Michael Sippey Joins Six Apart

I'm happy to announce that Michael Sippey has joined Six Apart as VP, Product.

Now Michael Sippey has been publishing on the Web for a long time. And, as I write this post, I find it difficult to articulate why his decision to work at Six Apart is such a big deal for us. Sure, he's talented and focused and all. But it's something more. Sippey was writing The Obvious when Ben and I were starting to read the work of online personal publishers and seems to exist in a world where one could name everyone who had a "weblog," though it wasn't called that then. Sippey has been writing about web publishing, personal publishing, the industry, tech companies, good and bad products for almost ten years and his archives document the personal web.

I took the time to read some older entries last night and found this one from Dec 11, 1995 about web publishing and traffic to be particularly relevant to what we're doing:

But you know what? It really doesn't matter. Because hit counts are a head trip.

Sure, I love the fact that so many people read my page. What red-blooded web publisher wouldn't love 12,000 hits on their personal site? But you see, hit counts aren't what it's all about. It's about connecting.

I don't publish this thing to attract thousands of mindless surfers. I publish it out of some strange urge to let my friends (and anyone else who stumbles upon it) know what's on my mind when it comes to technology and the web. I keep doing it because occasionally a friend will send me some feedback, telling me I'm absolutely wrong (or absolutely right), and that I should get back to work (or quit my job and do this full time).

It took me much longer to realize this fact, but I never claimed that I was the first person to discover that personal publishing is about *personal* publishing.

Take some time and read The Obvious archive. Then, you can head over to his weblog.

Our products are incredibly important to us. And, we've learned that the more people involved in the process of product development, the better the results. The amount of ideas and features that we've envision for Movable Type and TypePad has so far outnumbered our abilities to pull them together into our product line. Sippey will bring the focus that will allow us to make our tools and services better.

We're incredibly excited about this addition and other additions to our team and are totally blown away about what Six Apart has become and has the potential to become.