Candid conversations about using GPS and wireless technology for work and fun.
Behind the Scenes
Interview: Brian the TeleNav PR Intern
Aug 16th
TweetBehind the scenes here at TeleNav…
Behind the scenes here at TeleNav… 
…you probably wouldn’t guess it, but we have about 20 interns. Yup, you read that right: two-zero.
With so many interns running around, how do we manage to keep them all busy? I can only tell them to wash my car so many times…. ;) Just kidding!
Well, today being the first day of the work week, I thought it might be fun to try something we’ve never done before – interview an intern.
But to start this off, I actually didn’t interview just any intern… No, I interviewed OUR intern, Brian C.
So what does Brian think of working with us? Why is he interning with us? If he could have any super power, what would it be? He answers these and many more hard-hitting questions – check it out!
How long have you been at TeleNav?
I have been at TeleNav for 2 months (since June 14).
What is a normal day at TeleNav for you like?
I wouldn’t say I have a “normal” day at TeleNav. Many of my tasks change on a day-to-day basis. I am primarily responsible for compiling a report listing any media attention TeleNav receives and beyond that I assist with research, brainstorming, pitching the media, planning product releases and writing press releases. At TeleNav, I am lucky to have a wide array of job duties that leads to learning opportunities and meeting new people.
What’s the best thing about your job?
The best thing about my job is I get to work with innovative people, who allow me to grow as a person and an employee. My job involves thinking and creativity and often times that creativity comes from the people around me who motivate, challenge and encourage me on a day-to-day basis.
What were you doing before you were at TeleNav?
Before interning at TeleNav, I was a student at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash. While at Western, I worked as the personnel director of student employment and helped students find jobs, wrote policy and enforced equal opportunity standards across the university.
What would kind of advice would you give to someone who wants to do what you do?
Being involved in PR and marketing involves connecting with others and one’s personal reputation. I would recommend interacting and getting as much experience as possible with other PR practitioners and those needing PR services, before entering the workforce. For anyone starting out, helping a non-profit in your local community with any PR skills, can be a valuable time to grow as a professional and get hands-on experience. Lastly, ask someone you know (or don’t know) in the PR field to sit down and have coffee or lunch with you and get free advice and pointers.
What’s your favorite gadget?
My favorite gadget would be my iPod. My iPod goes more places with me than my Blackberry. I have an extreme passion for music and being able to share music with those around me.
What app do you use the most (besides TeleNav)?
I definitely use Facebook the most on my Blackberry to update my status and exchange messages.
If you could have one super power, what would it be? Why?
If I could have one super power, I would want to control time. If I could slow time down, I would never be late and the weekends would last twice as long.
What’s your guilty pleasure road trip song?
(This question was difficult because there are about 20)
My hands-down road trip song is Breakfast at Tiffany’s by the Deep Blue Something.
What is one thing you want to learn to do in the next year?
I would love to take hip-hop dance lessons throughout the next year. I love to dance and I think it would be fun to be around other people who enjoy dancing.
What’s your favorite dish to make?
Definitely nachos – with cheese, peppers, olives, onions, shredded chicken, avocado, organic salsa and beans.
What phrase do you say too much?
In any social situation or even at work, where one person is being slightly different, funny or silly, I like to say, “There’s one at every party.”
Anything else?
I’d like to give a shout out to our awesome PR team at TeleNav. Woot woot!
The One About The TeleNav PR Team That Rode The Duck
Aug 4th
TweetOkay, I’ll admit it…
Okay, I’ll admit it…
… I was a little skeptical when I heard about the idea. Can you blame me? I had seen these things driving around Seattle with people quacking off the side of them, being obnoxious and I wasn’t sure if I’d be into it.
I was dead wrong.
Let me start from the beginning.
Not long ago, the TeleNav Public Relations team (which I am a part of), was told we could do a team building exercise and at hearing these words, instantly our heads were filled with go-karts, whale-watching, and in-door sky-diving! “This will be great,” I thought to myself. But just as quickly as it started, it all came screeching to a halt, when someone said the words I hoped I would never hear – “what about the Duck?”
Boom.
What. About. The. FREAKING. Duck? REALLY?
If you’re unfamiliar with “the” Duck we’re referring to (as opposed to “a” duck), it is an amphibious vehicle which is part of the very popular Ride the Duck Tours, a company known for driving tourists around cities all across the US. Sounds fun, right? Then why was I less than enthused about the prospects of “Riding the Duck?” Let me tell you…
Being a Seattle-ite, I often have found myself downtown, walking to my next destination in complete peace, really enjoying myself, and almost right as I reach the pinnacle of inner-peace, it happens. Always. Out of nowhere, a monster of a vehicle comes up beside me with music blaring out of their speakers and the passengers quacking and waving their hands in an attempt to get my attention. And just as quickly as it appeared, it’s gone… but relief is short lived because there is always another approaching behind it.
This was my experience and what I knew of “the” Duck. Put another way, on my scale of “Things I Want To Do,” riding the duck fell right in between “sitting in a dentist’s chair” and re-enacting an episode of Man vs Wild.
Long story short (and probably not surprisingly), we ended up signing up for a tour with “Ride the Duck” and I will tell you 
one thing – I had a complete blast.
I will save you from going over every detail of the day, but I will tell you this, my team and I had a lot of fun on the Duck. From hearing Captain Sol T. Dogg tell jokes and play random music to hearing fun facts about the city to even plunging the Duck into Seattle’s beautiful Lake Union, the experience was one I would recommend for just about anyone of any age. In fact, our team (who is made up of mostly Seattle-ites) was skeptical about being interested in hearing about a city we’ve lived in our entire lives, but the tour couldn’t have been more entertaining and I think we all walked away with new perspective of Seattle.
Was it cheezy? Yes.
Was it loud? Yes.
Was it an awesome time? YES!
The next time you’re in a city (even if it’s your very own) and you see “the” Duck, think about riding it. While you may have preconceived ideas about the experience, it may be completely different than the truth and you may end up surprised at how much fun you actually might have.
Thanks to Captain Sol T. Dogg and the good folks of Seattle Ride the Duck for a really great time. Also, thanks to Brian, the intern, for taking the middle seat. You’re a champ.
Life at TeleNav: A Day in the Life of TeleNav’s Social Media Guy
Aug 2nd
TweetA question I often get is…
A question I often get is… 
… “so all you do is play on Facebook all day?”
As TeleNav’s social media guy, it’s understandable why people think that my job is just status updates and Facebook “poking.” And while being on Facebook is one part of my job, there’s actually a lot more to it.
If I were to describe my role as anything, I would say it’s a combination of many different roles including customer service, public relations, marketing, content strategy, & communications. That means all day, I’m working on strategies and plans that help TeleNav (as a brand) best engage our customers on the social web. Am I playing Farmville all day? Um…. not so much, but what I am doing includes creating content, getting to know our “fans,” and helping to make it easier for them to find us and engage with us online.
Interested in hearing more about my role at TeleNav? Well, the other day, I decided to record an average day in my life as TeleNav’s social media guy…
6:00am - Wake up. Hit snooze button – just 5 more minutes, I promise…. ZZZzzz…
6:05am - Up and ‘at ‘em as I drink coffee while reading about the sports. Mariners lost again (shocking).
6:35am - Out the door and on the road to the office.
6:37am – Realization: I forgot my lunch on the counter. Dang.
7:00am - I’m the first one in this morning! I’m not quite sure why that matters but it’s going to be a busy day so time to get started!
7:03am - With a second cup of coffee in hand, I jump on my computer and start knocking out emails. Lots of projects going on right now and keeping it all straight is important. One thing I’m happy about though is I received an email telling me that a new Facebook graphic is ready to go. Nice!
7:30am - Time to check the Twitter. Why Twitter? Part of my responsibility is to be aware of what’s going on around our brand and that means listening to what people are saying about us. I also check to see if there are any customer service problems that I can assist with. When it comes to customer service problems on Twitter, I try to respond to them quickly because I realize that when people are talking about a problem (with one of our products) that they aren’t talking about an issue that occurred yesterday or an hour ago – they are talking about a problem they are having right this second.
8:00am - Creating my to-do list for the day. Lots going on. Gotta start knocking things out.
9:00am – Time to get a blog post ready for the day. As part of our communication strategy, our main goal with blog is simple: to use our blog to speak openly and directly with our customers. On it, we try to share information we think our customers would find useful and valuable; this might be anything from helpful how-to’s and tutorials about our products to information about our employees and the things we’re involved in as a company to big announcements to new products, versions, and features.
9:45am - Copy down some of the useful information people are saying about us online and put it into a document. While the good comments are nice and always appreciated, truth be told, it’s the constructive criticism which allows us to improve our products.
11:00am – Big project meeting and as we’re up in Seattle (and the rest of our team is down in Silicon Valley), we’re doing a conference call. On the call we have all the people who are involved with the project including Project Manager, Project Marketing Manager, Engineering members, and Public Relations people and we all take some time to talk about the status is with our action-items. Obviously, my part is related to social media and what our strategy is in regards to this new project.
12:00pm - Lunchtime! Wait – I just remembered that I forgot my lunch at home… Granola bar or chicken teriyaki? The choice is an easy one.
1:00pm - Back to the desk and first thing is to I look at Twitter & Facebook again to see if there’s anything I need to attend to. I then quickly scan my inbox and get to my to-do list.
2:35pm - It’s time to edit some video. Although I’m not exactly trained in the art of video editing, I’ve done enough trial and error (with many more errors) to know how to navigate around the software and make a pretty decent video. While these aren’t professional grade videos (we often use a Flip cam), our videos are mainly meant to help to show things that words aren’t able to capture – things like events, product demos, & interviews. Today, I’m working on a new product demo.
4:00pm - That makes it official. The work day is done and it’s time to go to happy hour! See ya tomorrow, TeleNav!
Are you on Facebook? What brands do you like to engage with there?
Photo Credit: JayCameron
Navigating Life at TeleNav: Health Week & Climbing Rocks
Jul 30th
TweetExercise.
Exercise.
Why would we promote it here at TeleNav? Heck, we’re a GPS navigation-based company… Shouldn’t we want people to just use our navigation to get everywhere in their car? Promoting health & fitness in our offices doesn’t make sense, does it? To that, we say “WRONG!”
Promoting health & fitness in our offices is big deal to us here at TeleNav for a lot reasons and that’s why recently, we held our annual Health Fair in our Sunnyvale headquarters. The TeleNav Health Fair is a week chalked full of activities all around the idea of promoting good health and safety and the event includes visits from the Red Cross, the Fire Department, a Blood Drive, local gyms, and at the end of the week, even a massage therapist! The week was all topped off by a rock climbing event where an entire wall was brought into the TeleNav parking lot where employees could take a break by climbing 30 feet up in the air!
Some of the event highlights include:
- Tuesday was Safety Day so we invited the Hays Company to come talk to us about home/work safety. In addition to this, Libery Mutual came in to show the dangers of drinking & driving which included a very interesting simulation activity which used a radio controlled car and special goggles that recreated the feeling of being inebriated.
- Wednesday was our Community Giving Day so on that day, we really promoted our Corporate Giving Program where we donate to a different employee chosen charity each quarter. To help promote this, we invited several local non-profit organizations to come in and employees could donate to their causes throughout the day. Some of these charities included Big Brothers/Big Sisters Family Giving Tree, 511.org, and Blood Centers of the Pacific. We ended up collecting 14 pints of blood which will help 40 people in the community!
- Thursday (Health Day) - Happy health = Happy Life. This being the case, we invited many health vendors to come and speak with in our employees including many gyms and health care providers. One delicious (and particularly successful) visitor was Smoothie King who brought in some free drinks for our employees.
- Friday we wanted to relax and offer a variety events activities. Some highlights included Sutter doing free employee health checks, Palo Alto Medical Foundation teaching stretches that can be done at the desk, and Lomi Lomi who provided our employees with some relaxing massages.
- Finally, to keep the week fun, we decided to throw in employee giveaways and prizes included a Sony PSP, a Nintendo Wii, a Sonicare Toothbrush, several gift cards and emergency kits, and even a Magic Bullet Blender!
As you can see, the TeleNav Health Fair was a week jam packed full of activities meant to serve as helpful reminders of how important health & safety are.
Thanks to everyone who participated in this year’s Health Fair! Thanks you to you, it was a complete success!
How do you stay healthy? Is good health promoted at your workplace? Let us know in the comments section!
A Day in the Life of a TeleNav Engineer
Jul 21st
Tweet
8:37 am - My carpool buddy is driving today, so during the commute I’m doing some testing for one of our top secret projects. All I can say is, I love it, and it is absolutely gorgeous. I’m a big fan of beauty and functionality, so I’m really excited about this project. Call me crazy.
9:15 am - I’m waking up from my first cup of coffee and I’m ready to tackle email. My team in Shanghai ran some tests last night, so I hope they’ll have some results for me. Sure enough, they’ve found a couple of interesting things, so I’ll need to follow up with some of the teams here so I can make a good decision about how to proceed.
10:06 am - I want to beef up our testing and add more real-life test cases. I don’t like to do anything I can get a computer to do for me, so I’m writing a script to parse some log files and create test cases. Scripts are fun because they’re usually not very complicated, so I can write one pretty quickly and see the results right away. I win doubly: I don’t have to look at boring logs and copy-paste for hours, and I get to feel like I got something done before 11am.
11:33 am - A colleague and I are presenting an idea we had at today’s Engineering Seminar in a few minutes. We have them every week about various topics. This week, our idea for a new product was chosen to be presented, so here I am thinking about what I might talk about (great planning ahead, there!). Thankfully, I’m one of those people that can figure out what to say on the spot, so I’m not too worried. But still, it doesn’t hurt to do a little thinking first! Plus, I only have one slide, and it’s a comic strip, so I should probably make sure I have some idea what I want to say.
1:30 pm - People were totally impressed with my stick-figure drawings in my comic strip (haha). But actually, it went well, and we had fun anyway, and at least one person was awake for the presentation – SCORE! So, I got a bunch of things sorted out regarding my Shanghai team’s findings, so time to start coding (my favorite! and no, I’m not being facetious).
3:45 pm - Finished coding, time for a snack (wait, isn’t it always snacktime?). Seriously, coding gives me the munchies! I head out for the picnic tables where I can catch a little afternoon sun and have a chat with a coworker while I devour my pudding snack. Mmmm, butterscotch!
5:07 pm - Finishing up some design specifications to send to my manager for review. I’m excited about some changes that I’ll be making over the next few months that should make a huge difference in the speed of the code (well, we are talking milliseconds here, so don’t get too excited!), and also will make my job easier (okay, that is the best part). I’m a huge fan of making people’s jobs easier.
6:15 pm - Shanghai team is coming online now, so time to “chat”. I try to talk with them pretty frequently so that there aren’t any big surprises (well, fewer). It seems to work well. My team is awesome, and they always manage to exceed my expectations.
6:45 pm - On my way home. Conversation with my carpool buddy trumps testing tonight. It’s not all work, work, work!
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