July Newsletter

Basecamp July 2017 Newsletter. [View this email in your browser]( [Basecamp] Happy July, everyone! At Basecamp, July means [summer hours and summer vacations]( and in Chicago, forgetting how deeply unsatisfying the [Taste of Chicago]( is until you are wrist-deep in a $12 scoop of melting ice cream. But hey, we also keep busy over the summer... We've been hiring! [Jabari Allen]( and [Lexi Kent-Monning]( joined our Support team in May. Jabari has spent most of his life in St. Louis, Missouri, and somewhere hidden on the internet there are humbling videos of his teenage self running around doing parkour (challenge accepted, Jabari). Lexi suffers life in the wasteland of Carmel Highlands, California. She lives in a cabin in the woods right by the sea and is obsessed with her rescue Shar Pei mix, Ladybird Johnson. [Matthew Vincent]( very recently joined our Ops team on July 1! Matthew is a native Pacific Northwester who escaped the rain at age 16 when he moved to Valencia, Spain. For the last decade, Matthew has worked on applying technology to cultural heritage in archaeology. Welcome, new Basecampers! We've been interning! This summer, 5 Basecamp employees are mentoring 5 interns from around the world. Megan, David, Noa, Agnes, and Gabriel earn real money to work on real meaningful problems that their mentors have identified in Support, Programming, and Design. Welcome, new Basecampterns! We use Basecamp to organize and manage most of the details of our intern program. Last October, Noah announced that Basecamp would be taking on a new intern class, and he asked for interested mentors to comment on his post with a description of a project their intern might take on. When it came time to start hiring, we used [Workable]( for resume screening. We learned the hard way that Basecamp doesn't work for storing, reading, commenting on, and yes/no-ing 400+ resumes. But the rest of our recruitment documents live in Basecamp, from notes on interview selection criteria to the offer letter template. Then in March, Noah posted brief descriptions of each person who made the cut, along with a note about what projects they'd each be tackling. Much excitement (and probably Twitter-stalking) ensued. Once those new recruits started, we planned a Chicago meet-up for them and their mentors. That meet-up was planned in Basecamp. Mentors were asked to give talks; fun activities were planned; deep-dish pizza allegiances were agonized over (Lou's or Pequod's???). And because everything we do at Basecamp is a learning opportunity, we keep lists of things to think about next year. Problems we ran into, philosophies not quite fleshed out, or ways to improve upon our interns' experiences. For us, the best part of having an intern program is learning from teaching; building up the reasons behind the program itself is a big part of that learning. Having an annual intern program is a lot of work for the mentors and managers. It's also hugely rewarding for them -- maybe even more so than for the interns. Those rewards are amplified because mentors are able to spend more time working with their interns and less time on the nitty gritty of management, all thanks to keeping our processes as organized and automated as possible within Basecamp. Thanks for reading! I'll [see you in September]( [Andrea]( at Basecamp Basecamp Still running your business on email, texts and meetings? Stuff slipping? Getting chaotic? Start 2017 off right by switching to Basecamp. It's the saner, organized way to manage projects and communicate company-wide. It's a game changer. [Share]( [Tweet]( [Forward]( You got this because you’re a customer, or you wanted to get Basecamp updates. Not on the list, but want to be? [Subscribe and get just one fun letter a month.]( Our mailing address is: Basecamp 30 N Racine Suite 200Chicago, IL 60607 [Add us to your address book]( Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe from this list](