It’s time for a change

I wrote this post in 2009, more than 15 years ago. It may be very out of date, partially or totally incorrect. I may even no longer agree with this, or might approach things differently if I wrote this post today. I rarely edit posts after writing them, but if I have there'll be a note at the bottom about what I changed and why. If something in this post is actively harmful or dangerous please get in touch and I'll fix it.

It’s the era of change, I suppose…

Starting today I’m joining Frank Wiles – a good friend and fellow Lawrencian – at his consulting firm, Revolution Systems, LLC. I’m really excited to be working with Frank: he’s a great guy, and a crazy-smart developer and sysadmin.

Together, we’re going to be offering professional Django support to companies who need a Django expert on staff, but can’t afford someone full-time.

The Django community is terrific; those who are comfortable with the IRC/mailing list support venue can get great assistance that way. That said, volunteers aren’t always available in an emergency, and for large sites short downtimes can translate into huge losses. Indeed, some companies are a lot more comfortable with open source when it comes with professional support. And sometimes you just need an expert.

I can’t thank my friends and co-workers at Whiskey Media enough for the good times over the last year. Their commitment to helping Django thrive is nothing short of inspiring, and continues through this change: I’m happy that Whiskey Media will be our first client.

I’m hoping that the kind of support we’re offering will be a good complement to the free support already offered by the community. In my dream world, having professional support like ours available will help larger companies feel comfortable adopting Django. Django gets more popular, and we do good business.

However this all works out, it’ll be an interesting next six months!