Contentions
Clearly, things have changed here at Percussion.com. That's right, the new site is LIVE! It was the product of a lot of great contributions from so many talented people here at Percussion and with our partners. In fact, I was so proud of this that I was going to do a full tour post, touting all the great things that are here. But then I thought, you don't need to read about us patting ourselves on the back. The point of Contentions is, after all, to uncover the difficult stuff, the dark underbelly of these projects that makes success on the Web so hard. And with all that great contribution, there was a flip side, something one of our top engineers said to me during the depths of this project a long time back:
"You know why a Web site is so hard to get done?" he said, late one night in exasperation. "Because everyone has their (expletive) hand in the pie! Everyone thinks they know how this site should work."
Everyone who's managed a Web launch knows each site is a Frankenstein's monster of creative, technical, and content contribution. As a project manager, you probably end up like this by the time you're ready to pull the switch:
But lots of projects are hard. Balancing scope vs. deadline is nothing new either. So why are Web projects so exasperating at times, so impossible to contain? The reason is the same reason that comment stuck with me. Unlike a software release, or even that home improvement project, your Web site really isn't your site. The Web is about communication between you and everyone else. Not only does everyone internally have their hand in your Web "pie" but everyone who visits the site does too! The thing to realize is, that's what makes the Web so compelling, and such an opportunity if embraced.
We all make the Web our OWN. At Percussion, our vision for Content Management is based on the reality that your Web presence goes beyond something you alone can control. It moves at "market speed" and is never "done." When successful, it really is a living thing that you give the spark of life to.
So with that in mind, Percussion.com isn't our new site, it's yours. It's here to allow you to participate with Percussion, to find out what we do and tell us what you think, where to add more information, and where to dial it back. Just about everywhere we could, we added the means for you to interact with us - to make this yours. And that's why the site is only just beginning today. So by all means, dig in. Explore. Tell us what you think, what we missed, what you like and what you don't.
I can't wait to see what you all come up with.
Earlier this year I was tasked to "overhaul the Web site." You might think, as the CTO for a leading CM vendor, I'd simply dig into our bag of tricks and out pops a new killer Web site. Well, I had the experience not to be THAT naive, but I have to admit I got a bit caught up in what we can do these days. It was exciting to think about using our new Solutions for Personalization, Community Marketing and Analytics. They deploy fast and can dramatically improve the interactivity and general appeal of a site. And you know what? Just two or three of us got together and actually built a prototype "Percussion.com 2.0" in a few weeks that had all those bells and whistles blazing away. To my technical eyes, all we needed to do was "add some better graphics" and we could be live by the end of Q2!
Well, when we presented it to the rest of management, I quickly realized I had forgotten one of the most important things about a corporate Web presence - that it is a reflection of the company's market focus, not just a bunch of cool features. My thought that we simply needed "some better graphics" to align with Percussion's new direction, quickly morphed into the realization that the site needed to represent the dramatic changes that Percussion itself was going through.
Percussion is now squarely targeting the line of business, enabling marketers to get measurable results through more meaningful interactivity with their customers, constituents, patrons, subscribers and other audiences. That change isn't simply a change in colors or site functions, but a change in the way Percussion itself does business.
As part of that change, Percussion has begun a far reaching initiative to interact more with our own customers, partners and the community as a whole. Any new Web site is only one "channel" for that interaction. In fact, you may recently have noticed some of those changes right here in our current Web site. You may have read the press releases on some of the management changes we have made or attended one of our new quarterly customer briefings, but the real transformation we have undergone will become a LOT more visible in the coming months.
So we never went live with that cool prototype we built last Spring. Instead, you will see a new Percussion.com that not only has a bunch of new features we could cram into it, but is a reflection of the new Percussion itself. Until we go live, some time early next year, I'll be posting about some of that process and the first hand lessons that even a CM vendor needs to re-learn from time to time - and some of those cool bells and whistles too!
