There's a commercial on the air these days where some harried manager approaches a colleague with a concerned look and says something to the effect that their company's sales have recently doubled. He then complains that they'll have to expand into a new building, get new equipment and raw materials, and get some of those "card-swipe thingies."
"What if this continues?" he asks in a hushed and worried tone.
His colleague, obviously bewildered, looks at him and says, "Isn't that the point?"
This is one of those commercials which is so memorable you forget the product being advertised. I suppose it's some IBM business server set-up or similar service. But whatever the advertised product, the commercial strikes pretty close to home these days.
You see, OakTree Software is growing, and I for one am finding it hard to keep up. No, we haven't gotten any of those "card-swipe thingies," but we have been hiring new sales staff, another programmer, additional module developers, and a marketing assistant. We're very excited about these newest members of the OakTree family. They're all extremely enthusiastic, competent, and quick to learn.
Our newest programmer is helping with our efforts to develop an Intel-native version of Accordance, freeing our main programmer to focus on some really cool features for the next major Accordance upgrade. (Don't bother to ask, I can't tell you what those are yet!)
Some of you may already have dealt with Angela, our newest member of the sales staff. She has very quickly become a valuable member of the team.
Lesley, our marketing assistant, has been revamping our e-mail newsletter with helpful features and a cool new look (thanks are also due the designers at Crate Media). If you're not signed up to receive the newsletter, be sure to subscribe here. Lesley has also been helping coordinate a slew of free training seminars coming this Fall.
Our newest module developers, Jeremy and Rick, are already making significant contributions, including the recently released Gathered Gold module, a soon-to-be released study Bible, and some classic works which will be added to the next iteration of the Accordance Library. They're picking things up quickly, which is both encouraging and challenging. You see, as the one primarily responsible for training them, I find that they're not giving me time to get my own projects done before they're ready for something else!
It's there that I can sympathize with that harried manager in the commercial. In the short term, all this growth requires time and energy which I normally devote to blogging and to developing new modules myself. But in the long term, I know that investing in these new staff members will pay huge dividends toward expanding Accordance's offerings and better meeting the needs of you, our users.
So please forgive my recent lack of blogging, and regard it as a sign that there are lots of good things coming soon. We don't invest in "card-swipe thingies" around here; just new modules and new program features. And since these new staff members have been so quick to help contribute, there will soon be lots of new stuff for me to blog about. :-)
# posted by David Lang @ 7:40 AM
