrilled to congratulate our Co-Founder and CEO, Eric Dosal, on his 3-year BrightGauge anniversary! While he's been a part of our story from the first concept to today, this milestone is significant because it marks his move to join our team full-time and the rest, as they say, is history... In the Beginning Eric grew up in the Miami area where he spent summers working for the family IT business, Compuquip Technologies. Back in those days he started at the bottom, spending his days carrying technician tool boxes and pulling cables, all for $3.75 an hour. When the time came to get ready for college, Eric decided on Babson College because he knew he wanted to study business and there was also a great opportunity to play on the school’s baseball team. After graduating, Eric went on to follow his finance passion and pursued his dream of working on Wall Street. But as most of these stories go, the reality wasn’t nearly as glamorous as the dream. Eric had been working 90+ hours a week for over 2 years when he decided that this life was not his calling. Back home in Miami, his father offered a sales position in the family business and Eric ultimately decided to take that opportunity. He worked his way up the management ranks and after 10 years accepted the position of CEO of all the companies under the Dosal Capital umbrella. During that time Eric worked with his brother, Brian, to start the Managed Services division of Compuquip and ended up growing the group from $800K in annual revenue to $8.8MM within a 5-year period. The brothers decided to sell the Managed Services group so that they could focus on a wild idea Brian had: to build a software product. The Wild Idea Comes to Life With a background in the IT business, Eric and Brian immediately recognized what they wanted to accomplish with the software. At the same time, they also knew that founding a business was an incredible opportunity for each of them to focus on their own strengths while building the company and supporting each other. They decided to split responsibilities and Eric would get started on building the BrightGauge sales process and inbound marketing program while Brian would focus on the software development. As the company reached 6, 8, and now 15 employees, the brothers decided to officially split the company into two teams in 2015, Growth and Product, so that each employee could focus on their area of expertise instead of everyone doing a little bit of everything. As the head of the Growth Team, Eric is responsible for Marketing, Sales, Implementations, Customer Success, Support, and the most recent addition of the Data Customization crew. As he explains it, he loves running the team because he has “a real passion for SMarketing” (combination of Sales & Marketing). To top it all off, Eric also adds executive responsibilities and Finance too. Outside BrightGauge When he’s not leading our fearless Growth Team, Eric splits his time managing 2 of the other 3 family businesses as President & CEO of Compuquip Cybersecurity and President of Dosal Capital. We’re not sure how he juggles it all, but Eric also plays a big part in the business leadership community in the Miami area as an Executive Committee member of the Young President’s Organization (YPO) and also the Co-Chair of their Forum Group. If you were starting to think he’s all business, think again! Eric loves spending his free time with his family: daughters Isabella (4) and Andrea (1 ½) and his amazing wife, Lorena. They keep him busy enjoying fun time outside of work hours! Eric's family time with Isabella, Andrea, and Lorena Please join us in congratulating Eric on an incredible 3-year journey with the BrightGauge team; we can't wait to see what the next chapter holds for our team!

There’s a lot of excitement when it comes to being part of a team that’s rapidly growing. There are new skills brought to the group, new personalities added to the mix, and you see accomplishments stacking up faster than ever. But growth comes with some challenges also, and over the last year our team has been right in the middle of the excitement and the obstacles. A year is a relatively short amount of time for a team to almost double in size, and one of the big differences for our group was trying to keep up with effective communication. Yes, we talk to each other constantly as a result of a very open floor plan in our office, plus we have lunch together most days, and there are always Slack messages being traded. While those are all great ways to have a quick chat, we still needed a way to make sure that within the Growth team every individual stays up to date on all of the pieces that make up the larger puzzle, so to speak. One of the best ways we’ve found to keep everyone in the loop are weekly stand-up meetings. Every Monday morning, our team gathers in a circle to share a quick (15-20 minute) update about everything going on in Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, Data Customization, Support, and an Executive update as well. Eric leads a stand-up discussion on analytics How to host stand-ups First things first: we’re serious about keeping these sessions at a minimal amount of time so that we’re finding the right balance between increasing communication without taking away from our productivity. To help ensure that the session stays quick, each team member is required to update their notes on a shared Google Doc prior to the start of the meeting. This way, we breeze through and nobody has to stop and think about what they need to say. There are 3 topics that make for a successful stand-up: Recap of accomplishments the prior week: The key here is to highlight a few tasks that are not part of your regular weekly routine. For example, as Marketing Coordinator I wouldn’t tell the rest of the Growth Team that I completed a few blogs during the week because that’s a given. I could instead talk about the changes made to an email layout that increased click through rate by X% because it’s a special project, plus measurables are always a great thing to share when possible. Focus for this week: Again, make sure the plans you talk about for this week are not part of your ongoing weekly functions. This is your opportunity to reference some of the special work you’re focusing on that will be a step towards completing a big picture project. Obstacles that are impeding progress (especially ones that may need team help to conquer): Some weeks you’ll find that you don’t have any obstacles to mention, and that’s fine. However, let’s say I’m working on a blog that needs some data from a specific gauge and the data doesn’t appear to be correct. I would mention this during stand-up time because it gives a heads up to the Data Customization team that I’ll need a few minutes of their time to get the data sorted before I can finish my task. a sample of the topics covered at a recent standup If your team is in need of a fresh take on keeping everyone in the loop, give stand-ups a try. We really enjoy the opportunity to have a quick group discussion on the big picture items and also understand what our counterparts are working on each week. Plus, if you find that you need updates more often, take a page from our Product Team’s playbook... they host a standup every morning!

“Just stop cold calling.” It’s a bold and direct statement made during our conversation with Dan Tyre, HubSpot Executive and SMarketing guru. We asked Dan to join us for a discussion on the ins and outs of Inbound and why Managed Service Providers should invest in it instead of traditional sales and marketing methods. As Dan explains the concept to our community, he points out that Inbound is a “data-driven, holistic approach to turn total strangers into table-pounding fanatics” before going on to confirm that Inbound is the quickest, fastest, least expensive way to attract customers. Whether you’re brand new to the world of MSP marketing, or looking to refresh your efforts, Dan talks about the results that SMBs see as a result of adopting Inbound. Why MSPs Should Practice Inbound Marketing: Episode Highlights Dan’s Introduction and background (1:22) Dan’s journey at HubSpot and what he’s focused on now (5:43) The concept of Inbound (7:05) The quickest, fastest, easiest, least-expensive way to generate new leads and customers (9:43) Creating a website that helps people find you (10:59) … "But I don’t have time for Inbound” (14:09) Inbound results at BrightGauge (17:22) How long does it take to see value and benefits? (19:52) How do you buy something in 2016? (22:24) You have to have a CRM [+ free CRM offer] (25:26) The ROI on Marketing vs. Sales (27:14) Welcome to the Inbound Revolution: a customer-centric approach (29:39) The Customer Experience (34:04) Inbound Objections & How to easily get started (35:52) There’s so much noise on the Internet… who’s going to read my blog? (38:17) Parting advice and how to reach Dan (41:32) Want to find out more about The BrightGauge Podcast? Check out all the episodes here.

Since kicking off the year we haven’t talked a lot about new feature updates, but that doesn’t mean our team was slowing down the work on bringing them to life. You asked for them and we listened… and we’re excited to launch 2 big improvements (mentioned often on our Feature Request board) that will make your BrightGauge experience better every day: Export Gauge Data to CSV Let’s say you’re working remotely one day and notice a gauge that you want to get some more information on. You need to share the data with your teammates in order to ask them for that extra info. This happened to me recently when I was looking at the gauge to show our list of customers for one specific RMM integration. Before, there was no easy way to share this list - I would have to ask my team to log in and look at the gauge, or maybe try to screenshot the data list as best as possible. Neither of those is a great option, plus there would be nowhere for my crew to log any notes. The good news here is that with our new exporting feature, all I had to do is hit the “CSV” button and my list was immediately emailed to me. I quickly opened the file in a spreadsheet and shared with those who needed to review the list and get back to me. Adding notes was easy and within 15 minutes the whole thing was done and I had the information I was looking for. Any list gauge or table gauge can be downloaded with no limits on the amount of rows downloadable. Export Drilldown Data to CSV Building on our new downloading capability, we also gave users the option to download any drilldown data to a CSV. This is a great option for those times when you have a long list of data to sort through. Let’s say you have a machine count gauge with 250 machines and you need to sort and analyze that data. Using the CSV download feature to then transfer the gauge data to a spreadsheet makes it incredibly easy for a granular analysis. use the “CSV” link in the right corner and your download will start Stay tuned for more delightful features, as we call them, coming soon and are sure to make your BrightGauge experience better every day!

If you keep up regularly with our blog, you know all about the new series we’ve kicked off to help our community get to know the people behind the product here at BrightGauge. Through lists of our favorite things, we’re letting each team member tell us as much or as little about the topic at hand for each post. So far we’ve talked about our favorite movies and our hometowns, so now let’s dive into our favorite places to wine and dine: David: My favourite place to get food from is actually a take-out Chinese restaurant called Hong Kong Chinese. It's deep in the Kendall suburb of Miami and as much as I live near Downtown I haven't found Chinese food that's anywhere near as good or for as low a price. Kristian: As cliché as this sounds, my favorite place to eat is in my very own home. Growing up in a hispanic household with your grandmother and a father who used to be a chef, kind of spoils you. Yes there are a countless number of awesome restaurants here in South Florida (which I love to indulge in, don’t get me wrong), but none of the food compares to a good ol' home cooked meal. Adam: All of South Florida? Wow. That is a large area. One of the great things about South Florida is the wide variety of Latin American and Caribbean food. Great Haitian food in Little Haiti, the ceviche at Peruvian restaurants, the cafecitos everywhere, and new food trucks coming up every weekend all contribute to an endless tasting course. I'm not sure I can definitively say there is one place that is my favorite. Perhaps because pho is hard to find down here I do enjoy a little place called Pho Thang near Palmetto Bay in Miami. It's not fancy and the service isn't amazing, but the pho is very delicious and the prices aren't crazy. Stephen: My favorite place to eat in South florida has to be Shibui - best sushi in Miami for the price. Orlando: Versailles. Great cuban food. Reasonable prices. Real "Miami" experience. a team celebration at Versailles Francisco: Hillstone's in Coral Gables. I have yet to go to a place where everything I have ever tried on their menu is as delicious as the next item. Never exited the restaurant with a bad experience and always with a happy mood and full stomach. Larry: Burger Bob's. One of the last greasy spoons left in Miami. Rick: Uh, POC Buffet & Sushi... Obviously. Fantastic Sushi, all you can eat, right below the BrightGauge headquarters?! Oh, and a premium Zagat rating. Haters need to learn to appreciate. (Eating House, definitely Eating House). Editor’s note: The story behind Rick’s response is that we all give him a hard time about the “all-you-can-eat” sushi buffet that sits in the lobby level of our office building. While the Yelp reviews do give the restaurant 4 stars, most of us have tried the restaurant and the easiest way to explain it would be the old line about “you get what you pay for”. Rick has been known to fly solo at POC because he can’t seem to convince anyone else on our team to join him there. Eric: Christy's in Coral Gables. My father, brother and I have a monthly "Dosal Boys Lunch" on Fridays where we get to catch up so it has a special meaning to me. Steve: Well whenever I pick lunch for a work event it's always Swine. The brisket and pork are amazing and I love the pickled onions. A close second is Mellow Mushroom in South Miami. That's my wife and I's new date spot. Great variety of funky pizza and good beer selection. lunch at Swine... the lights say "Run Pig Run" Amanda: Wow, it’s hard to pick just one! Coming from a small town with mostly chain restaurants, the variety that we have in South Florida is so awesome and trying out new restaurants is one of my favorite hobbies. I’ll have to name a few of them: For pizza, there’s a tiny place in Fort Lauderdale called Luigi’s Coal Oven Pizza - the owner is originally from Naples (Italy, not the gulf coast of Florida) and he does true works of delicious art. In Coral Gables, there’s a fantastic Caribbean restaurant called Ortanique that I always enjoy. I could go on for ages, but the list is getting long so I’ll cap it off with DaDa in Delray Beach - the restaurant is a historic home and property that also focuses on a rotating artwork collection. Pretty cool vibe and always tasty food, but it’s their drink menu that I really love. Their signature item is the mojito, and they have an entire menu of different flavors made with fresh fruit puree and Hawaiian sugar cane sticks. Delicious! Ryan: Living next to the ocean for the first time in my life, I am taking advantage of the great seafood. I love eating at Divino Ceviche in Miami because of their namesake dish... the ceviche! I also enjoy The Local and Swine in Coral Gables because they serve modern/southern fare that reminds me of Tennessee. Brian: Hillstone. Coral Gables. Amazing food, awesome service, great location, and they serve the best wine experience by the glass. Always fresh, perfect temp, and affordable. Randall: Shiver's Barbecue. Homestead. I love me some good ribs. Have you been to the South Florida area? If so, tell us about your favorite restaurants so we can check them out!

[Case Study] Sometimes in life, you don’t initially realize when things could be even better than they already are. At first glance, the grass is green on your side of the fence. The team at PriorityOne Group used to be in this scenario… their grass was green when it came to the dashboard and reporting solution they had in place and they actually liked the product very much. But at a closer glance, there were some brown patches to be found here and there. As Jason Romer, Director of Technical Services, looks back on his days of using that first software solution he remembers that he wished for faster support response times and more guidance on what the software could do. Additionally, the gauges and dashboards in those days were very time intensive to manipulate - and with a growing business he didn’t have any time to spare. The Change It was the IT Nation conference in November 2015 that gave Jason a glimpse into how green the grass could be for PriorityOne. He had just left the booth of his dashboard solution at that time, when he came across the BrightGauge booth. As he tells the story, “I spoke to the BrightGauge team and they showed me the types of gauges and reports they had. The a-ha moment was when they said they would set it up for us and showed us the Quickbooks datasets – as soon as we saw that, it was a wrap.” Besides the Quickbooks integration, Jason was also keen on the ease of use and data manipulation that he knew would result in rich reports for his clients. But it was the BrightGauge team that truly sealed the deal. Jason concludes that “the people sell the product” and we certainly agree that our people are one of our best assets! Getting Started with BrightGauge Looking at the BrightGauge implementation and onboarding process, Jason states that it was “incredibly easy”. It all started with a Data Customization chat with our team so that he could explain what PriorityOne wanted and the parameters of how they use their data sources. Jason goes on to explain that the onboarding process and the people at BrightGauge are the most positive experiences in his time as a customer. “We were hand-held from the beginning, which from my point of view trying to run a MSP of our size and not having the time to get into the weeds on all this stuff is HUGE! The BrightGauge team did and is still doing the work for us so that we can focus on using the tools.” When it comes to the software differences Jason confides “there are many positive differences just in terms of user experience, look and feel, types of data that is available and the reporting aspect, but it’s the people that make BrightGauge different and stand out. Even when the team got slammed with work around the holidays, they were upfront about it, setting expectations with me the entire way. It was a breath of fresh air in a world where everyone seems unable to tell the client what’s really going on.” Recommending BrightGauge The effect of changing their Business Intelligence platform showed quickly for the team at PriorityOne, as they were soon able to benefit from the results of leveraging BrightGauge. Jason explains that now he and his team “see everything” from A/R at a glance or even noticing when their engineers are getting too busy… and that visibility also allows them to work on other aspects of their business. Jason minces no words as he explains to the MSP community “If you don’t have a dashboard system you have no idea what you are missing, seriously, because you have no visibility on what you are missing. I recommend BrightGauge over other solutions because of the hands on approach the staff takes, the elegance of the dashboards, the ease of use and manipulation, and the quality of the reports.”

My brother mentioned that at BrightGauge we have two teams, one being the Growth Team (which he manages) and the other being the Product Team which is my responsibility. Though we all work very closely together, there are very distinct differences between the two teams. As you can imagine, our product team has complete responsibility for building and maintaining... you guessed it... our product. The different functions that make up our product team are fairly well known in the software world but may not be to people outside the industry. So I’ll lay them out for you now: Product Manager: makes sure that all engineering and design work is getting done properly and with thoughtful order. This one is my personal responsibility and you can also think of this role as the “project manager”. In building agile software products, the role expands a bit more where the responsibility is making sure the team is building the right features, at the right time, and in the right order. Seems simple but I can assure this has yet to become a science. Other fun responsibilities of the Product Manager is to be the top quality assurance tester so as to make sure what is put in the pipeline to be developed and shipped does so at the acceptance levels we all would expect. User Experience (UX) / User Interface (UI): This critical role builds the human interfaces and interactions within the platform… better explained as this person makes sure BrightGauge is user-friendly. In any product team, this skill is one of the hardest to find because of the wildly broad expertise needed; it’s not just being a good artist or coming up with good ideas but it’s both of those as well the implementation of those ideas. It’s a blend of right brain and left brain thinking that very few individuals possess all together. And that’s not to mention the attention to the finest details in actually delivering that idea which needs to be something beautiful and incredibly useful. It’s a critical part of any product team and we are no different. Back End Developers / Engineers / Architects: This group loves to turn ideas into living products; the code they write is running the most critical parts of our product. The core of any software product is the architecture which can be translated into the systematic design and technologies used to run the product. This is where back end engineers live and for us this is the background of our Director of Engineering. I, and many others, call this area the “backend” because the code they write does not interface directly with the user. This function, especially with small teams like ours, also compromises development operations, which means they are responsible for keeping systems up 100% of time. Thankfully, services like Amazon Web Services take care of a lot of that system administration and network security, so the backend team can focus more on writing code instead of maintaining servers. Front End Engineers: differentiated from the backend because these specialists know how to work with technology that is very browser focused (for web apps like ours). It was once explained to me that the code being used to create amazing web experiences is like the wild, wild west. Where technology and approaches are so varied and changes constantly that we, like many others, need specialist who just live in and love this world. It’s not to say these same engineers couldn’t or don’t do backend work (or vice versa) but it’s more a division of expertise. the Product team enjoying a lunch celebration To close, I must also say that we thoughtfully named ourselves the product team versus what would be a traditional development or engineering team. The reason we call ourselves a “product” team is that every one of us works together to build a full product that adds real value to our customers. This means we aren’t just a group of engineers writing code to write code, or a designer trying create pretty designs. We are a cohesive team with many different specialties but have a singular goal of building an amazingly useful product for our customers.

It’s probably safe to say that throughout history, plenty of great ideas, inventions, and achievements were stumbled upon rather than being planned out. Sure, a lot of people may also be chasing a dream and have a specific route in mind along with a checklist to get them there. In this specific case, the Support Team at BrightGauge found themselves in the former category when it came to ramping up their efforts on customized videos almost a year ago. Our team had dabbled in support videos here and there, but prior to a year ago they were occasional at best - usually saved for a really complicated ticket that couldn’t be explained by a written response. Then Kristian joined our growing crew. As the main Support guru on our team, we left Kristian with the responsibility of making sure our support time continued to be world-class and that our customers were happy with the help we provide. We didn’t really set many guidelines about how he should achieve that task… this was his project to own. Kristian was up and running in no time, and hearing him recording quick videos became a common practice. As the months flew by and the videos kept multiplying, the happy customer responses just kept rolling in. In fact, we have a Slack channel dedicated to sharing Customer Feedback, and after a while we knew we had definitely written a new chapter in the BrightGauge history book. as shared in Slack: a note from a customer in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada When we asked Kristian about how the videos came to be such a big focus for him, the answer was simple: “I personally am a visual learner and I believe most other people are too. So if I have the ability to show someone how to do something, I’ll take that route. I also think it’s not only easier for me to record a quick video vs. typing a long explanation, but I think it’s also easier for the customer to watch a short video.” Like the example above, if you’ve had the pleasure of receiving a customized support video clip from Kristian or anyone else on our team, then there’s a huge chance that you were incredibly excited about it, probably sent us a love note, and also wanted to know more about how you could implement the same idea on your team: another example of the great notes we’ve received about our support videos We’re always excited to give our customers the answer when they ask, but since there are plenty of other companies out there who could benefit from better service and support we decided to share our secret with the world - Droplr is the tool behind our customized video success. (side note: Droplr does more than just videos and our team uses it in some manner every day at BrightGauge HQ.) The custom videos have become such a key part of our support method that we now ask job candidates to send us “how to” recordings as part of the interview process for our Customer Support Specialist opening! Videos are here to stay and since seeing is believing, here’s a sample video recently sent to a BrightGauge customer: When you give customized videos a shot, please share your experience with us... we think you'll love it!

As we recently explained in a blog about our team’s favorite movies, we’re taking some time in 2016 to showcase a little more in-depth info about the people behind the product at BrightGauge. So we’re putting together several lists about our favorite things and sharing them with our community. Question # 2 asked our team about their original hometown and what it was like growing up there: Randall: Coral Gables. A nice, green oasis in a bustling city (Miami). Central to everything and plenty to do. welcome to “The City Beautiful” Brian: Miami - great city to be from due to the multi-cultures that all converge together throughout my entire life. It was unique to be from a city that is all about "materialistic" things but also is built on hard work from immigrants who believe so much in family and in small business. Miami at dusk Ryan: Columbia, Maury County, Tennessee, USA The self-proclaimed Mule Capitol of the World, C-Town had a population of about 30,000 people when I grew up there. Most worked at the GM automotive factory, farmed, or commuted an hour to Nashville for their job. I lived a typical small-town life in the exurbs, spending lots of time outside, playing soccer, and creating things for fun (building treehouses, designing objects, making studio art). Living in a small town made me want to live in a large city, just because there was so much going on all the time. Once old enough to drive, I spent time driving to Nashville on the weekends. Eventually I moved to a giant city -- Miami, FL! downtown Columbia Steve: I was born in Long Island, NY but grew up in Miami, West Kendall more specifically. Our neighborhood was great and I had an awesome group of friends that I met there and we are still close to this day. Always had big family parties and caused a lot of havoc with my cousins. And it was great to be able to take a 20 minute drive and be at the beach. Miami’s sun and surf view Eric: Miami / Coral Gables. I'm a local guy and grew up here in town. I did live in Boston for 4 years and New York City for 2 years but I love Miami and being close to family. the famous Venetian Pool, Coral Gables Rick: Long Island, New York! Hard to beat a 30 minute train ride into the city, a beach around every corner, and a slice at the quintessential pizza spot in Huntington followed by a night out with friends. Never a dull moment. the sign says it all... Amanda: Concord, North Carolina… “Where Racing Lives” Concord is a suburb about 30 minutes outside of Charlotte, but its claim to fame is being home of the Charlotte Motor Speedway. NASCAR is a really big deal in the area. As a child, I lived even further outside the city in a fairly rural area where there was quite a bit of farmland and I always knew the same kids for most of my younger years. Charlotte wasn’t really on the map for big business relocations until probably the mid to late 90’s; after that things seemed to explode with tons of new people moving in and the suburbs multiplied quickly. While it’s nice to go back to Concord and visit my family now, and find some good ol’ Southern Hospitality, my trips there are short. I much prefer living in South Florida and I don’t think I could ever get tired of palm trees, the awesome weather and always having plenty of things to do! historic downtown Concord Francisco: Caracas, Venezuela. (Vista Alegre) The fondest memories I've had with friends took place there in a very modest neighborhood that was always beaming with life at every street. As a kid, I was always on the street with my friends playing any game that popped into our heads. Walking from place to place, eating fresh bread from the local bakery, and enjoying our youths is all I can remember when I think back to my home town. a panoramic view of Vista Alegre, Caracas Larry: Miami. Great cosmopolitan city to be raised in. Unlike anywhere else in the world. First world city with third world culture. Calle Ocho (8th Street) in Miami’s famous Little Havana neighborhood Orlando: I grew up in Miami. It was great. There is something to be said about playing outside year round. South Pointe Park, Miami Beach David: Kingston, Jamaica. Occasional trips to the beach, a few weekend runs to the touristy parts of the country for a getaway, good local eats, warm climate, some hurricanes which are fun to be in once you're safe. Luckily none were terribly damaging/serious. Kingston’s skyline Adam: Miami, born and raised. Growing up I always felt the need to go see other places and never really considered Miami a special place. I never lived on the beach, never went clubbing, and my Spanish isn't great so it was a bit like being a foreigner sometimes. After a bit of traveling I do see the appeal to this city, especially for people that want to get out of the snow. The summers can get brutally humid, but the rest of the year makes up for it. As for the Hispanic/Caribbean culture, I definitely appreciate it a lot more after leaving and having food cravings. Having a car has always been essential and growing up I thought if I moved more central it wouldn't be needed, but it seems one will always need a car in Miami. the annual SOBE (South Beach) Wine & Food Festival Kristian: I’m a born and raised Miami boy that has endured excessive humidity, no winters, and crappy drivers all his life. Ok, I may be exaggerating a bit, but anyone who has lived (or at least visited Miami) knows what I’m referring to. In all honesty, I wouldn’t trade growing up and living in Miami for anything. Miami is a huge Melting Pot of cultures and this can be seen through its people, which are constantly expressing their heritage. Whether it is through food in restaurants, music/dance in clubs, or simply just being themselves and practicing their ways/customs. Apart from the cultural diversity, I also love Miami’s awesome activities, beaches, and nightlife. There’s is always something to do. Being “bored” in Miami, truly isn't an option. LIV, one of Miami’s famous clubs It’s safe to say we have a lot of locals in the BrightGauge office, but everyone still brings their own unique background to our group! The Miami area is truly one of the best places we can think of to find a huge variety of people from all over the world and we look forward to seeing where our future teammates are from.