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A Day At The Beach

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

apch-beach-event-q2-2010-girls-clean-up-crew2On Monday, June 28th 80 volunteers from our LA office and 120 kids from the South Los Angeles after school program A Place Called Home hit the beach for a rewarding day of cleaning up the sand, swimming, surfing lessons, volleyball, soccer and ultimate frisbee at Will Rogers State Beach.

The clouds were upon us in the morning, which didn’t stop the kids from jumping in the water! In the morning we spent the first hour cleaning up the beach, simultaneously teaching the kids about conservation. Then after working up a sweat filling up trash bags, we had our resident surfers teach kids on foam boards kindly donated by Rip Curl (thanks guys!), our volleyball gurus leading games, our soccer stars running up and down the sandy field with the kids, and our ultimate frisbee experts teaching kids how to throw a frisbee and shoot for the end zone.

A Place Called Home has a mission that certainly inspires us: “To provide at-risk youth with a secure, positive family environment where they can regain hope and belief, earn trust and self-respect, and learn skills to lead a productive lifestyle free of the gangs, drugs, and poverty that surround them. We help inner city youth find their dreams through educational enrichment.” Thank you APCH for all you do!

All in all, it was a great day for both adults and kids. We formed genuine relationships with many of the kids there, definitely the most rewarding piece of the day. It definitely reminded us what is so great about life and this team. We can’t wait to do it again!


Posted in Fun, community service, team development |
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The Cinderella Project

Friday, March 19th, 2010

cinderellaproject1The Rubicon Project is proud to partner with an organization that inspires us, the after school program A Place Called Home. As part of the Cinderella Project, we brought our team together to donate (as well as reach out to family and friends) gently used prom, bridesmaid, or other formal dresses. The dresses then find better homes- to be seen at proms at local high schools. Ahhh the memories.

The Cinderella Project is a Los Angeles-based program dedicated to building the self-esteem of underprivileged teenage girls by providing them with beautiful formal wear for special occasions in their lives. A Place Called Home (APCH) is a haven within South Central Los Angeles dedicated to providing at-risk youth with a secure, positive family environment where they can regain hope and belief, earn trust and self respect and learn skills to lead a productive lifestyle free of the gangs, drugs and poverty that surrounds them.

TO MAKE A DONATION: Please deliver or mail gently used or new dresses, shoes and/or accessories, directly to A Place Called Home/The Cinderella Project c/o Melissa Molina, 2830 S. Central Ave., LA, CA 90011. For questions please call Melissa Molina 323-232-7652 ext 324 or email cinderellaproject@apch.org.


Posted in Charity, Fun, community service, team development |
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What Does it Mean to Manage?

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

office-space“It is a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test.” -Elbert Hubbard

The word “management” reminds us of the movie Office Space. Reverting to the age old image,  managers are supposed to be corporate drones who sit in their office, have a fancy title,  sip coffee, and report to their higher ups. Forget that! Truth be told, that image just doesn’t fit into our work ethic or our culture.  Still, the question is tough- what does it mean to be a manager?

On Tuesday, January 26th all of the leaders at the Rubicon Project (anyone who manages anyone) spent an entire day learning what it means to be responsible for other people. The wonderful Mr. Jason Seiden visited our LA headquarters, helped us talk through our problems and issues, provided brilliant insight into where we can improve, and even made us laugh! The entire day proved to be one of the most important for furthering developing our leadership as we push this company forward.

Sometimes we discussed topics as a large group, other times we broke into small groups of 4 or 5 to talk about everything from what we do to block communication or listening (often times not on purpose) to how a manager keeping their head out of the weeds is beneficial for your entire team.  Jason got us out of our of comfort zone and got us thinking creatively and realistically about how we can create the best environment for our team possible.

Ultimately, our team members are our biggest assets and we will do any and all we can to make sure they are successful, supported, and inspired! As team members in this company, we all believe it is our duty to push each other to be the best we can be. The leadership training session led by Jason is a perfect example of this aspect of our culture in action.

Besides being an author, Jason is available for corporate and leadership coaching and we couldn’t possibly give him a higher recommendation. Thanks Jason!

Quotes from our leadership team:

“I loved working in small groups, it made the session extremely relatable. I think my team will really benefit from what I learned during the session , especially when we reviewed decision making and effective communication. Seeing it up on paper and talking through scenarios really allowed me to visualize how to apply everything in the real world.”

“I really got a lot out of the training session. I was glad to see everyone be so open and honest. It was good to see others appear to be struggling with some of the same issues I struggle with. A lot of times, I feel like I am the only one who is, at times, struggling as a new manager.

“I walked out of the session feeling a profound sense of urgency not to ‘do’ (my team can do that) but rather to ‘manage’, the act of being able to get a group of people to achieve a set of goals by providing a detailed set of objectives, creating the right work environment, and maintaining an overall positive attitude among the group through motivation and support. Thank you!”


Posted in Leadership, team development |
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End of Year Wrap-Up in Words, Pictures and Video

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

How do you summarize an entire year at the Rubicon Project? It’s a combination of new technologies, new customers, new partners, new team members, new programs, new initiatives, and a lot of great inspiration and creativity. 2009 proved to be a phenomenal year for our company, we practically doubled the size of our team, added 3 new offices, and continued to focus on developing a strong and innovative company culture. It has always been our goal to create an “experience” not a “job,” and 2009 proved to be the year of excitement and focus.  Some areas of change and impact that we are proud of include:

Community Impact:
Community outreach and service is something that is bred into the DNA of our company and all of the team members we hire. We recognize how fortunate we are, and are committed to giving back to our local community. In 2009, we expanded from local community impact to global community impact. After opening offices in New York, London, and Sydney, we have been able to effect change not only in Los Angeles but internationally as well. Some groups we have volunteered or supported in the last year include: the Midnight Mission (LA), LA’s Best After School Program (LA),  Heal the Bay (LA), Tree People (LA), Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen (NYC), Morgan Stanely Children’s Hospital (NYC), City Meals on Wheels (NYC), Ted Knoff Foundation (SYDNEY), Community Chest (HONG KONG), Toys for Tots (US), NY Cares Coat Drive (NYC), Coach ART (LA),  and the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation (US).

Education:
We firmly believe in empowering our team members to take on as much industry knowledge and career skills as possible. The continuation of our Rubicon University program, which takes internal team members who are experts in certain fields and puts them in front of our team-at-large to be a “professor” of sorts, continued to be a big success. This year, the company also invested in a “Rubicon Library”, which houses books (team members make suggestions!) focused on improving management skills, how to inspire others, how to effect change, or how to reach your full potential.

Sports:
In addition, we also saw the creation of Rubicon Project sports teams, which provided some tough competition and a lot of fun memories. Active in the areas of softball, basketball, kickball, tennis, and soccer, the Rubicon Project is proud that our team members take any opportunity to be athletic, have fun, and forge friendships that aren’t just about  “business”.  None of our teams took home a league championship but that is definitely part of our goals for 2010!

Team Development and Bonding:
As a company, we devote resources to providing each manager with a budget for creating and planning team bonding events. It is important to us that our team members feel appreciated and connected to one another, and these events tend to have 100% participation. Whether it’s taking the team out for bowling, a nice dinner, or on a sailing adventure, our team knows what it is like to connect with other team members outside of “work.”

Cheers to 2009, and especially to our wonderful team members, who are the heart and soul of this organization. After looking back at the past year, I think we are all excited for what we will accomplish in 2010!


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Posted in Charity, Fun, Team Development Events, community service, team development |
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Healing the Bay

Friday, August 14th, 2009
the Rubicon Project At Dockweiler State Beach

the Rubicon Project At Dockweiler State Beach

On Friday, August 14th the LA Rubicon Project team headed down to Dockweiler State Beach for a day of volunteering with Heal the Bay. As members of the Los Angeles community, we feel particularly passionate about the cleanliness and health of our beaches. So, we grabbed our team and went after doing anything we could to help.

The sun was shining, the gulls were curious as to what we were doing, and we spent the morning breaking up into teams and collecting (and documenting) trash that had either been left on the beach or washed onto the sand through storm drains. After a sweaty two hours, we found everything from styrofoam to thousands of cigarette butts. In the end, we were very proud of the massive amount of trash we got off of the sand. Surprisingly, there were no sunburns. Nice work team!

Heal the Bay is a non-profit organization dedicated to making Southern California coastal waters and watersheds safe, healthy, and clean. If you want to volunteer with Heal the Bay, go to www.healthebay.org!


Posted in community service, team development |
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Midnight Mission: Thank you!

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

Every quarter, the Rubicon Project picks a local organization to partner with for our company wide community service project and event. This quarter, we were fortunate to work with the wonderful men and women at the Midnight Mission- a group of folks who inspire us daily by giving their heart and soul to those who need it most.

The Midnight Mission is located in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles and first opened it’s doors as a refuge to the homeless men of Skid Row. For almost a century, the organization has been dedicated to providing outstanding services to homeless men, women, and families who need shelter, food, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, counseling, education, training and job placement.

Our community service event this quarter sent 3 different groups from the Rubicon Project to the Midnight Mission to serve food (and most importantly, big smiles) to folks who call Skid Row “home”. It was an educational, humbling, and very worthwhile experience that none of us will forget.

Quote from David Johnson, a Rubicon Project software engineer:

“I want to thank the Rubicon Project for coordinating this event with the Midnight Mission. It was an enlightening, humbling, and overall very positive experience of which I am glad to have taken part. I thank you for getting the Rubicon Project community involved with such inspiring organizations”.

If you or anyone you know would like to volunteer or donate time to the Midnight Mission, please contact Mai Lee at mlee@midnightmission.org.

the Rubicon Project and the Midnight Mission: What a team!

the Rubicon Project and the Midnight Mission: What a team!




Posted in Charity, Team Development Events, community service, team development |
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Knowledge is Power

Thursday, July 30th, 2009
Popular amongst the Rubicon Project team

Popular amongst the Rubicon Project team

At the Rubicon Project, we are committed to giving our team members access to as much information, knowledge, and opportunity to improve their skills as they desire. The most recent addition to our team development arsenal is the Rubicon Library. Based on team suggestions and feedback, we invested in a “library” of books that pique their interest. It has been wildly successful amongst the Rubicon team: the library has only been open for 2 weeks, and already, half of the inventory has already been checked out! A perfect example of how “knowledge is power”!

Full list of books available:

The SPEED of trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow
Apples are Square: Thinking Differently about Leadership
Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… And Other’s Don’t
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Best Managers Do Differently
Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In
Who’s Got Your Back: The Breakthrough Program to Build Deep, Trusting Relationships that Create Success- and Won’t Let You Fail
What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful
 A Sense of Urgency: How to Sustain it in Any Organization
Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal With Change in your Work and your Life
Our Iceberg is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions
Leadership and Self Deception: Getting Out of the Box
How Full Is Your Bucket: Positive Strategies for Work and Life
Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High
Growing Pains: Transitioning from an Entrepreneurship to a Professionally Managed Firm
Now Discover Your Strengths: Strength Finder
The One Thing You Need to Know: Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success
The Truth About You: Your Secret to Success
In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies
How to Win Friends and Influence People
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness
Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
Just Enough Anxiety: The Hidden Driver of Business Success
Small Giants: Companies that Choose to Be Great Instead of Big
MKTG 3.0 2009 Edition
Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind
The Magic of Thinking Big
The Effective Executive
Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices
The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t
Weird Ideas That Work: How to Build a Creative Company
Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management
Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
Hadoop: The Definitive Guide
The Elements of Statistical Learning: Data Mining, Inference, and Prediction
Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques
Building Scalable Web Sites: Building, Scaling, and Optimizing the Next Generation of Web Applications
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Think: Why Crucial Decisions Can’t Be Made in the Blink of an Eye
Blur: The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy
The Truth About You
Fish! A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results
The Green Book
It’s Easy Being Green
The Urban Dweller’s Guide to Green Living Los Angeles
Green Your Work
101 Ways to Turn Your Business Green


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Rubi Rewards: How We Show Our Appreciation

Sunday, March 1st, 2009

Matt’s mission to turn the whole Yield Management team into wine connoisseurs is no secret in the office. So when we received a wine cooler through our Rubi Rewards program, we were grateful to have an excuse to keep a few bottles handy for a special occasion. Unfortunately, the cooler sits guarded by Matt’s desk and those bottles have yet to be uncorked. We’re waiting for the right moment–I’m just hoping that moment comes soon.

The RubiRewards program started as a way for us to show appreciation for other team members by purchasing items for them with Visa gift cards that we receive quarterly. It’s a nice surprise when you receive a gift from a person on a different team because it makes you realize that your impact spans far beyond the people sitting next to you…like our wine cooler, which the Ad Network Development team gave to my team at the end of last quarter. Our teams work so closely together every day, and we don’t stop to say “Thanks, you’re doing a great job” enough!

The Rubi Rewards program is just another one of those fun little things that we do that actually makes a big impact on our work environment. It’s great to see that your work is recognized by people who don’t necessarily have access to your everyday accomplishments. It proves that we’re really doing something special here, and hey, you deserve something for it!

Now, time to start thinking about what to buy this quarter for those people at the top of my list…


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The Dream Center: Changing Lives

Friday, January 30th, 2009

The Rubicon Project exceeded many goals last year but the most inspiring of them all has to be our Food and Clothing Drive last holiday season. We set a goal of donating 3500 items to the Dream Center, a non-profit outreach, and our team responded to that challenge by bringing 5x the amount: 17,372 pieces of clothing, packaged food and household necessities.

We hope that our contributions help the Dream Center’s mission to provide food, clothing, shelter, and life rehabilitation to the struggling in impoverished areas. Their Mobile Food Truck delivers groceries to 26 different low-income neighborhoods in Los Angeles each week. In May 2008, the Rubicon team spent an afternoon bagging groceries and items for the Dream Center’s food truck—and thus began our love affair with the organization.

The Dream Center protects and motivates the youth of Los Angeles through many campaigns. Project Prevention delivers food, baby supplies, toiletries, cleaning supplies, furniture and beds to families that are at risk of losing their children to foster care because of poverty. Metro Kids mentors young minds to think positively and encourages young people to find their talents and abilities and pursue their dreams.

We love working with the Dream Center because of the opportunities to attend to the various needs of our community. Whether we want to focus on sheltering the homeless, rehabilitating the sick or inspiring our youth, the Dream Center aids many different groups. For ways you can get involved, go to http://www.dreamcenter.org.


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Rubicon Dart League

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

Here at the Rubicon Project, we work really hard making sure Ads get served, and we work with our Ad Networks and Publishers to make sure everyone has the best possible experience. To balance out our work life, we also have an awesome playground complete with foosball, pool and ping-pong.

A handful of us here the Rubicon Project have discovered the joy of playing darts, and we have an area dedicated to play Golf, Baseball, 301/501 games, and my personal favorite American Cricket. Here are a few Snaps of us having an awesome time and some of our better shots along the way.

If there are any other companies or leagues that wish to challenge us to a round, please contact us and let’s set something up.


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