The New Stack Times: Looking Back and Moving Ahead
The new year — it’s so close. Thanksgiving is behind us. It will be 2018 in less than 35 days. So it seems right to take a few hours after the holiday to pause and reflect. What is the mission, goals and values we uphold? Who is part of our team? Who has helped us this year in getting to where we now stand as the rains batter us here in Portland and festive times fast approach?
First off, a bit about our mission, which we have really not shared publicly before. The New Stack provides explanation and analysis of at-scale application development, deployment and management. We provide clarity about new stack ecosystems for software engineers, developers and IT managers.
Our long-term goals:
- Provide the highest quality work for our community.
- Build a long-term sustainable business.
- Be a critical, trusted resource for people making complex technical decisions.
Our values:
- Equality, Diversity
- Everyone is an equal participant in the success of the organization.
- We recognize the strength in diversity of experiences and points of view.
- Thoroughness, Clarity
- We thoroughly explain and analyze complex, technical subject matter.
- We help software engineers, developers and IT managers clearly understand technologies that are being used for application development and management at scale across multiple ecosystems.
- Trustworthy, Inclusive
- Individually, we strive for transparency and accountability. Collectively, we make The New Stack a trusted source.
- We aim for an open, inclusive environment for all.
We conclude 2017 on a high note. We hired Libby Clark as our new editorial director. Libby is a top-notch editor with 15 years experience who has already shown her leadership in the first few weeks she has been at The New Stack. Libby comes from The Linux Foundation where she led content strategy. She is managing our entire editorial operation, overseeing the news organization and our sponsored editorial services. Libby will play a visible and public role for The New Stack. She will have her own podcast, taking the helm of The New Stack Context, a show that we first launched last year with Scott Fulton as host. Libby will host and moderate the show which we will recast as a roundtable of editors and writers from The New Stack and elsewhere to give context and perspective about the narratives that marked the week past. We’ll livestream it and podcast it, too. Look for it soon. We’ll be touting it.
Joab Jackson continues to manage our news department. Kiran Oliver is The New Stack’s podcast producer, taking over from Scott Fulton, who has moved on to write about scale and data center technology for ZDNet. Ben Ball now manages marketing activities after a run as our ebook editor. Michelle Maher makes sure our newsletter gets out every week. She takes care of all the writer contracts and keeps an eye on the site to make sure quality is in check. Aaron Ban and Vinay Shastry manage our site out of Toronto and Bangalore, respectively. A big hats off to Lawrence Hecht, who has managed our research for ebooks and always has an insight with his look at the numbers. Krishnan Subramanian has served as our technical editor for the state of the Kubernetes ecosystem ebook. We wish him well in the development of Rishidot Research, the analyst and advisory group he started and leads.
We are a family run company. Judy Williams is the smarter and better other half of the business. She is co-owner of The New Stack, managing our operations. Alexander H. Williams is a name I share with my father, who has been so incredibly helpful in working through the changes and challenges that come every day with running a small, growing business. He is my most important mentor, a trusted advisor and a major influence on our company.
A few more people to write about before I stop my yammering. Gabriel Dinh came recommended to us in early 2014 by my friend Chris Dawson when we were first developing the concept for The New Stack. I had no idea how to make The New Stack something real. Gabriel took me through a process that gave roots to The New Stack and its position and contribution to the community. Gabriel introduced us to Joseph Do earlier this year when we were going through a lot of introspection about the business and its direction. Joseph’s title is project manager but he has proven to be so much more. He continues to help us focus and find clarity for the business in a manner that embodies our mission, goals and values.
The New Stack puts its greatest value on trust and responsibility. Our goal is simply to be a world-class organization that shows its leadership through the work it does, the makeup of the people who are a part of it and the examples we show our community.
So in all, a big thanks to everyone. Here’s to a great end of year and a new one ahead.
