2 sketches of sound at Newfangled Carrboro

Our North Carolina office is in a cool old building, with old hardwood floors and almost everybody in one open room and another business upstairs. As with any older building, it has its own set of sounds that fill out its character. Here are two ways that sound travels around 103 Lloyd Street:

1. One manifestation of our strong company culture is that we (happily, voluntarily) eat lunch as a group most days. During a recent after-work gathering of internet types in the Carrboro/Chapel Hill area, one of our upstairs neighbors asked Mark, "What on earth do you guys *do* in that corner of the building?" Upon questioning, it turned out that "that corner" was the room where we have lunch, and "what we do" is laugh, a lot, such that the people upstairs can hear it.

2. Our building was originally the town's freight depot. (The passenger depot, a few feet across the tracks, is now a restaurant called Southern Rail.) Carrboro started as a railroad stop for University of North Carolina students, then turned into a mill town due to its railroad-convenient location, so being in one of the original train depots gives us a pretty cool connection to the town's history. But sometimes--as many of our clients can tell you--we have to pause a conversation so the train can go by. Here's why:

The railing on the right is a back entrance to the office; the brick wall is the exterior of our conference room. On the left--that's a train. The embedded audio clip was recorded from my desk as another train passes. It doesn't capture the extent to which that sound can fill the room, but it does go to show that this is a common event for us; the typing continues apace.