09.14.2007
Chris at Six Apart
It would be an understatement to say that it’s been a while since I’ve posted to Mena’s Corner. Personally, I’ve needed to take an extended break from corporate blogging and luckily this break was enabled by the great work our teams have done on the various product blogs.
However, it just wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t take the time to wake up the corner and personally write a post about some Six Apart related news that we’re announcing today. In brief, Chris Alden (who has served as EVP and GM of our professional division – basically, the Movable Type and TypePad businesses) is going to be the new Chairman and CEO of Six Apart, having been handed the reins by Barak Berkowitz.
When Barak officially joined Six Apart as our CEO in July of 2004 (he’d been acting CEO since January), I wrote in great length (my God, it’s five printed pages!) about the reasons we wanted him to be a part of the company and what it meant to Ben and I on professional and personal levels.
Naming Barak as CEO brought on a new phase for the company and for Ben and me personally. While it was a really tough decision for both of us when I handed over my CEO reins to Barak, we knew that it was a necessary step to take the company to the next level. Barak helped Ben and me to expand our own ambitions for the company and to really see how Six Apart could grow the blogging industry as a whole, and since he joined the company as CEO, that’s what he and Six Apart have continued to do. And for that, we’re incredibly appreciative.
In the post I wrote three years ago about Barak, one of the stories I told about him was when he did the wiring in our old San Mateo office:
At our office, we had phone cables running up and down walls and doorframes and across the floor. This mess was around for months until one day Barak came to work with a T-shirt, some tool-belt type thing and some device to do phone wiring. During the course of the afternoon, Barak installed our phone lines and cleaned up the office. … The fact that Barak will do this sort of grunt work is why he fits in at Six Apart.
What’s worth noting is that when I talk to people who have read my post, the above anecdote always sticks in their mind most clearly: that Barak is a guy who’s willing to be hands-on at any job at the company, and whatever he does, he’s going to dive in and do a good job at it. For people who know Barak, I think that’s something that really rings true about his character and personality, and it’s certainly one of the things we’ve appreciated most over the years.
And now, today.
We’re incredibly excited about what Chris will be bringing to his new role at Six Apart. As GM of our Professional Division, he’s led, inspired and motivated an amazing team that has injected a new passion and life into Movable Type 4.
While Chris will be the first to admit that reinvigorating and building Movable Type 4 was a group effort that involved his entire team at Six Apart as well as the outside community, I couldn’t help but be blown away by how Chris made us all feel the energy around the product.
While Ben and I were lucky to be able to contribute in small ways to the development of Movable Type 4, it wasn’t until we saw Chris present a preview of the product at our internal weekly company meeting that we understood just how exciting the launch was going to be (and frankly how much the product had grown). Over the past couple of years, it’s no secret that Movable Type hasn’t had the attention it deserves; that was just the reality of having such ambitious (and good) goals and a relatively small team to accomplish them.
To see the glow of Movable Type come back not just as a glimmer, but as a full-on spotlight, literally gave me goose-bumps, and the result—Movable Type 4—is the best version of Movable Type we’ve ever created at Six Apart.
It’s a really exciting time for Six Apart and I continue to have great faith in what we’re accomplishing. As I realized myself, being a CEO is a big job, and Barak has filled it for four years of hard work as we all built this amazing company. He moves on, but will continue to be a valuable advisor to us all. The Six Apart that’s empowering millions of people to express themselves wouldn’t be what it is without Barak, and for that I’m incredibly grateful.
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Here is Chris's post on the transition.
Posted by Mena at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Trackback (0)
08.29.2006
Talking At Ted
It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted on Mena’s Corner. Funnily enough, it’s not that I haven’t had time to blog, it’s because I’ve been doing a whole lot of personal blogging over on Vox, some product blogging over at Team Vox and been totally heads-down in product development. Even with the Mena’s Corner absence, Six Apart is still well-represented with blogging, between Pronet Weblog, Everything TypePad and another blog you may have never seen before: TypePad Feature Weblogs (these are but a few). There are so many amazing blogs being featured each and every day — it’s quite remarkable to see the talent we have on the service.
I did want to write and check in and say that more of my blogging can be found at Team Vox and blogging almost daily (mostly privately) at mena.vox.com. If you’re unfamiliar with Vox, I wrote a post about it in early June. If you’d like an invite, simply request one.
A lot of what I wrote about in that introductory post about Vox, I also shared in my Ted talk in February. This summer, and for the first time, the Ted Blog has been putting up past talks online as a way to share the event with those who can’t attend. (See all the TedTalks online)
Yesterday my talk was added — and If you can bear to watch 18 minutes of me, I think it’s a good way to get an idea of the motivations behind Vox. I don’t talk about the product at all. Instead, it’s about how powerful personal blogging can be, as a way to stay connected and, fundamentally, record one’s life.
Posted by Mena at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Trackback (0)
03.29.2006
Bling for Your Blog
Tonight we launched TypePad Widgets, or as they are known on the street, TypePad Bling. From the very early days of TypePad, we imagined this sort of widget functionality -- the roots are evident in the way modules are handled in TypePad's design managment -- built into the service. It's exciting to see that the integration is finally here and that we've already got over thirty partners providing and enabling their unique services to our users. There's a lot more to come and we want to hear from others with widgets to integrate. (See the FAQ if you're interested in creating a TypePad Widget.)
As much as the term Web 2.0 is loosely thrown around, I believe strongly that the most significant characteristic of this era of development is the openess that is enabled by APIs. It's about sharing information and data and having services work well together.
Thanks go out to the TypePad team for making this happen as well as all our partners who made their widgets available for release. Our thanks, as always, to our customers for their continued suggestions and inspiration.
Posted by Mena at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Trackback (0) | Comments (3)
