This picture was taken during a somewhat yearly lunch get-together between some of the original team members of what was then ITRI’s web communications department. These people set the standard for all work experiences to follow. It’s amazing that as we approach close to 20 years since I first met them all we still manage to keep in touch and meet regularly.

Other than fostering a fun and enjoyable work environment we enjoyed so many early “firsts”, a few included: 20% rule whereby you spent a portion of your time on self-directed study, then share and apply; business blog networks before it was a thing; early standards based web development; and we established a robust information architecture practice within a very early for Taiwan UX team (there were no other UX teams for web at that time that we knew about).

It wasn’t all flowers and unicorns of course, there was conflict, we got emotional, but by and large we were more family than work colleagues.

As I prepare to leave Taiwan for the next chapter of my life, I will always remember fondly the experiences I had working with my other Taiwan family.