Vibrant finally made a Harlem Shake Video (and we’re sorry internets).

As a reseller of remarketed servers and data center hardware, we looked around and were surprised at how few IT Hardware companies had made one, so we thought, why not? Plus, it wasn’t a bad time. Anytime you get to dance on a server rack dressed as a gentleman luchador, you’ve got to do it, right?

Below is a collection of IT hardware companies who have done the Harlem Shake.

Vibrant Technologies

Brocade

EMC

Intel

Rackspace

Tech Data Cisco Team

That’s some pretty (wonderfully) terrible Harlem Shake action all around, and we’re glad we could take part!

Two weeks ago, two of our best techs, Erick and Kris, informed me that Slashdot’s 10th Anniversary was upon us and that we had to host a regional anniversary party for them. Of course I agreed, because all of the following are awesome: Erick and Kris, Slashdot, Slashdotters and Parties.

I reeled in approval from the top to throw some money at this and put the techs in charge of planning and organizing. Last night we had the party here and I think the results were pretty great.

(Lindsi rolled all the photos and videos into a great montage.)

So, what does a Slashdot crowd consider fun and entertaining?

1) Smashing old EMC, Sun, HP, IBM, Cisco and Brocade gear with a sledgehammer, while offering up witty commentary.

2) Playing Guitar Hero and old video games on large projector screens.

3) Mingling with like-minded techie-types and gamers that are proud to be geeks.

4) LOLcats (which were on the drink tickets, walls, cake and who knows what else).

5) Geek Facepainting (OK, the idea of that was funnier than in reality. Only two people got logos painted on their face, Slashdot and Apple, but we were ready to also do Firefox, Tux and Redhat logos).

6) Hot Taco bars, beers and mixed drinks (who doesn’t?)

7) Singing Happy Birthday to a website (my wife really laughed at me for that one).

Thanks to all who came, we had a blast and loved meeting everybody.

Happy 10th Anniversary to Slashdot!

The Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal’s 9th annual “Best Places to Work” publication came out on Friday, and Vibrant ranked in the top 20 small businesses. It’s a great honor to work for a company that is even considered, and especially for one of the winners.

I love working for Vibrant – and I’m quick to share stories about my time here with friends or family. The “perks” of working for an edgy, innovative company range from Video Game Happy Hours to themed summer and holiday parties – but while those events provide occasional entertainment, the fun part is the bonding that takes place between employees.

It’s true when they say a work environment depends heavily on the people in it. Each person at Vibrant is passionate about what they (we) do (and who we’re doing it with), and I believe that’s what makes us one of the best places to work.

Interop Las Vegas 2007 was a successful show for Vibrant. We met many current networking clients as well as hopefully several future ones. There are definitely many end-users and resellers interested in used Cisco, used Servers and the secondary IT hardware market.

The show was very active with close to 20,000 attendees, 450 exhibitors and all varieties of stunts, costumes and give-aways. Vibrant gave away two Night Vision Monoculars (to spot our great Cisco deals ). The winners guessed the correct number of Cisco Thing-a-ma-jigs in a fishbowl (38), which drew many questions and were actually old school cable management kits. Congrats to our two winners!

Here is a shot of Vibrant’s booth along with our terrific staffers in our technical lab coats and our signature “Vibrant” orange shoes:

What is a Twitter hunt?

It’s a simple treasure hunt, except the clues are given out via Twitter. In our case, we’ll be giving out $200 in chips to the person who can find Vibrant’s own Lindsi Gish somewhere within Interop Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center.

Between 2 and 4PM on Wednesday, May 23rd, clues will be given out every 10-15 minutes via Vibrant’s Twitter profile (www.twitter.com/vibrant) regarding the profile and location of Lindsi. The first one to find her wins.

What is Interop?

Interop is a huge networking (hardware, software, security) conference held this week in Las Vegas with over 18,000 attendees expected. Vibrant will be there meeting current and prospective clients who are interested in used Cisco, Juniper, Marconi and so on which we offer at up to 90% off list. If you’re there, participate in the Twitter Hunt and stop by our booth #1878.

Do I have to “friend” Vibrant to play?

The updates or “tweets” will display on our profile if you refresh it so you shouldn’t need to “friend” Vibrant or even be a member of Twitter to play. You may want to do so though because then you could get the updates sent directly to your cell phone or IM instead of constantly refreshing our profile.

What inspired you to do this?

A local Twitter user, Aric McKeown, has been holding his own social Twitter hunts monthly in the Twin Cities which he brilliantly calls the “Least Dangerous Game.” (Yes, inspired by the 1924 short story, The Most Dangerous Game, by Richard Connell.)

Should you participate?

If you’re at Interop and would like to have some fun and maybe win something to gamble with… Why not?

www.twitter.com/vibrant

Fun news today at Vibrant Technologies as our CEO, Jennifer VanDerHorst was recognized as one of the top 40 “accomplished professionals” under the age of forty in the annual special section of the Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal. She was chosen out of a field of 280 nominees for this prestigious list.

Thanks to Heidi Carpenter of Fafinski Mark & Johnson, P.A. for nominating Jen.
The write-up was spot on in describing Jennifer’s entrepreneurial spirit and detailed how she has started and continues to run two tech companies as well as Holland Center for children with Autism.

Describing Holland Center:

“‘Right now, it’s not a nonprofit – it’s a lose profit,’ she said laughing. ‘The money we make from the other two companies supports the kids.’”

Congrats to all of those named to the 40 Under Forty for 2007.

An “I Love Minnnesota” meme has been started by Aaron Weiche of the Find Buffalo Blog and we’ve been tagged by Patrick Schaber of Transition Networks and local marketing blog, The Lonely Marketer!

Spring is a great time of year to kick off this meme, because if it had been launched in February instead, I’m pretty sure I would have come up with the reasons why I wanted to move to Cali instead! Despite a giant CO-2 encrusted snow pile still melting at Eden Prairie Mall, I’m feeling MN again, so here we go:

1. Big Business meets MN Nice
Best Buy, Target, Medtronic, General Mills, 3M, ADC, and Hormel (Spam!) all call Minnesota home among many other top-notch corporations. This provides a healthy employment market locally as well as a steady flow of clients and trade-in used IT hardware that we can pick up locally. Despite the ominous corporate skyscrapers downtown and the sprawling business campuses of the suburbs, the people here really are nice.

2. The Twin Cities is the Silicon Valley of Used Hardware
There are more used IT hardware dealers in MN than just about anywhere else in the USA (due to some of the early players in the industry settling here). We love this because we are a large inventory player and serve as a distributor to many of these resellers, making them our clients and partners.

3. Diversity of Activities
While I might not appreciate the changing of seasons as much as others do, I do appreciate the diversity of activities the Twin Cities and the state has to offer. If you’re a city person, there are great concert venues, theater, professional sports, universities and more. If you’re a country mouse, you can still live on the outskirts and commute in, or stay out that way entirely. While there is no ocean, Lake Superior seems as vast as one (and people even surf up there when the waves are just right).

The following Minnesota bloggers are now it:

Julio Ojeda-Zapata (My Tech Weblog of choice)
Graeme Thickins (who I’m bummed that I didn’t run into at BarCamp last weekend)
Ed Kohler (and his outstanding wife)
Sven Sundgaard (Straight outta Cottage Grove, our shared hometown)
Thomas McMahon (Widget Wizard)

Things have been quiet at The Remarketer the past week, but we’ve been quite busy behind the scenes. Blog posts are on the way here soon, but I just wanted to list some of the opportunities that we’ve been lucky enough to have get in the way.

Hiring

As a growing firm, we’re almost always hiring, but lately we’ve encountered some terrific candidates and have been appropriately engaged. At Vibrant, growth is a priority, but only if it’s smart growth with the right people. We met a lot of those right people in recent hires including Bruce, Dede, Nicole, Mike, Patrick and Kolby (and hopefully a few more that we’re still in negotiations with). On a shout-out Friday, I just wanted to send a warm welcome to our newest team members.

Preparing for Interop Las Vegas
Vibrant is exhibiting at the spring Interop conference in late May, the networking world’s premiere industry convention for users, resellers, manufacturers and geeks like us. We’re preparing to make the most of the event and will have more updates on our participation there as we get closer to the show dates.

Blogging at Network World

Speaking of networking, I’ve taken a great opportunity to blog over at Network World’s Cisco Subnet Community. Network World is my favorite Cisco/networking-related magazine and now they’ve built a terrific community portal, too. Here are some recent posts that I’ve contributed:

• Used Cisco Buyer’s Guide
• Refurbished Cisco Terminology Guide
• Counterfeit Cisco offered in Broad Daylight
• Sell used Cisco and maximize your return

Podcasting at Refurb Radio

We’ve started an “industry” podcast over at Refurb Radio and it’s off to a solid start. If you’re not a used IT reseller, this podcast would be pretty boring, but for those of us in the industry, it’s a nice way to discuss insider topics. Marty Brown co-hosts with me and Lindsi Gish produces.

Biz as Usual, too
Of course, we’re also doing plenty of what we do best… selling used servers, storage and networking hardware to clients worldwide.

To celebrate the end of the shortest (yet longest) month of the year, to do some fun team-building and just to have fun, Vibrant hosted its first Video Game Happy Hour.

We had video games (Boxing & Tennis on the Wii, Guitar Hero projected on a 15′ wall, DDR, Parapa, NES, etc…) set up throughout the office. Face-melting guitar heroes and old-school Super Mario gamers alike found a game to their liking and all had a blast. Our Mac-whiz Lindsi Gish put together the above comic book photo-log of the evening.

Our staff works their collective tail off striving to provide the best service and responsiveness in the industry, so our management does its best to have frequent fun events for our employees. Since the majority of our staff is under the age of 40, an in-house video game happy hour seemed like a perfect fit. Here was the invite that went out to staff (another Lindsi creation):

Despite a huge snowstorm beginning its assault, the event went off like a charm. It was a potluck of sorts as everybody collaborated to bring in their video game systems. Vibrant provided the projectors (and the server racks used as backdrops) as well as pizza and employees could bring the beverage of their choice.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press sent a photographer out and published a fun shot of our CEO Jennifer VanDerHorst and AR/AP rep Jen Sikes rocking out on Guitar Hero in the Sunday business section. With all of the positive buzz from the event, I’m already campaigning for another one (and practicing my virtual guitar “hammer-ons” and “pull-offs” with my 9 year old at home).

Rock, Rock on.

[youtube]dVUgd8ot6BE[/youtube]

UPDATE:
Sara Goo, a fellow University of Minnesota Grad, recently blogged about her Guitar Hero showdown with co-workers at the Washington Post. Guitar Hero is officially the office game du jour.

We’re planning our 2nd Guitar Hero Happy Hour soon!

From our experience running booths at college and university job fairs, there is a simple sure-fire way to attract and recruit IT and IS students to your booth.

Include the word “technologies” or “technology” in your company name or in big wording on your display materials.

The funny thing is, Vibrant generally doesn’t go to college career fairs to recruit IS graduates, because we require several years experience in the field before we consider a systems engineer candidate (we’re looking for entry-level sales and customer service).

Regardless, the IT students and electrical engineering majors see the word “technologies” in our company name and introduce themselves almost every time. We certainly hope someday they’ll be our clients, but it’s difficult to explain that we don’t have an immediate opportunity for them.

So, if you’re an IT exec, in-house recruiter or independent recruiter looking for new blood from the college ranks, you might want to send some cards and materials to an exhibiting reseller. If you’re interested in Midwest students, we would surely be happy to hand those out to the plethora of IT students that drop by our college job fair booth.

Here are a few more tips for running a college career fair booth:

1) Stand in front of your booth. This is another pretty simple tip, but it really works. It’s easy to hide behind a table, but you’re more approachable if you don’t. The concrete floors and cheap carpet of exhibit halls will leave your knees and back begging you to sit down, but don’t give in!

2) Give away fun stuff. It creates a conversation starter and will get some people to your booth that won’t otherwise. Candy is a staple, as are pens. At our last career fair, we gave away big inflatable bats (we were hiring sales people and “looking for a few big hitters”). Every once and a while I would take a walk around the fair with one over my shoulder and scores of students wanted to know where they could get one. There are endless giveaways for tech types, too.

3) Bring lots of water. If your booth is a success, you’ll be talking all day and you will get parched (lip balm?).

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4) Try to set up next to the big corporations (if you aren’t one). You’ll get tons of overflow traffic from the students who have lined up to hand their resumes in to the corporate black hole (err… on-file resume collection).

Good luck, and again, contact me (corey at vibrant dot com) if we can refer any IS students your way.