You Who?

New web site coming soon... this time for sure

As previously mentioned, one nice thing about the acquisition of my company: During the "due diligence" phase when scores of strangers with titles were mulling about and interviewing us, every single one told me how they hated their web site and loved ours. This was gratifying but sort of felt odd since it really was work I had done about 3 years ago and had been hardly changed since. I hadn't really been able to do much web work since the big layoff in 2001 when I became the IT guy. I guess it was nice to know it had stood the test of time.

When the acquisition went through, those of us that "made the cut" (about 20 out of 50) were formally offered new jobs. I was offered a job in Marketing (*sigh*) by the VP, reporting to another guy down the chain of command, and told they wanted me to entirely redo their web site. Even better, they really just wanted me to take our web site, re-brand it as theirs and host it on their servers. Cool! (It sounds pretty easy, but if you know anything about this stuff, we're talking about moving from Linux+Apache1.3+mod_perl to Solaris+iPlanet and ultimately went to Solaris+Apache2+mod_perl). Oh and they want it within 60 days. Not cool. The transition period to absorb the rest of the company was 90 days, and that transition would ostensibly require a lot of my time for IT stuff. I mentioned that 60 days seemed aggressive. Work it out with my new boss, I was told.

The new boss wanted to stick with 60 days, but he was going to handle most of the content (since I am still pretty ignorant on the new company's products) so I could work with IT (real IT) on the technical issues. Sixty days came and went. There were a few weather- and power-related events that greatly affected progress. As 90 days approached, a new launch date was set. My boss and I put in a couple weeks of very long hours... late late nights. A few days before that release, there was a little layoff and my boss was suddenly no longer with the company. There went not only my boss, but also the guy who knew the products and was doing the content.

A senior level management shuffle followed, resulting in a new VP to whom I now report. The release was postponed (wasn't really ready anyway). Another new boss, with new ideas -- many of them very different -- meant several more iterations on the new design. Thankfully the new VP also brought in some new talent to help finish the content. Finally, at long last, the site is slated for release within a few days. If you want the "before and after" affect, you better check out the web site now before it changes. (No, I'm not posting the new company URL, if you don't know it, email me.)