Starting my New Job with Jive Software

Last week was my final run with Anvil Media -- I had a great time there. They have an amazing PPC/SEO/Web Analytics team, who I will miss tremendously (but luckily will be working with, and playing with, still).  Anvil has a track record to prove its success, with a client base that includes enterprise software companies, global technology publishers, universities, brand name e-commerce sites, financial services providers, travel & tourism sites, etc. Plus, this year we won a Marketing Award of Excellence (MAX) for Best Return on Investment (ROI) from the American Marketing Association (AMA) of Oregon (for our work with SmartWool's PPC campaigns.

While all this was very exciting, I've been feeling a little antsy recently, working for client service firms. A good chunck of my professional career has been spent in the worlds of management consulting and advertising agencies. More and more, I've been wanting to trade breadth for depth. Working in client services provides an amazing opportunity to experience a wide variety of businesses, challenges, and opportunities, as well as develop an arsenal of skill sets -- I used to call my days with Deloitte Consulting a "business boot camp for liberal arts students." These days though, I want to focus, go deeper, have more ownership in the process, and ultimately leave no stone unturned as can sometimes happen within the constraints of multiple clients, budgets, billable hours, and the intricacies of client-vendor relationships.

So, timing of the opportunities at Jive Software couldn't have been better. I'd already met the team through various events (Portland Web Innovators, BarCamp Portland, etc.), and had done a good amount of my client work in the enterprise software space (e.g. Deloitte, Attensa, ColumbiaSoft, and PolyServe). Plus, I am a rabid consumer of online collaboration tools, so its enterprise collaboration software called Clearspace was right down my alley. Jive also develops a real-time, business-class instant messaging server called Openfire,  and an online community portal called Clearspace X that brings all the bells and whistles of Clearspace to an externally-facing platform that offers customer support and user collaboration (the next generation of the wildly popular forum software). I'm coming on board as the Online Marketing Manager, to help coordinate Web efforts to market Jive's suite of products, as well as generally promote the benefits of collaboration software to bust information silos that have been built in a world of emails and redundant conversations. It's going to be lots of fun!