Sadly, I won’t be joining in the Synergy fun in Los Angeles. But I’m happy to offer a few tips for somewhat off-the-beaten-path things to do for the lucky Citrites who will be in Los Angeles next week for our big tech conference. I lived in and around Los Angeles for eight years before making the move to Raleigh, and while there are certainly things I don’t miss (traffic, smog, traffic), there are a lot of things I really miss. Here are five of them:

1. Cha Cha Chicken in Santa Monica. Caribbean food, very casual atmosphere, awesome plantains and beans. It’s not fancy. But it’s delicious. And you can stroll up the boardwalk after you stuff yourself full of L.A.’s yummiest Jamaican jerk chicken.

2. Contemporary art at Bergamot Station. After lunch at Cha Cha Chicken, head over to the city’s best collection of contemporary art galleries and see great art by emerging artists in L.A. and beyond. (If you like more a more traditional art scene, you can’t go wrong with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The J. Paul Getty or my personal favorite, the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena — a smaller collection, but nearly every piece is something you studied in Art History 101).

Social. Mobility. Context awareness. Nontraditional content. User experience. Consumerization. All of these were hot topics at the Gartner Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit in San Diego last week.

After scoring the highest rating given in Gartner’s MarketScope for Enterprise File Synchronization and Sharing*, it was fitting for Citrix ShareFile to exhibit its solution to business and IT leaders at the event.

In the MarketScope review, Citrix ShareFile’s strengths included integrations with Citrix Receiver, Citrix XenDesktop, Citrix XenMobile and Citrix Podio, as well as the multi-product aspect of our portfolio including sync tools, mobile apps and more. We saw the effect these integrations can have in action at the summit, as attendees at the event were especially interested in how the ShareFile product works within their current Citrix environment.

Citrix ShareFile is partnering with Build Your Firm to offer free education and CPE credits to ShareFile clients. Build Your Firm (BYF), a leading practice development firm for CPAs, specializes in helping accounting firms improve marketing, practice management and website effectiveness. BYF is owned and operated by CPAs, and the best practices they share helped build their own multi-million dollar practice.

ShareFile has been selected as the exclusive secure file-sharing partner of BYF. As part of the partnership, ShareFile customers will be eligible to participate in BYF educational webinars throughout 2013. These webinars will feature best practices for generating higher profit margins, improving office efficiency and maintaining a balanced lifestyle. As part of the arrangement, these webinars are not only completely free for ShareFile clients — they count towards CPE credits as well.

May is National Smile Month in the UK, National Moving Month and Drinking Water Month in the US, and also Health and Wellness month here at Citrix ShareFile! With all of our hiring, there seems to be no better time to tell you about all the things we’re doing to keep our employees healthy and active!

So what kinds of things do we offer?

Well for starters, we’ve got fresh, organic fruit in our kitchen and a selection of healthy snacks in our break rooms. We’ve got a gym in our building and we encourage employees to take advantage of it. In our suite, you’ll find that free weights, punching bags and exercise balls abound. Recently, some ambitious ShareFilers have organized a Run Club and a Cycling Club for colleagues to get out and enjoy the fresh air. Open to all fitness levels, these groups get together for various distances at a variety of times during the week.

Citrix ShareFile customers now have an easy way to tell their clients, friends and associates about ShareFile and earn rewards for it. Today marks the launch of Refer-a-Friend, a new way for ShareFile customers to receive thanks for spreading the word about ShareFile.

ShareFile strives to provide superior products and world-class customer service to our business clients. With Refer-a-Friend, happy ShareFile customers can confidently recommend ShareFile to anyone with just a few clicks and earn great rewards in the process.

Refer-a-Friend gives ShareFile customers the ability to create unique, traceable links that can be

Citrix ShareFile has been serving small and medium businesses for more than eight years, and now that we are in the Citrix family, we are seeing increased interest in how important ShareFile is to the enterprise sector. With a growing customer base and lots of questions coming in, we launched the ShareFile Master Class in October 2012. Designed to educate potential customers interested in solving their file sharing problems, the class is an open forum for anyone interested in learning more about ShareFile Enterprise.

Did you hear about our newest employee? She’s smart, she’s sweet, and she’s only in the second grade. Yesterday was Take Your Child to Work Day so our principal web analyst, Yannick Autphenne, brought in his adorable daughter Chloe. She got a chance to learn more about what her dad does every day and help out around the office. There was even a desk just for her, right next to her dad. Of course it’s never only work around here — she rode a scooter around the office and played some ping-pong, too. Chloe was nice enough to take time out of her busy day to sit down and let me interview her.

I recently sat down with Shannon Bass, operations coordinator at Citrix ShareFile. In recognition of Administrative Professionals’ Day, I interviewed Shannon to get a glimpse into her daily workflow.

Tell me a little bit more about your day-to-day activities as Citrix ShareFile’s main administrative professional.

Here at Citrix ShareFile, the daily duties of the facilities and operations team can be very unpredictable, yet exciting! As operations coordinator, I personally strive to make the best possible first impression on our guests, visitors, vendors and new employees. To do this, some of my tasks include getting visitors checked in, assisting new and existing employees with general office needs, conference room scheduling, calendar management, and maintaining daily office functions. I focus on treating every person that I come in contact with as an individual and doing whatever I can to make their day and experience here at Citrix ShareFile a pleasant one.