Reclaim or, You Can’t Jinx Greatness

I can’t remember the last time we had a bad review of our support at Reclaim Hosting, so I went searching in our Zendesk account over the last 90 days—and I can safely say it was more than 3 months ago 🙂 Out of the 1501 tickets we have closed in the last 12 weeks, 39% were reviewed and every last one of them were good. Lauren Brumfield has already covered some of this ground in her post over a month ago when she noted that our support has been on point this semester. In no small way this is due to Meredith Fierro‘s remarkable start as Reclaim’s newest full time employee last month—I can honestly say she is giving Timmmmyboy a run for his money. OH…

Lauren and I having been using some of this new found time to organize accounts, work on new server setups, and focusing on outreach with interested, existing, and potential institutions. It’s been  fun to see Reclaim Hosting really catch its stride this semester. I already talking about the idea of building capacity at Reclaim, and I can honestly say we’re as tight and sharp as we’ve ever been right now. I know that if that is a total jinx, but as of now the support statistics bear out some of that. But beyond that, it also feels like we are in control of our financial destiny (still debt and investor free-independence is not being in someone else’s pocket!), we are insanely organized thanks to Lauren’s ability to finally inhabit her role as operations manager and more and more it feels like we are planning thoughtfully for the future—giving Tim the space to keep his sharp eye on what’s next.

Sometimes I feel I don’t have that much to say about Reclaim because everything is going so well. Not to mention the idea of my actual speaking it as its  undoing. But the strength of our work now is not by accident, but rather by design. And I do think it’s important to share the fact that we’re not only ever more real with each passing day, but we’re also not going anywhere anytime soon. So if you are not Reclaiming, my only question to you at this point is why the hell not? Pioneering your own bit of the open web not good enough for you anymore? You graduated to Medium or Facebook or Twitter only to bemoan shortly thereafter how you are locked into a system that is eroding democracy? You are not locked into anything, you can choose how and where you live online, and it’s never been cheaper or easier. So stop bitching and start pitching your tent on a re-decentralized vision of the future of the web.