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On joining FireGiant

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I’m beyond excited to announce that I’ve joined FireGiant. Rob, CEO and co-founder of FireGiant, has known me for more than 10 years – plenty of time to get to know my strengths, my motivations, and my amusing quirks (what others might call peculiarities).

So when he appeals to all three by offering me a job where wearing pants is optional, how could I refuse?

(Note 1: I don’t mean to imply that Rob opened by mentioning the no-pants thing. I mean, it would’ve been perfect if he had, but I want the record to be clear.)

(Note 2: It’s likely that pants are optional only because FireGiant is a distributed company – unannounced drop-ins are unlikely. And as long as I keep my webcam pointed in the right direction, nobody’s going to know anyway.)

I’ll be working on FireGiant’s service offerings like support and custom development. Other things are on tap and I look forward to talking about them when the time is right.

Changes to my work on WiX

On the one hand, there are none.

I’ll continue to act as the release manager for WiX v3.10 and any other future releases we do in the v3.x series. I’ll keep participating in the WiX online meetings, wix-users and wix-devs threads, and even StackOverflow.

I’ll also continue to contribute bug fixes and features to WiX, just like I’ve been doing for the past 10 years.

10 years.

Wow.

Where was I? Oh yeah…On the other hand, however, being part of FireGiant will have numerous benefits for my work on WiX.

Most of my best (in my humble opinion) contributions to WiX came from my day-to-day work using WiX and finding a need that was best solved inside the WiX toolset. For example, while working on Flight Simulator, I needed firewall exceptions and while working on App-V, I wanted to simplify major upgrade authoring.

Day-to-day exposure to those kinds of problems makes me a better WiX contributor and a better project leader. I’m looking forward to getting more of that exposure than I’ve gotten in my own consulting and freelancing since resigning from Microsoft four years ago. (Really? Four? Time flies and all that.)

One size fits all

I’m excited to join FireGiant not only because FireGiant is a great fit for me and not only because I’m a great fit for FireGiant – I mean, really, who wouldn’t want me to be on call as their own personal WiX expert?! – but also because I believe FireGiant is a great fit for WiX.

For 10 years, I’ve loved being part of a small team of volunteers working on WiX. And I recognize that for WiX to keep growing, to be viable in any organization regardless of spot or lack thereof on the Fortune 500, some people need to be able to rely on a guarantee of support. FireGiant provides that and I’m thrilled to support WiX in that way too.