Last night I experienced my first ever art auction, which was even more exciting because it was the first time I ever got to see real users using the auction kiosk app I’ve been working on for the past few months. It’s a very magical experience to see someone browsing artworks, see one they like, place a bid, and swipe their credit card all with software that I worked on. Very cool.

Orta, dB, and I got a chance to talk shop about Artsy – the company’s goals and strategies for achieving them. Being a remote worker, I miss out on a lot of hallway conversations. I even got to talk to Orta a bit about the art world, something I’m reading more about, and how my directive to do good in the world fits in with helping people buy art. It’s something that I’m still reading up on, thinking about, and discussing with my colleagues – I hope to have some coherent thoughts to put in a blog post soon.

It was also great to work with some of my colleagues on the auctions team who I normally don’t get an opportunity to interact with. Everything went well and the auction kiosks’ software worked flawlessly.

That is not to say that the evening was completely without incident. We had had a problem at the last auction which re-presented itself last night that me managed to fix. It was an exhilarating experience.