Earlier this year I was in Las Vegas for the Affiliate Summit West 2009. During that trip, a group of us arranged to take a tour of the Zappos.com office, which is headquartered in Vegas. I didn’t know at the time, but they offer tours to the general public so that you can see how they operate. I won’t go into detail, but it was an incredible experience and I would recommend anyone that is interested take the tour.
At the culmination of the tour, they gave each of us their 2008 “Culture Book”. Every year, they put out a professionally created and bound book that
is made up of submissions from their employees. Everyone, from top to bottom, submits a written passage about what it’s like to work at Zappos and it is included. The passages range from funny to heartfelt to downright nonsensical!
A few months after the trip, I was reading a blog posting about how Zappos is taking submissions of photographs from anyone who took the tour for inclusion in their 2009 Culture Book. I immediately fired up my iPhoto and grabbed three of the shots that I took that day and sent them in. A few days later, I was contacted and asked to sign a release. I sent back in the forms and asked if I could be contacted if any of my photos would be used as I would like a copy of the book. That was back in March and I kinda forgot about the whole thing.
Flash forward to two weeks ago when I received an email from the same person who sent me the release informing me that my submission would be included in the book! Not only that, but they offered to send me one, free of charge. Today, I arrived home to find the book waiting and not only did I get in once, but twice!
Now, I can’t take full credit here because, obviously, I didn’t take the photo that I appear in. For that one, the credit goes to Kim Rowley, who did an excellent job. You have to be a damn good photographer to make me look good!
If you’re interested, you can obtain this book, for free, by contacting Jenn Lim of Zappos via her Twitter feed. She’s the one who “designs, produces and field questions for the culture books.” It’s a great read and really shows you that companies can truly succeed when they make their employees love what they do!
