My camera is at the end of its rope. Seriously. Every time I'm going out for a photo tour of a local tech company's office, she opens her case and murmurs: "Please, Lucy, don't take me to another open space where conference rooms are named after Boston neighborhoods. I can't do it anymore."
As a staff writer for BostInno, I visit the offices of Boston tech companies on a regular basis. With my camera, I've been in hundreds of spaces, 30+ of them resulting in photo galleries for our Office Envy series (BostInno's digital tour of the ecosystem’s coolest offices and spaces).
Over time, I learned a few things about Boston tech offices: open-space layouts are very popular, unhealthy snacks are always in abundance, ping pong competitions are taken seriously and naming conference rooms after Boston neighborhoods is a trend.
Companies like Avecto, iboss, Datadog, ObserveIT, Smartbear, The Boston Foundation, Turbonomic, Pearson, PAN Communications and Epiq are only a few examples. My educated guess is that probably tens of companies named their conference rooms after Boston neighborhoods, Boston T stops, Boston landmarks, Boston streets, Boston colleges, Boston-area islands, Boston nightclubs or (another popular one) Boston breweries.
As a result, any choice that differs from this norm makes the company stand out—and my camera's lens bright with joy. In my quest for the most original names of conference rooms in Boston tech, I also had the help of the Boston tech community, who flooded my inbox with suggestions.
In the following list, you'll find the names of the conference rooms that have the highest smile potential. Five "honorable mentions" are included, together with BostInno's favorite—something I personally consider a hidden gem.
For office managers, it's worth noticing that naming conference rooms can be a team-building, fun brainstorming activity for employees, as many of the following creative names were chosen thanks to internal surveys.
"Conference room names are usually a small detail in any office environment, yet their names are probably repeated dozens of times every day."
"Conference room names are usually a small detail in any office environment, yet their names are probably repeated dozens of times every day by everyone from the CEO to interview candidates who are signing in at the front desk," Mohan Zhang, co-founder at CollegeVine, pointed out in an email. (CollegeVine's conference rooms, not included in the list, are named after forests). It's important to get these names right—and some companies excelled at the task.
Without further ado, the top 10 creative conference rooms in Boston tech are:
BevSpot — Fictional Bars
“Since our product started out as a bar inventory, order and sales data tracker, all of our rooms are named after well-known fictional bars,” Sarah Noe, human resources and office manager at BevSpot, wrote in an email. The office of the food and beverage management software company in Fort Point has nine conference rooms: The Prancing Pony ("Lord of the Rings"), The Leaky Cauldron ("Harry Potter"), The Bamboo Lounge ("Goodfellas"), Bob's Country Bunker ("Blues Brothers"), Paddy's Pub ("It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"), Ten Forward ("Star Trek"), Rick's Cafe Americain ("Casablanca"), Moe's Tavern ("The Simpsons") and Mos Eisley Cantina ("Star Wars").
Bynder — Game Clue’s Rooms
All conference rooms at Bynder (a marketing tech company with offices in Boston, California, Europe and Dubai) are named after rooms in Clue, the classic detective board game where players move from room to room in a mansion to solve a murder case. “Aside from being an office-wide favorite game and a sneaky good movie, it represents daily problem solving and using every piece of context as well as intuition to arrive at answers to the questions we come across,” a company’s spokesperson said. In Boston, the conference rooms are Library, Hall, Study, Billiard Room, Conservatory, Ballroom and Dining Room.
Cloud Technology Partners — Songs that correlate to the color of the room
Thanks to a survey among employees, each conference room at cloud computing consulting company Cloud Technology Partners was associated with a song and a music album. For example, the Yellow Room is also called the “Yellow Submarine” room, with a cover of The Beatles’ album hanging on the wall. The full list is: Rainbow Call Room ("Rainbow Country" by Bob Marley), Blue Conference Room ("Blue Suede Shoes" by Elvis Presley), Brick Conference Room ("Another Brick in the Wall" by Pink Floyd), Green Conference Room ("Green River" by Creedence Clearwater Revival), Grey Call Room ("Touch of Grey" by Grateful Dead), Navy Meeting Room ("In the Navy" by Village People), Red Call Room ("Little Red Corvette" by Prince), Yellow Call Room ("Yellow Submarine" by The Beatles), The Lounge ("Purple Rain" by Prince) and The Vault ("At Folsom Prison" by Johnny Cash)
Crayon — Crayola crayon colors
At Crayon, a market intelligence platform provider located near South Station in Boston, conference rooms are named after Crayola crayon colors, with the final picks being chosen by popular vote in the office. They are: Mango Tango (a popping orange color), Purple Mountain Majesty, Outer Space (deep black and grey), Mac and Cheese, Wild Blue Yonder and Laser Lemon. Fun fact: Outer Space is the name of the large board room. “It sure is fun to say, ‘let's meet in Outer Space…,’” said Ellie Mirman, CMO at Crayon.
Continuum— Innovative aircrafts and ships
Recently acquired, the design firm made a very situational choice in deciding the names for its conference rooms. Located in the Seaport, Continuum named the rooms facing the airport after innovative aircraft (either real or imaginary), and rooms facing the cruise ship after innovative ships. Examples? Voyager (the space probes launched by NASA) and Nautilus (Captain Nemo’s fictional submarine).
InCrowd — Popular Doctors
Led by poker player and former nurse Janet Kosloff, health tech company InCrowd named its conference rooms after well-known Doctors, including Dr. Quinn (from "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" TV series), Dr. Who, Dr. House (from the eponymous TV series), Dr. Doolittle (from the movie where Eddie Murphy plays the role of the vet who can communicate with animals), Dr. Seuss (American animator and book publisher), Dr. Scully ("X-Files"), Dr. Watson (Sherlock Holmes’s assistant) and Dr. Lahiri (from "The Mindy Project" rom-com).
MOO — Typefaces
As one could expect from a company that’s all about typography and design, the seven conference rooms in the Chinatown office space of on-demand printing company MOO are named after different typefaces: Baskerville, Cyclone, Helvetica, Lego, Mrs, Eaves, Neutra and Obsidian.
Payfactors — Meta-reflection on business meetings’ standard dynamics
Earlier this year, compensation data management tools provider Payfactors moved into a new space on the Quincy/Braintree line and had to name four conference rooms. They wanted to avoid street names, famous Boston landmarks or a theme. The rest of the story is for marketing specialist Jessica Krason to tell: “We went with the funny-slash-sarcastic route. The idea behind the names was to poke fun at meetings and the thoughts you might have after or before them, also some cliche office excuses people use to cancel on meetings or be late to meetings.” As a result, the names are “Just waiting on Jeff” (Jeff Laliberte is CEO of Payfactors), “Can we reschedule,” “This coulda been an email” and “I was on mute.”
Sense — Types of senses
For Cambridge-based startup Sense, which develops a device that monitors home energy usage, nothing makes more sense that naming its conference rooms after different types of senses. “We were looking for names that would reflect who we are as a company: original, honest and playful,” Rhoda Ullmann, VP of marketing and consumer sales, said in a statement. “With a company name like Sense, puns came naturally, so we decided to lean into it.” Here we go: The lounge, where people relax, hang out or get together to play board games, is named Non. The two small breakout rooms are intentionally incongruously named Sixth and Two (i.e. “two cents”). The rooms where teams have most of their regular meetings are Makes and Common. “And we do our long term planning and board meetings in our largest conference room named Spidey, since who wouldn’t want a Spidey sense when you’re looking ahead?”, Ullmann added.
Trilio — Trios
Another place where the company’s name inspired the titles of its conference rooms is Trilio, a data protection startup based in Framingham, Mass. At Trilio, they use "trio" names. “The ‘Trilio’ name came from the original trio of founders, so we thought we'd pay homage to that,” Katie Lyon, director of marketing, explained. Names are Narnia (because "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" was the favorite, but not particularly snappy, Lyon added), Stooges, Musketeers and Marx Brothers.
Honorable Mentions
Not everyone can make it to the top ten, but the following companies put some special thought in deciding the names of their conference rooms - and we want to honor them.
Here they are:
• Accomplice — Famous accomplices At Cambridge-based early-stage VC firm Accomplice, meetings take place in conference rooms named after a famous accomplice in movies, TV, or tech pop culture: Wozniak (Apple), Goose ("Top Gun"), Costanza ("Seinfeld"), Chewbacca ("Star Wars") and Minions ("Despicable Me").
• Fuze & ezCater — Food & Sandwiches Food is always a good idea, and both Fuze and ezCater think so. At Fuze, a provider of communication tools based in Copley Square, the 18 conference rooms are named after sandwiches (examples: Turkey Club, Burrito, Falafel, Gyro and Lobster Roll); At ezCater, food is the theme of one of the three floors of the office: the corporate catering provider chose Cupcake, Macaron, Empanadas, Falafel, Sushi and Vindaloo as names for some of its conference rooms.
• Pixability — Women in Tech The seven conference rooms at Pixability’s headquarters are named after influential and impactful women in tech and advertising. Names include Margaret Hamilton (computer scientist for NASA), Grace Hopper (pioneer in computer science) and Mary Wells Lawrence (the first female CEO of a company listed on the NYSE).
• Skyword — Far away lands District 12 ("Hunger Games"), Narnia ("The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe"), Wayne Manor ("Batman"), Diagon Alley ("Harry Potter") are only a few of the conference room names at Skyword, a content marketing platform based on Chauncy Street.
• Zaius — Space science fiction Zaius, a marketing tech company that was named after Dr. Zaius (the keeper of the truth in the original “The Planet of the Apes” movie), keeps honoring the space science fiction world with the names of its conference rooms. They are, among others, HAB (where Mark Watney lives after he is accidentally left on Mars in "The Martian"), Jedha City and Chalmun's Cantina (from various "Star Wars" episodes).
BostInno’s Favorite
The following company is not even a tech company or a startup, so we had to create a special category—we just couldn’t miss the chance to include it.
Plymouth Rock Assurance, an insurance company with offices on Atlantic Avenue in Boston, named the conference rooms of its property division on the second floor after “risks known to cause homeowners insurance losses,” CEO of Plymouth Rock Property Bill Martin wrote in an email.
As a result, the names of the conference rooms are (brace yourselves)... Unfenced Pool, Lightning, Storm Surge and Biting Dog.
