We’ve all participated in that all-American ritual: the awkward company holiday party. No matter the best intentions of the planners, everyone stands around looking for small talk that will get them through the night unscathed and un-remembered. More importantly, one tries to avoid the broader question of, “Why do I spend so much of my life with these people??”

The CultureMob team is not your average team, and the party reflected that. With a group like this, it’s easy to have a great time. There was great food (compliments of my wonderful wife, Christina, plus vegetarian and vegan food provided by Jeremy), the inevitable wheel chairracing (the rules seem to change with every race), bike jousting (which began and ended rather abruptly), bowling, tennis and more (compliments of a Wii and our projector) and a great toast by Chadwick.

Best of all perhaps were the gifts. Jeremy gave me a magic wand. Yup, it’s true. If we need more capacity to handle increasing traffic, I can simply wave it over the servers. Need a critical feature to arrive sooner? Just wave the magic wand and all will be right with the world. Plus it has great sound and light effects. Some may not believe the power of the magical wand, but I have incontrovertible evidence: During the party, Brummel and I disagreed about something. I merely waved the wand — he was in mid-sentence — and he suddenly saw things exactly as I do. Truly magic.

Wait a second, the best part of the party was the reminder that I work with a group of great individuals. In addition to being the foundation of a great company, it’s not a bad way to spend your days.

Happy Holidays!

Other startups have ping pong and fooseball. Green Couch Conspiracy has Wheelchair Racing!

Why, exactly, do we have wheelchairs in our office? Hmm, that’s a good question…

Mike? Jeremy?

The latest release is live! The user name and password requirements are gone! (No more dress code. What you’re wearing does cut it.) People are using the site and providing feedback. The world can see what we’ve been working on these many months.

Best of all, we’re just getting started. We’ve got tons of work still to do, but we’re completing the fundamentals. We’ve got a great foundation for building our vision of the best local events discovery site on the web.

As we do that, we get to build cool, innovative software and add to the vitality of Seattle’s local event scene. A great combo.

Have any comments on what we can do better? Just let us know. Post a comment or email me and/or Mike Showalter (the guy who’s really in charge). We’re a work in progress, releasing early and iterating often. The best is yet to come!

And don’t forget, be sure to tell 1,000 of your closest friends about CultureMob.com!