It’s been a few years since the last tournament, so the Bronto Winter Foosball Tournament 2012 was created to revive the fun competition and also serve in memory of long-time engineer Mike Rundle, who recently left the company.  Mike Rundle, who is still considered to be one of the company’s best players, was the original advocate of the Bronto Foosball Tournament.   Mike made everyone want to play foosball, as you felt invincible on his team with his myriad of tricks, ease of play, and desire to win.  The tournament was the very least I could do in the name of my friend and the fun game we all love.

The tournament has taken place over the week of January 30^th with the finals culminating on February 3^th during the “Bronto Happy Hour.”  Starting with 22 singles entries and 11 doubles entries, the matches have been fast paced, passionate, and surprising with upsets.  Despite the 15-minute match times, it is common for matches to go into overtime or tie breaker rounds as seasoned players are pitted against each other.  In the end, all participants have shown the highest level of sportsmanship and camaraderie in both victory and defeat.

Bronto Winter Foosball Tournament 2012 Winners

Singles 1st Place - Jameson L.

Singles 2nd Place - Ryan S.

Singles 3rd Place - Andy F.

Doubles 1st Place - Jameson L. + Dan P.

Doubles 2nd Place - Ed D. + Justin S.

Doubles 3rd Place - Chris S. + Alexey T.

Stay tuned to a variety of other competitive events at Bronto, next up Assassin!

Andy Feller
Development Team Lead
Foosball Master
Devoted Husband

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Armed with this knowledge, the Bronto Social Committee set out to surprise their fellow Brontos last Wednesday (Jan. 25th) with a donut truck. The fine folks at Dusty Donuts came over and served us all as many mini Donuts and delicious hot beverages like hot chocolate, tea and coffee as we could stomach (yours truly personally stomached 48 mini donuts and 3 gallons of hot chocolate).

Sunshine and Donuts

Let’s back up. As stewards of the great culture here at Bronto, the Social Committee organizes monthly shindigs for the entire Bronto crew. Bringing Dusty Donuts out was especially meaningful; it happened a few days after some hardware maintenance the entire company was preparing for.

Several members of engineering had to pull all-nighters the previous Saturday, and the project affected everyone in the company. So, what better way to blow off steam with some free donuts?

Brontos enjoying some free coffee

In the end, we all got to take an hour to enjoy some free food, some awesome company, and some great weather. Hard play (and free food) after a weekend of hard work is not only extremely rewarding and deserved, it is also so the Bronto way to do things.

Bucky Schwarz
Software Engineer
Bronto Social Committee Member
Photographer Extraordinaire

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Over the last year, we worked with 9 amazing non-profits. The goals the community committee set for the year were challenging, but achievable. We hoped to have 22 volunteer opportunities and we had 33!  We wanted at least 50% of the Bronto hours to be used and we had 80%! We were ambitious and wanted 100% Bronto participation, we came just shy of that with 86%.  We aimed to have 600 volunteer hours (on Bronto’s time) to be used, and surpassed that with 636 hours or almost 16 weeks of Bronto’s time!

Some of our volunteering efforts benefited:

Emily K Center Fitness Camp – As one of our 2011 focus organizations, Brontos donated school supplies and helped supervise and facilitate the Spring Break fitness camp at The Emily K Center in Durham for over 35 1^st-8^th graders.

Brian Hanyok and a few of the kids from Emily K Center with new school supplies!

Food Bank of Central & Eastern NC – We volunteered 140 hours that included stuffing backpacks, bagging food, and during the Heart of Carolina Food Drive volunteers collected donations and encouraged others to donate.

Habitat For Humanity of Durham - Throughout the year, Bronto provided volunteers to the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity to help build and renovate houses in Durham.  In 2011, we had 8 build days and 216 volunteer hours!

(Pictured left to right) Paul McCall, Bucky Schwarz, Dan Therrien & Jameson Loop working hard during a Habitat build.

SEEDS Community Garden – In honor of our herbivore namesake, Brontos learned how to care for the earth, helped plant and winterize Durham’s SEEDS community garden. We volunteered 120 hours at SEEDS!

Fawn Young and Kevin Thornton at SEEDS Garden doing an interpretation of "American Gothic"

American Red Cross – Every quarter, the American Red Cross comes to the American Tobacco Campus (where Bronto’s HQ is located). This year, we had 32 volunteers give the gift of life during these opportunities.

Another way that Bronto helps the community is with sponsored accounts.  A sponsored account gives a local non-profit the ability to use Bronto’s marketing platform at no cost.  Many organizations use Bronto to drive donations, communicate with volunteers or spread the word about their cause.  This year we had our first ever Non-Profit Round Table and invited our sponsored accounts to join us.  It was a great experience for non-profit marketers to learn tips from each other, have a strategy session and to learn more about Bronto.

Thank you to all the Brontos who donated their time and efforts to these very worthy causes!  The Bronto Community Committee is already working on a full schedule of community events in 2012, so stay tuned!

Sara McDaniel
Marketing Associate
Community Committee Member
Natural Red-Head

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Brontos Carolyn Sparano, Kristen Gregory & Nathalie Scheier pose after organizing the toys.

We have worked with Ronald McDonald House Charities before, but never to this extent.  The community team decided we needed to have a challenge at Bronto and choose to work with the Ronald McDonald House of Durham. We committed approx. 5 volunteers for a morning shift, an afternoon shift, and a shift for those musically inclined Brontos to help provide some holiday cheer. Check out a short video of three talented Brontos bringing in some holiday musical cheer:

During these shifts, Brontos helped transform an ordinary room into a Holiday Wonderland with toys organized by age to help the parents pick out gifts for their children and themselves. We also wanted to donate at least 70 gifts to the cause. Brontos provided 85 gifts (for infants, toddlers, children, teenagers and adults) to meet our challenge.

Since 1980, the Ronald McDonald House of Durham has allowed families to focus on the health and well being of their critically ill children by keeping families together who are in need of a community of hope, comfort, and empathy.  The toy drive is a great opportunity to help families who are struggling with balancing the needs of a sick child, travel and the regular stress of the holidays all at the same time.

Members of the community team sorting gifts. Jamie Tharp, Karen Bruce & Anna Pfeiffer

Sara McDaniel
Marketing Associate
Community Committee Member
Natural Red-Head

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Popular gifts this year were various forms of east coast inspired leisure attire, a motherboard, bottom barrel adult beverages, and of course, the famed Bronto geese (ceramic geese which have managed to make an appearance at each Bronto White Elephant gift exchange).

After the initial gift selection, chief Bronto Joe Colopy craftily conjured up some on-the-fly rules for exchanging (permanently borrowing) gifts among employees. Some Brontos saw their gifts upgraded, while others watched their coveted white elephant gift slip from their fingers. Most notably, Software Engineer Andrew Feller had his prized lava lamp stricken from his grasp, only to be replaced by a weighted stuffed animal dog door stop contraption thing. Depending on one’s perspective, this could be an upgrade. I’ll leave that judgment to the reader.

Following the exchange, the Bronto team was treated to a delicious holiday feast by Posh Nosh catering. Upon exiting the gift exchange, the Bronto team was treated to one last surprise. Each employee was gifted a brand new Ogio backpack complete with Bronto logo!

On a bittersweet note, the Bronto White Elephant gift exchange also marked the end of a great (some would say ‘the greatest’) era in Bronto socializing. Esteemed veteran Bronto social committee members Jameson ‘Data’ Lopp and John Henry ‘The Kid’ Gunther bid farewell to the social committee as their 1 year (+ or – 2 years) term on social committee came to a close. Jameson and John (speaking in the third person is fun!) are survived by new social committee members Mary ‘Mel’ Lucas and Mike ‘Unicorn Man’ Mulligan.

From all of us here at Bronto, Happy Holidays!

John Henry Gunther
Technical Writer/eLearning Specialist
Retired Social Committee Member

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The theme for the party this year was “game night.” Several stations bedecked the hall, allowing attendees to float between Rock Band, DDR (Dance Dance Revolution), corn hole, and even beer pong (which ultimately transformed into a highly spirited and incredibly competitive game of flip cup).

Interspersed with the games was a variety of delicious food.  A carving station, fish and chicken tacos station, and a still young but cherished tradition, the mashed potato bar, were all complimented by a full bar.

Another annual tradition: formally recognizing the Brontos voted for by their peers with the ever prestigious Golden Bronto Awards. This year, hand-made, glimmering, gold spray painted wooden trophies were given out to honor

• The Bronto Class Clown
• The Punniest Bronto (won by yours truly)
• The Most Dependable Bronto
• The Bronto Dude(ette)
• The Most Athletic Bronto
• The Iron Chef Bronto
• The Otnorb (that’s “bronto” spelled backwards)
• The Company (Wo)Man, and lastly
• The JCW Malone Professionality Award.

This was in addition to a raffle stocked with prizes that change every year. Brontos and their guests won gift cards towards shopping, gas, and nice meals, while others won fancy tablet computers, extra days of vacation time, or a Fathead likeness of themselves to be placed somewhere in the office.

Then there were the more…intangible prizes. For instance, as Bronto grows, the line to grab food at the company lunch & learns also grows, so one Bronto will be able to jump the line three times in 2012. Assassin is a hot tradition at Bronto, and so there were two prizes to give the winners an advantage when the 2012 cycle of assassin rolls around–one, a silver bullet to kill their opponent with ease and the other, a crystal ball so that they know who will be pursuing them. There will also be a new Bronto holiday to honor one winner as well as a conference room dedication to another Bronto. For a month, another Bronto will receive a phone call everyday to remind her that she is awesome…and I think that is awesome.

From Bronto to you and yours, we hope you have a great holiday season and a Happy New Year!

Mike Mulligan
Software Engineer
Social Committee Member
Punniest Bronto

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In June of this year the 100th employee joined our team and since then we’ve added 20 more people.  New Brontos have been hired to nearly every team, including six Brontos to the sales team, six to our award winning client services team, three new marketers, and five engineers.

Because we’re constantly expanding the Bronto team, we needed additional space to accommodate everyone.  Over the last half of the year we’ve gotten used to the sounds of hammers as our home at the American Tobacco Campus grew to over 22,000 square feet.  Our new office space has come with fancy new desks, more conference rooms, a Bronto-sized gas pump gumball machine (with free watermelon or green apple gum), and a kegerator.  Yes, I said kegerator, and a double one at that.  Currently on tap we have Duck Rabbit Milk Stout and Big Boss Angry Angel.  Most Fridays and other random ‘special occasions’ we open the taps, put out some snacks, and have a Bronto Happy Hour.  It’s a great time for our employees to wind down from a busy week and get to know other Brontos better.

Some of these unique and fun aspects of Bronto are just a few of the many reasons that Bronto is an great place to work.  This year we were recognized by the Triangle Business Journal as a Best Place to Work for 2011.  This is our second year in a row being named to the list and we are proud to be included again.  Our culture of openness, hard work, and fun really do make Bronto a ‘Best Place’.

But as a prospective employee, client or just fan of Bronto, we realize that you’ll also want to hear from employees around the company, and why they think Bronto is a great place to work.  In the coming months, I’ll be contributing regularly to BrontoNation with an employee spotlight.  So, stay tuned to hear directly from Brontos on their lives in and out of the office and why they enjoy working here.

We are still looking for additional talent to add to the family, so check out our open positions!

Muffy Urquhart
HR Generalist
Social Committee Member
Gym Aficionado

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While Bronto provided the turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes…every Bronto was encouraged to bring their favorite Thanksgiving dish or dessert to compete in the annual Thanksgiving cook-off.  The spread of food alone was a sign of the recent growth at Bronto.

This year, two lucky Brontos would take home the ‘Golden Spatula for Best Dessert’ and ‘Golden Whisk for Best Side Dish’.  The Social Committee took on the extreme task of taste testing for the winner.  Pineapple Upside Down Cake, Pecan Pies, Puddings, Cookies, Bourbon Balls, Asian Cole Slaw Salad, Dill Potato Salad, Balsamic Reduction Cabbage, Jambalaya….you get the point, everything was so delicious but only two winners could be selected.

Congratulations to Jamie Tharp, Partner Manager, and Jim Davidson, Manager of Marketing Research, for taking home the golden kitchen utensils.  Jamie’s Fall Corn Pudding with White Cheddar and Thyme was out of this world and the Davidson family’s Bourbon Balls were just the right (alcoholic) touch to end a great Bronto Thanksgiving.  Below are the secret recipes for the two dishes!

• 3 cups (about 1 box) crushed vanilla wafers
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 2 tablespoons clear Karo syrup
• 8-10 tablespoons of bourbon

1. Finely crush the vanilla wafers
2. Mix all dry ingredients
3. Mix Karo syrup and bourbon
4. Combine dry and liquid ingredients
5. Form into a ball and roll in powdered sugar

Fall Corn Pudding with White Cheddar and Thyme

• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus more for greasing
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 teaspoons minced thyme
• 4 cups frozen corn kernels (about 20 ounces), thawed
• 1/2 cup stone-ground cornmeal
• Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
• 5 large eggs
• 3 cups half-and-half
• 1 cup shredded sharp white cheddar cheese

1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Butter a 9-by-13-inch shallow ceramic baking dish. In a large skillet, melt the butter. Add the onion and thyme and cook over moderate heat until the onion is softened, about 8 minutes. Remove from the heat. Add the corn and cornmeal and toss to combine. Season with salt and pepper and let cool.
2. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs with the half-and-half. In a blender or food processor, combine 1 cup of the custard with 1 cup of the corn mixture and puree until smooth. Whisk the puree into the custard. Then stir in the corn mixture, cheese, 2 teaspoons of salt and 1/2 teaspoon of pepper until well blended.
3. Spread the mixture in the prepared baking dish and bake for about 40 minutes, until the pudding is slightly puffed and just starting to brown. Let stand for 10 minutes before serving.
4. MAKE AHEAD The pudding can be prepared through Step 2 and refrigerated overnight. Bring to room temperature before proceeding.

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving from the Bronto family!

Mary Lucas
Account Development Representative
Social Committee Member
All Around Cool Chick

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During the week of Nov 7th – 11th, Bronto participated in the latest battles, life-sized Jenga! The regular version of this “stack ‘em high” game didn’t pose enough of a challenge to the Battles committee. Knowing that the premise of Jenga, using skill and technique to move stackable blocks, was fun enough on it’s own, using a much larger set would be a great way to play outside (in the courtyard of American Tobacco Campus). The set measured 3′6″ tall at the beginning of each game and quickly soared to nearly 5′. With fear that at any moment the tower could fall over, crushing them under a pile of blocks as well as the heavy weight of defeat, participants were constantly watching and hoping the tower would remain intact.

The Battles are great opportunities to meet others in downtown Durham, and also a great excuse to team up with colleagues and come up with a clever team name. Many team names can’t be repeated here, but some creative ones include:

• “You’ll Fall for Us”
• “We’re on Top”
• “Fully Stacked”
• “High Gravity”

Twenty-two teams from Bronto, CMG Partners, Square 1, Burt’s Bees, Argyle Social and Windsor Circle battled through a week of matches. Wind, sunlight and crowd noise were all factors in determining strategy and approach. In the end, a winner emerged – Fully Stacked, the team of Mary Lucas and Lindsey Traub, Account Development Representatives at Bronto, brought home the victory in the final match on Nov 11th.

Many thanks to the other participating companies and teams that helped make this round of Downtown Durham Battles a success, and thanks to Jameson Lopp for taking some great pictures of the matches.  Watch for the next round of the Battles by following the activity on the Downtown Durham Battles’ Facebook page.

Interested in working for a company that can take you to new heights? Bronto, one of the fastest growing companies in the Triangle, where you can play games during your lunch break, is hiring!

Caroline Smith Riddle
Community Marketing Manager at Bronto

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Bronto Runners Pre-Race

The mission of the Active Committee at Bronto is to promote health, fitness, and general wellness through group activities.  As we entered into November with shorter daylight hours and cooler weather, the days present themselves as great opportunities to get moving in the fresh autumn air.  So, the Active Committee decided that the Raleigh Fall Festival Race on November 13 was the perfect event to sponsor with the support of 100s of other runners and other Brontos.

Formerly known as the Old Reliable Run, Brontos have a history of participating in the race through the City of Oaks. This year, the Raleigh Fall Festival consisted of a 5k, a 10k, and a 100-yard dash for children. Nine (and a half) Brontos ran the 5k. (The “one and a half” is a pregnant Bronto running with a little one on board!), and we had some great results!

• Chaz Felix, COO of Bronto, finished 10th overall! With a finishing time of 20:25
• Mary Gelfand 26:33
• Jen Fentress 27:40

Post-Race Brontos

By sponsoring the race, we encourage Brontos to band together to help train for the race, and ultimately help them to participate by subsidizing their race fee. Normally, the race fees would be $25, but because of the Active sponsorship, Brontos are able to register with only $8. This is just one more way to make it easier to participate and stay active!

This race was just one of many examples of how Bronto has created a healthy environment. From healthy snacks (fruit, veggies) in the kitchen to a free YMCA membership for Brontos who visit the gym eight times a month, Bronto is a great place to work and play. Looking for a better work/active life balance? Take a look at the open career opportunities and hit the ground running.

Mary Gelfand
Account Executive at Bronto
Bronto Active Committee Member
Green Album Songstress

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