FROM THE IGLOO

We’ve been toying with the idea of a blog/wiki/twitter feed/whatever for ages. My own intertia has been mostly responsible for the inaction so far. It just seemed complicated to set up something official. Ideas for postings were never the problem. It was more technical and also ordinary than that — how would we set up an official company or departmental blog that multiple people could post to? What would we call it? How would we link to it? Who would be allowed to post to it? Who would moderate it? I’d have to get my IT team (for setup, maintenance, backups, etc) and the Marketing group (for branding, consistent messaging, etc) involved… It seemed like a lot of work and though it would be worthwhile, there were always bigger priorities. And so we were stuck in that most useless place — The Waiting Place.

But then Tore did a site visit to one of our local Higher Ed customers. He came back from it and told us that the IT group over there wanted to know whether we had a communication method like this in place. They knew about our official Facebook page, Twitter feed, and quarterly newsletter, but felt they were too focused on marketing and didn’t contain the kind of information they were looking for about our products (in Tore’s words — technical issues, advice, and comments).

So, the whole thing got revived again and this time we got off our lazy butts and did something about it. We decided we’d start with an unofficial blog. No branding, no corporate language, no thinly veiled sales pitches; nothing but real observations and real postings around the topics of technical issues, advice, and comments. At least at the beginning, we are intentionally not mentioning our company name or product names other than by the three letter Product Code assigned to each one. If you use one of our products, you’ll know the Product Code or will be able to figure it out. If you don’t use one of our products, some of the postings here might be of interest but the product-specific ones probably won’t be of much use.

Rest assured that although this is all unofficial, it is real, honest, and unfiltered. You’ll be hearing from the people who make the decisions about what products we make, what features go into them, how they are supported, and who they are designed for. Tech Ops as a department is made up of Tech Support, Product Management (including Technical Publications), Professional Services, and IT. We hope you enjoy it and find this useful. Spread the word.

Oh yeah, comments are not only appreciated, but are expected. Please let us know what you want to hear more about. We all have very thick skin too, so if something is not working make sure you tell us. With committed, interested, interesting (and groovy) readers, I’m sure we’ll succeed. It’s 98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed now that Tore has allowed us to escape from The Waiting Place.