Wow… what a year! With all the tough economic news flooding our consciousness, it’s probably more important than ever to reflect on what you are grateful for.
First, I wanted to say how grateful we are to our clients. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Your overwhelming support in 2008 (our biggest year ever) allowed us to pull the trigger and focus on Wiredrive full time. It took us nearly the full year to finish off our roster of website design projects, but starting in 2009 we have our entire team engaged on making Wiredrive better, faster and more powerful. We’ve also collected over 400 feature suggestions from you and have prioritized them based on the frequency of request. We are incredibly excited about what’s to come in 2009, as we’ve been cooking up a bunch of new features that are going to start rolling out quickly. It’s both an honor and a privilege to create a toolset that so many people rely on to run their business.
Second, I wanted to thank our Wiredrive team. This group is the best I’ve ever worked with – smart, team players, motivated and really hardworking. I love coming into the office every day and have the team to thank for that. Considering we spend more time at the office than at home, having a great environment and people to hang out with directly equates to a better life.
2008 represented our biggest year of change. We mourned the loss of Stephanie Ogaz on May 6th, who we miss very much. Stephanie, we will continue to do our best to honor you and keep your presence alive.
In March we decided to end our IOWA Interactive design service, which was growing quite rapidly and had a very strong reputation. The challenge was that our Wiredrive business was growing much faster and our core team was not growing in size to keep up with the demand. We realized that Wiredrive represented a better and more sustainable business model, so we made the choice.
Once we had the whole team working together, we were able to change to a methodology called Scrum, which has fit our team culture perfectly. What does this process mean for our clients? Faster feature releases that are completely focused around client needs.
Needless to say, 2009 is going to be an explosive year. We wish each and everyone much success as we head into the Year of the Ox.
Regards,
Bill
