If you've been following our Office Envy series, you know that naming conference rooms after Boston neighborhoods ("Back Bay" or "North End," for example) is not an original choice for local tech companies.
Datadog, a monitoring platform for cloud applications headquartered in New York City, has found a way to transform a cliché into something more special.
The company, which moved its Boston office to 225 Franklin Street in March 2018, has created an accurate map of the city by naming rooms according to their mutual position and the authentic Boston topography. So you'll find the "Fort Point" room a few feet away from "Beacon Hill," but closer to "Back Bay;" the "North End" room is oriented towards the Italian neighborhood.
"If we're going to do it, we're going to do it right," said Jon Rovello, office manager at Datadog.
Rovello added that creating a map of Boston inside the office help employees (especially newly-hired ones) navigate the 40,000-square-foot place, which is currently home to 175 people.
The 18 Datadog offices around the globe are the same in terms of layout: a huge kitchen, an open-space setting and a casual atmosphere, Rovello said. However, the Paris location made a more radical choice for the conference rooms' names; they were all named after Nicholas Cage's movies ("Snake Eyes" and "The Rock," to name a few).
Here are a few photos I took during my tour of the Datadog office in Boston:
