Launch!
Shuttle Launch
The day is finally here! Midpoint Access is ready to be in the hands of our publishers and improve the way we all do business!
Well, actually, I write this when Midpoint and RustyBrick (our awesome web developers) are currently working hard to make sure the right pieces are in place for a safe and productive launch. Of course, the site will never truly be finished. The focus at the outset of this project has been continuous improvement. That lofty goal can make life difficult (if you never stop fixing things, how do you know when something is "ready?") but it is also extremely rewarding because I never have to be satisfied.
Though it has been stimulating to always think about the next step and improving every aspect of the business through this new tool, it has also been difficult to launch. This is my first experience with launching something so significant and managing a process which largely involves tasks which I don't have the expertise to do myself. To be sure, I know enough to get myself into trouble poking around, but I can't even pretend to have the talent to program a piece of software ilke the new Midpoint Access. The biggest lesson I have learned, then, is the value of collaboration.
"Access" began as a team of Midpointers sitting around discussing what we needed to do to improve our website. Quickly, it became obvious that even just that team was not expansive enough. Every team member had great ideas and fueled some very positive movement, but we all spoke of our own experience and what we needed. If this site was going to be groundbreaking it couldn't just be for the 5 team members, it had to improve the business for everyone at Midpoint, employees and publishers.
We began collaborating with the entirety of Midpoint, "interviewing" every employee. We then began discussing the site with publishers - we needed to find out what our core constituency would find beneficial. Eventually, we ended up with a comprehesive plan to create a new publisher portal and public face for the company from the ground up. That plan was handed over to RustyBrick so our vision could become a reality
The collobaration didn't stop there, however. The two companies have worked together for almost a year and not a day has passed without something improving. Our team talked to all the publishing "insiders" but it is astounding what people with an unbiased perspective can add to the discussion. Whether it was our designer streamlining our ideas from a design point of view or the programmers building something we didn't think was possible, Access is the culmination of dozens of individual efforts all adding up to something much greater than the sum of its parts.
Colloboration led to Access, a product I believe you will find as amazing as I do. Team thinking is in every one and zero on this site and so, too, are our publishers. We built this site with publishers in mind, we built it with their help, and we built it to better colloborate with them. We will continue to improve on what we've built together, but that isn't just Access. Midpoint and our publishers work together to create something that neither of us are capable of doing alone and comes together to be something great. We accomplish that every day with our publishers and always strive to be a little better than the day before.
