Blog Posts From Jive Talks Tagged With jive_software

JiveWorld09 - SOLD OUT!

communities@jivesoftware.com — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:19:07 GMT

If you've ever been involved in planning or producing a major public event, you can probably relate to the “all hands on deck” call that goes out in the 30 days prior to the event. There are often hundreds of "to do's" as the clock clicks down to showtime.

Fortunately, we crossed off one of the big "to do's" over the weekend when we tallied up the registrations for JiveWorld09 and realized the conference is sold out! We announced this in a press release today, and I wanted to share some additional comments today in JiveTalks.

Before I continue, a huge THANK YOU to Jive customers, prospective customers and partners from all of us at Jive! In the year of the "non-conference" - and in an environment where every travel dollar is scrutinized - we appreciate this incredible vote of confidence. We’ve had customers tell us their budgets restricted them to only one event this year – and they chose ours. That has everyone on Team Jive even more motivated to deliver a high-impact program that arms conference participants with the information they need to move even more aggressively with their Social Business Software agenda.

We’ve started a waiting list because there’s always the possibility that someone who previously registered won’t be able to join us. If you’re interested in attending JiveWorld09 and didn’t register, I encourage you to add your name to this list as soon as possible. We’ll start at the top and work our way down when we have an open slot. We’ll also be providing select conference materials through the JiveWorld09 community site.

And if you can’t join us in person this year, you can still participate in video form. Check out the contest we’re holding and share what it means personally to you and your organization to “Jive Together.” Entries will be shown during the conference as a video mashup.

We’re in the midst of announcing some of the most significant innovation to ever come out of Jive, and we’re just beginning. We’ll have much more to share at JiveWorld09, and I predict it will provide even more inspiration to lead a Social Business Software revolution in your organization.

Changes at Jive

communities@jivesoftware.com — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:03:32 GMT

So far, 2009 has been the best year for Jive that I can remember. Our launch of Jive SBS 3.0 was hugely successful, the product has a huge and compelling set of features, and SBS as a category (http://www.jivesoftware.com/jivespace/blogs/jivetalks/2009/03/10/welcome-to-the-social-business-revolution--introducing-jive-sbs-30) is expanding faster than we imagined. Every member of the Jive team has pulled more than their weight the past few months and it's been a joy to work with such a solid team. It's also clear that we're on the other side of a big company transition -- what I like to think of as going from a ‘big small company’ to a ‘small big company’. It's exactly what we needed to go through as an organization, but with this transition comes change. And one of the tougher transitions for me will be saying goodbye to our Chief Marketing Officer, Sam Lawrence, who is leaving Jive at the end of this month.

Sam is a great friend and a great marketer. He was an instrumental part of moving this company from a small technology vendor to the category leader - from the initial Clearspace direction to developing creative ways to evangelize this new space.

I am going to miss Sam - not just what he's done for Jive, but who he is. His sense of humor and loyalty are unmatched. He has helped in making Jive's first chapter memorable and enjoyable. I'll let Sam talk about what's next for him on his blog, but he'll rock it for sure.

In the meantime, Jive is actively refilling the CMO position and will make an announcement once it is filled.

Top 5 stupid things I did in 2007

communities@jivesoftware.com — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 08:22:01 GMT

Created Clearspace-branded condoms

True. Amid a lot of controversy at Jive, I created thousands of Clearspace-branded condoms to distribute at San Francisco's Love Parade. In fact, we still have a box of them. I thought it would be a good way to promote a good cause and reach a very techy crowd when they didn't expect it. Although it did get the positive attention of a few customers and some Flickr love, in retrospect, I should have chosen a risk that could have paid off more directly. That said, it's been the joke that keeps on giving. Want one? Ping me: sam@jivesoftware.com.

Fought for a Frankensuite

I argued with Matt and Bill about building Clearspace from the ground up. I wanted to sew together best-of-breed products. They kept telling me that while if we cobbled something together we'd get to market faster, that we'd just end up with a bad product and more work long term. I thought no one would know the difference. Now I make fun of other Frankensuites.

Thought no one would use the blogs in Clearspace

I argued with Aaron Johnson, the killer engineer behind the blogging part of Clearspace (among other things) that no one would blog inside a company. I even made fun of his " meaningful URLs". As you can see from this screenshot from Jive's internal deployment of Clearspace, I sorta ate my words. Turns out 35% of our company blogs and there's an average of 4 comments per blog. I imagine it could be even higher once all our new hires settle in.

Decided to relaunch an entire website in 2 weeks

That's right. A couple of weeks before we launched Clearspace, my small "mini-wesbite" project ended up taking over the entire website. Ten of us worked around the clock for 2 weeks straight and overhauled absolutely everything. It was burnout central. Ironically, we're in-process of overhauling everything again right now but this time we've taken 4 months to do it right.

Didn't hire fast enough

Once we released Clearspace and we were (surprisingly) flooded with interest, I couldn't seem to let go of all the work that needed to be done long enough to focus on hiring. Of course, it could have also been my post about the sort of Marketing people I would never hire.

Jive Dog and Pony

communities@jivesoftware.com — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 15:26:42 GMT

In case you haven't checked out BNET~~a business-centric CNET brand focused on helping managers succeed~~it's worth taking a look. One of their video programs is called " Dog and Pony," which is a daily interview with folks who share compelling ideas.

They invited Jive to participate a few months ago and have just published the interview. They don't provide embed code so you'll have to go directly to the video if you want to watch it.

Community Involvement: Jive Software and Portland Impact

megan@jivesoftware.com — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 19:33:46 GMT

Jive's Community Involvement group used our very own internal instance of Clearspace to poll (pictured at right) all Jivers on which community activity there were interested in sponsoring for Q4. The winner was Portland Impact's Adopt a Virtual Family program. We received a family profile and shopped for them. Then, rather than giving these items directly to a family, items are brought to a holiday store where low income families can do free holiday shopping. Thanks to all the Jive employees for their generosity and thanks to Jive for helping with the larger gift items! Check out our stack of gifts below:

Work Hard, Play Hard: Jive's Call of Duty 4 Tournament

megan@jivesoftware.com — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 21:16:48 GMT

Last night we hosted our first Call of Duty 4 Tournament here at Jive headquarters. Turn out was great and the Jivers really showed their gaming expertise.

We started with nine Jive teams at 6:00 PM and by 7:30 PM we were down to our winners: Chase Caster, Software Support Engineer and David Smith, RTC Engineer. Congratulations to you both. You are truly scholars and frag masters.

Then, professional gamers, Kristin Reilly and Oscar "Technoboy" Rivera, stepped up to play our Jive champions. To our own surprise, Chase and David showed us what they were made of and beat the professionals 2-1 in a best of three!

If you'd like to see the photos, check them out on Flickr.

Free office!

communities@jivesoftware.com — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 17:35:56 GMT

Office software hasn't changed in over 20 years

What was your office like 20 years ago? You were probably sitting at your desk jamming to Madonna's "Into the Groove," wearing stone-washed denim and working away on your IBM PS/2 486 MHz computer. Since then, office software has rested atop its "good enough" mountain with no real challengers. Somehow good enough is good enough as long as the checks keep rolling in. Meanwhile, two generations of us have used the same personal inbox, calendar, word processor and spreadsheet to do our work. This has gone on for so long, many of us can't even imagine our workplace framed a different way.

Office software will be free, then included in the OS

Suddenly, companies have a gaggle of "Office" options from folks like Google, Zoho, Thinkfree, Zimbra/Yahoo, Adobe, OpenOffice and a slew of others. But these Microsoft competitors are merely duplicating the Office suite--Google and OpenOffice even give theirs away. The resulting navel-contemplation in the industry often focuses on whether office software's future is based on the web or on the premises, but that focus is misplaced and misses the bigger picture. The spate of knock-offs will devalue this old set of features. Soon, paying for "Office" software will seem as ridiculous as paying for a web browser. Microsoft is painfully aware of this. Rumor has it they are readying the release of a free, limited and ad-supported version of their Office suite.

The current revolution of office software is not a revision of the old one

The picture has quickly expanded past file creation and email sorting. Traditional office software features are being absorbed into browsers and OSes. The next level of digital office work is shifting from a disjointed file exchange work model to one that's much more connected, contextual and collaborative. In the old model, users create documents in isolation and exchange them with other isolated users--all insulated from and out of sync with the bigger picture of relevant interpersonal activity. In the new collaboration model, connected people understand when, what and why to engage and they do it in a unified environment. They use file-sharing only as a supplement, when and if it's necessary. We refer to this collaboration model as Social Productivity, which frames our daily work activity in the "we" vs. "me" context and then delivers new functionality to help with these connections. This more accurately mimics our work-with-others activity vs. the produce-alone-and-distribute part of our daily equation. Now we can get context at a glance, work doesn't disappear once we hit "send," and we stay connected to the efforts most important to us.

The irony of the "Office wars"

There's a lot of speculation about how things will change but the good news is that there will be change. Some of it reminds me of what happened to Netscape. When they broke onto the scene in 1994 with their Navigator web browser, they charged for it and people gladly paid because it was the best (and arguably the only) solution available. Then in the late nineties, Microsoft introduced Internet Explorer--for free. After a very short "browser war," Microsoft integrated their browser into their OS. Netscape lost, but users didn't care. They happily looked past the browser features because the real value wasn't the browser; it was the content within it. Ironically, it is now Microsoft that is set up to stumble on its own shrewd business practices, which could cost them almost 30% of their $40 billion revenue engine. There's always Outlook.

Our office future finally changes

A whole new industry focused on Social Productivity has emerged. The door is open for new market leaders to lead this next wave of innovation. Demand is through the roof for this bigger picture approacha more visible and productive enterprise. All of this is good news for employees and companies. Social Productivity is already producing better results and more quickly than we ever did wearing the blinders of individual contributors. A whole new marketplace is changing the game. Our kids will smile with nostalgia when they think of a digital “document” saved somewhere on a hard driveliterally modeled after a piece of paper--that only one person at a time could access or give to someone else to look over. It already sounds quaint and archaic.

Introducing Marty Kagan, new VP Engineering and LinkedIn Giant

communities@jivesoftware.com — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 17:25:34 GMT

About three months ago, John Miner (fellow Portlander; used to run Intel Capital) introduced me to Marty Kagan. We had been on the hunt for a good VP of Engineering for a long time, but given how naturally picky we are, and how important this role is to such an engineering-focused company, we weren't able to find anyone who fit the bill. Portland has a lot of great companies, but not many that are similar to Jive, so we were about to jump into the executive recrtuiting/relocation game. And then along came Marty.

Marty just got it. He understood what we're doing, where we're going and all of the pain points we're feeling.

Having had a very successful career at Cisco, Marty has spent the last eight years at Akamai, where he grew a large organization as the VP of Engineering. He also understood the sales perspective, having been the top SE for EMEA -- a ridiculously cool trait for any Engineering VP. And, thankfully, his family picked Portland as the next place for them to live. So he literally fell in our lap at the right time.

All of Marty's references were glowing, but the best part of the process was to read his LinkedIn profile. It's possibly the most effusive collection of references I've ever seen. Thankfully, not the standard BS references a lot people dutifully throw up to satisfy a partner, but thoughtful, genuine insights into how he works with people and what he's achieved.

So please welcome Marty to the team. We're thrilled to have him. (I expect I'll have to say that on LinkedIn as well.)

Working at Jive Software

communities@jivesoftware.com — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 15:27:33 GMT

Maybe I'm a little biased, but I think that Jive Software is a great place to work. We're a culture of good natured ass-kickers who love our work. A friend of mine jokingly refers to it as the "Cult of Jive" because people start talking about how cool their job is upon starting a new job at Jive! We work hard -- it's a bit of Silicon Valley competitiveness mixed with a Portland ethos. But we make it fun, too. We make sure there is time left over for the important stuff: family, friends, hanging out. We get together every three weeks to celebrate the end of each release cycle with a Friday happy hour event in addition to BBQs, movie outings, and other fun activities. Even more importantly, we get to work on great products with other really smart people, and this makes all the difference for me.

Using my own work at Jive as an example, we were able to take the idea of a developer community through to the complete implementation of the Jivespace Developer Community within 2.5 months of my start at Jive Software. This was a team effort with probably 20 people at Jive contributing to this launch in some way. What made this possible in such a short time was a great product (Clearspace) and a great team of smart people to make it happen!

Want to know what it's like to work at Jive Software? Watch this video to get a sense for who we are and what we do. Make sure you stick around for the outtakes at the end of the video.

We're always looking for good people! Join us at www.jivesoftware.com/jobs