Author Archives: Katie Hurst

Pardon Our Dust

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Gangplank’s growth over the past year has created a fantastic network of talent, mentors and Gangplank culture, allowing Gangplank to continue to innovate.

With this growth, we’ve been making changes in order to better serve the local Gangplank communities, as well as give you the opportunity to learn about HQ’s larger vision.

As part of this mission, we have been separating Gangplank HQ updates and notifications from local Gangplank information. The latest improvement has been to our websites. Continue reading →

Gangplank Chandler Open Saturdays Starting April 7th

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We’ve noticed the past few months more demand for our space on the weekends. So beginning Saturday, April 7th, we’re doing an 8-week trial run of Saturday hours for those with different work schedules.

Drop ins will be welcome from 9:00am-6:00pm. We’ll throw on some music or a movie to keep things in the weekend spirit =)

Thank a Mentor

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Though many of our mentors make their living as professional consultants, they choose to donate their time to give back to the Gangplank community. Many startups and small companies can refer to the help of one of our fantastic mentors as a game changing moment in their business. We are incredibly grateful for their contribution and want to show them how much their donated time and services means to us.

If you’ve found the advice of our mentors useful in your business, please thank them by:

LinkedIn Recommendation
As we said, many of our mentors do this for a living. Give them a shout out they can add to their public LinkedIn profile. Click the links below for the respective mentor’s profile:

Ward Andrews
James Archer
Melissa Balkon
Mike Benner
Phillip Blackerby
Chris Conrey
David Cosand
Alan Dayley
Kevin Dixon
Michael Gillette
Jim Goulka
Ben Hall
Francine Hardaway
Mike Hawksworth
Michael Kasten
Justin Kroop
Amy Lamp
Brian LaPan
Bimal Merchant
Jeff Nielsen
Ed Nusbaum
Stuart Preston
Chuck Reynolds
Christie Simmons
Randy Spencer
Greg Taylor
Mark Wright

Tweet it to the World!
Use the #thankamentor or #whyGP hashtag when you send a 140 thank you note to the mentor of your choice. All the Twitter handles we could track down are below:

Ward Andrews
James Archer
Melissa Balkon
Mike Benner
Phillip Blackerby
Chris Conrey
David Cosand
Alan Dayley
Kevin Dixon
Ben Hall
Francine Hardaway
Justin Kroop
Amy Lamp
Brian LaPan
Ed Nusbaum
Stuart Preston
Chuck Reynolds
Christie Simmons
Randy Spencer
Greg Taylor

Write a Testimonial
Don’t have a LinkedIn profile? Email us a testimonial for your mentor to include on their website. We’ll make sure to pass it along.

Shaking Things Up

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At Gangplank, we believe in order to have true collaboration and innovation, there has to be a little bit of chaos.

Our drop-in area and hot desks area always a crazy scene. People from all sorts of backgrounds and fields, mixing and mingling all day long. In their case, chaos is not a problem.

The trick is how to mix up 12 Anchor companies with more than 40 regular employees, to add some chaos into their day-to-day operations.

Hence the quarterly desk change.

Every 3-4 months, we shake up the space by moving Anchors around and making new collaborations between companies possible.

This time around, we REALLY went crazy. We’ve mixed in hot desks within the Anchor space and added a little lounge area by our stage.

Come in and check out our revamped space. It’ll mess with your head.

photo by chris conrey

LEGO Madness Week

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On April 1st, the largest American flag made out of LEGO bricks will arrive at Gangplank where Building Bonanza will be reconstructing it.  In honor of this, Gangplank will be holding a variety of LEGO based activities to promote creativity.

Join us April 4th at 7pm for the first part of a two part adult stop motion class or express your creativity through free play with LEGOS for adults.  Saturday April 7th from 9am- noon we will have LEGO activities for ages 6+. This will include car racing, tower and bridge building.  April 11th at 7pm we will have the second part of our 2 part adult stop motion class as well as a LEGO building challenge for adults.

Our final event, April 14th from 9am- noon, will include LEGO activities for ages 9+.  Join us for a children’s stop motion class, scaling (building LEGO creations to scale), and a First LEGO League robot demonstration.

Podcasting Classes

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The Gangplank self-identified podcasting wench, Debbie Walker, will be taking on new students beginning on March 26th at 5:00pm.

This is a three-part class over six weeks. Classes are scheduled every two week on March 26th, April 9th and 23rd, at the Gangplank Chandler location (260 S Arizona Ave, 85225)

Students will:
– Be introduced to the recording equipment
– Record a short 3-5 minute discussion with the group
– Learn how to edit recording in Audacity
– Practice intros and outros

The class series has only six spots. Email spellwight[at]gmail.com to reserve your space.