Saturday, December 1, 2007

Just saying thank you to all the communities

We've been working on many different projects besides Pioneer Linux at Technalign including Electricity for Cross-Platform independence and also VoIPTelCaster that allows companies to work with an enterprise grade IP Phone system at a very low cost. I've been doing this blog for a short time now and I like writing it as I hope you enjoy reading it. As we move into a new year and coming up on our 6th year in the industry, I wanted to discuss our community and how it's the same but different than most of the other Linux distributions such as MEPIS or PCLinuxOS and say thank you. We're actually starting to see the community outside of our business community/Partner Network becoming involved, and we're also seeing an increase of popularity of Pioneer in countries such as El Salvador, Finland, Italy, Germany, Pakistan and the list goes on. We're finding that communities are growing within Technalign itself as people learning C, C++, Python and others are starting to build projects for the community and not commercial applications for Pioneer. You're each welcomed to become involved in those projects also.

At Technalign we have sales, support, development and marketing departments to name a few just like most companies. We have extensions now of Technalign many of you may not be aware of including a growing partner network outside of Technalign, but part of our family none-the-less. We've found that our partners from regular partners, silver partners and solution providers are becoming critical to our success and providing valuable input. We even have some partners sending us old PIII and P4 systems and laptops so we can continue to test and support the older “stuff” out there. Some of these systems go to employees to test and learn on while others are simply for testing. We're considering setting up a distribution center for people with lower incomes located in the communities we reside in so they can use the equipment for learning Linux and expanding the skills they have today. Who knows, maybe someday even becoming a Technalign employee or getting a better position elsewhere.

The one thing that is most notable now is the involvement from members in the community that was not there previously including many people assisting in the testing and validation of our products. I have also tried to be heavily involved with he forums, and Steve Kaufman will be coming on soon to be a liaison between all communities and Technalign. This is where I'd like to give many many thanks to each and everyone of you providing assistance when you use and test new releases. I haven't felt this good about Technalign since we left New Jersey and moved into other directions such as Pioneer. One reason we moved from Explorer to Warrior for our short lifecycle product was many of you wanted more than of a lifecycle than 6 months to a year so Explorer now sports a 3-year lifecycle and has been replaced with Warrior as our initial test bed. Not everyone wanted support or a boxed product, so we've been learning as we go along. The biggest learning curve came with Explorer and what people expect from us in the communities.

I've opened up our Technalign Intranet site for each of you also, you can find this at http://intranet.technalign.net. This site provides information on Technalign, clubs, benefits and open positions. We'll be working with the Wyoming Workforce here and other groups, including the Laramie Economic Development group (LEDC) so everyone can find positions in Wyoming and it will be available to all of you considering a better lifestyle and career. Wyoming is a beautiful state, and each of you have the opportunity to move here and create a better life for you and your families. I'm loving every minute of coming into the office everyday now, and I'll admit it's nothing like what we experienced in Delta, Colorado with DADI on the Western Slope where people were downright hostile to us for being a Linux company and didn't understand what we did or do. Technalign is now in an area that allows us to start growing and providing even more back to the communities.

It's only a thank you to each of you in the communities I know and not much meat in the blog this time, but all I can say is thank you.