My Pinteresting Visit to the Pinterest HQ!
I was blessed, and I do mean blessed, by a fantastic tour around San Francisco and Silicon Valley for what I call the Ultimate Geek Day with Guy Kawasaki as my tour guide. I'll be sharing photos and stories from our day and I'm starting with our first stop which was Pinterest.
I was most excited to visit Pinterest of all the places that we had planned for the day. I love Pinterest, really love it! I found out via email at 3:30 am the weekend before that Pinterest was confirmed and I immediately posted on Google+ with the Pin All the Things meme. I know that all my social media friends and blog readers wanted all the details on this visit so there will be a lot of photos and I'll pin them as well. Guy posted all his photos on Google+ and they are amazing.
What is Pinterest? In their own words:
This is the first photo of the day, you can see I'm flipping out excited. Guy may be questioning his choice to bring me to Pinterest because I am a Pinterest fan girl. It takes a brave, brave man to take a Pinterest crazy social media girl to visit the Pinterest headquarters. Uber Cars sponsored our day by providing a car and driver. So classy.
Pinterest just moved to a new location and I was interested to see what kind of space they had created. The office is located in San Francisco in a very cool, laid back loft. They are still creating and decorating the space but it already has a WOW factor. It's being put together in a thoughtful and creative approach with a keen eye on design, just like everything Pinterest.
I spy with my little eye… Pinterest!
This collage is the Pinterest lobby. All the individual photos will be pinned on my Silicon Valley Tour #GeekDay Pinterest board. Note the coffee table made of rulers and the Ryan Gosling book. 
Hey Girl!
I told our guide how much I loved the RG book on the table and she told me that Pinterest LOVES Hey Girls! I told her about my friend Beki and our obsession with pinning Hey Girls during #PinChat, a weekly Twitter chat hosted by my friend Kelly. Check out my Hey Girl Hall of Fame Board and Beki's Hey Girl: The Collection for some inspiration to create your own Pinterest/Hey Girl thing. Then I was on high alert to find Ryan and Hey Girl around the office. I found some fun things!
The very best part about Pinterest was learning that Pinterest uses Pinterest and it's fans as inspiration for their own creativity. How cool is that? The PR department created this little lounge area and the marquee Pinterest P idea was found on Pinterest! I need to find that pin and make that light for my office which means I find the pin, get the supplies and ask my husband to help.
My friend Megan wanted to see photos of the creative work spaces which were frankly everywhere but this particular space was used for creative brainstorming sessions. Imagine the great goodies coming to Pinterest from all those post-it notes!
This space was at the bottom of the stairs and could be used for meetings or a coffee break. The designers used washi tape to decorate the walls since they didn't have official artwork yet. One wall of shelves was filled with vintage cameras and typewriters, two things I love!
Push it
I'm going to recreate this board in my office for my team. It's Push It board, based on the Salt ‘n Pepper song, this board highlights the accomplishments of the Pinterest team. It's located in a hallway where people pass by frequently. It's a nice reminder of their highlights. A few things on the wall: secret boards and rich pins. Two things that made me, and pinners everywhere, very happy. Celebrating success as a team is sure to bred success in the future.
Pinterest really cares about pinners and their Pinterest experience.
A few things I learned from my Pinterest visit:
- Live your brand to the fullest extent.
- Pinterest is a social media marketing machine!
- Being in a creative, visually interesting workspace is important.
- Teamwork creates harmony and a great product.
- They practice what they preach. Each week they get together and someone teaches a craft to the team.
- You can be a serious business with a great sense of humor.
- Use your own product .
- FOCUS
I hope you enjoyed this photo essay of my Pinterest visit. I wasn't there very long but it made a huge impression on me. Thank you so much to Pinterest for allowing Guy and I to come and visit your fantastic offices.
If I didn't already have the world's greatest job, I would love to work at Pinterest.
All these photos and more are on my Pinterest Geek Day board. I'll be writing more about the rest of my Geek Day trip soon. I wish you all could have come with me!
Thank you to Guy Kawasaki for sharing some of your personal photos with me for this article.
Ahhhh what I would give to hang out there for a few days!! Next best thing, seeing it through your eyes — love you lady, so glad you got this chance and Geek Day is probably the coolest idea ever.
stacyofksw Stacy, thank you! I would love to go back to and spend some time there too. It was so hard for me to leave.
I hope I did it justice, I felt the responsibility of all my social media pals that weren’t with me to capture the essence and share the Pinterest love.
Oooh I love this! Stumbled upon it by chance after following a Pinterest tag of yours on Google+ Little bit jealous, love Pintrest so much too, and it fascinates me how much traffic it drives to our blog!! It beats google.co.uk, Facebook and Twitter and is only topped by google.com!! Amazing! Really fabulous little insight. Thank you,
Annabel X
What a day you had Peg! I love living vicariously through all of your pics. And the ‘Hey Girl’ insight about Pinterest HQ is hilarious. I love hearing that they love exactly what everyone else loves on Pinterest. Too much fun!
So Jealous! It was a lot of fun following along on your #GeekDay, love the concept and how to see more adventures! Thanks for sharing these images and your adventure, love being able to see all the fun things you experienced that day at one of my favorite resources PINTEREST. Crossing my fingers that someday I will get to chance to visit, perhaps with a few of my fellow #pinchat friends!
Oh. My. It totally lived up to my expectations!!! I narrated my comments to you on G+ as I read the post, but this was awesome!!!! Thank you for the photos of their creative spaces–I loved every inch of it! And I agree with Rebekah, I love that they love using Pinterest as much as we do! Totally inspiring!
(You also looked adorable btw!!!)
LoveMyDress I clearly love Pinterest too! But as bloggers it can be an amazing traffic referrer.
What tips do you have for your blog and Pinterest traffic? What has worked for you?
Rebekah Radice It was the best! Thanks for reading and following along on my crazy adventure. 🙂
EducatorsSpin A #PinChat field trip would be fantastic!
I’m so happy that you liked my idea and, of course, that Guy thought it was a good idea too! Dream big!!
What’s your favorite way to use Pinterest?
Megan Sheakoski Hi Megan! I really was thinking of you, Kelly, Rebekah and all my friends that love Pinterest as much as I do and I tried to capture the essence so you could really see what it was like. It was the ultimate in Pinterest!
So funny story, when I was taking pictures with my camera in the lobby, my photo recorded a video that I didn’t realize it was doing. The visual is horrible because I didn’t know it was recording and I was just moving my phone around with my camera so it’s not watchable but the audio is hilarious. I’m like ooohhhhhh this is so exciting!! I was freaking out running around saying OMG look at this…wow…
I could feel your excitement through your words and pictures, Peg! LOVE IT! 🙂
The entire experience must have been creatively stimulating in itself! *big smile*
Kit
PegFitzpatrick Megan Sheakoski That is AWESOME!!! Whenever you need a pick me up you can play the Pinterest video and smile!!! I love it!!!!
I want to be Peg Fitzpatrick when I grow up. #awesome
kr_iyer Thanks! I was so inspired!
jaredeasley Yeah! Although I don’t feel grown up. 🙂