Team Reclaim

As Reclaim continues to morph, I ‘ve been thinking a bit about working teams. One of the real joys—and possibly under appreciated privileges—I’ve had professionally is being part of really amazing teams, which often translates to working with great people. I was living in New York City in the late 90s, just in time to witness (many times first-hand) the NY Yankees 3-peat World Series championships in 1998, 1999, and 2000. Now it might be easy to dismiss this team given they were chock-full of money and talent (they’re the Yankees, after all), but turns out the Orioles had an even higher payroll with arguably as much talent in 1998.* And also, remember the Mets!!! 🙂

Beyond the money and individual stars there was something more at play—a sense of joyful commitment to the work married with talent made them something else all together. Even the leagues of folks who hate the Yankees would crack a little with that particular team—they were hard not to respect because they played as a team and the greatness transcended any one player. What’s not to love about an impossible infield play by hall of famer Derek Jeter to rob the opposition of a hit followed by an equally impressive stop from everyman utility player Scott Brosius. It was greatness all around; they made each other better and as a result were unstoppable for 3 straight years—a herculean feat in any sport. To boot, they seemed to be having fun all the while.

Now edtech is not Major League Baseball, and this comparison is flimsy at best, but the NY Yankees of that era were emblematic of a great team, and one I witnessed first hand.† And for me the key seemed to be joy, having both a shared purpose as well as a lot of fun with your teammates. I think that translates very well for me with the work I did as an instructional technologist at University of Mary Washington alongside many amazing folks, but in particular Martha Burtis, Andy Rush, Shannon Hauser, and Jerry Slezak. They’re folks I miss being around regularly, but when we were together in the bullpen (maybe the baseball metaphor does work) exploring the magic of the mid-2000s web for higher ed was undergirded by a lot of laughter, and thankfully not spoiled by the years of million dollar state salaries. I’ve talked about the magic of working at the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies (DTLT) on this blog extensively, so I will try and keep things moving along.

DTLT Reunion at Reclaim Open

My next team was in many ways taken from DTLT, as Tim Owens and I started Reclaim while working together there. We both eventually left the university, taking the newly minted graduate Lauren Hanks (Brumfield at that time) with us as we ventured into the unknown territory of Reclaim Hosting. We were a super small team for many years, it wasn’t until 2017 that we brought on Meredith Huffman (another fresh UMW alum). And with the addition of Chris Blankenship a couple of years after that (yet another UMW faithful!), we had the core of a team that would define the first 10 years of Reclaim Hosting.

Tim and Lauren in a recently Completed CoWork

This was quite an intense period as we stayed lean and grew quick, but at the same time it carried over a lot of the fun and experimentation of our time at UMW, only with a fraction of the meetings. On top of growing our shared hosting, Domain of One’s Own, and managed hosting significantly, we also had time to open up a CoWork space, a VHS store, and eventually Tim took over the arcade we built and spun it off into his own career—leaving the now civilized terrain of Reclaim. And not too long after Tim became the pinball wizard, Lauren left just this past September after realizing the previous eight years Reclaim was all she had known professionally. It was time for both to strike out for new territory, leaving old man bava to his devices. The contributions both Tim and Lauren made are too immense to list here, and in many ways I’ve not written either a proper goodbye on this blog for fear of letting either go—but I’ll save that discussion for my next appointment with Dr. Freud.‡

I’m not going to lie, I was a bit concerned this past fall and winter as I was saying goodbye to Lauren and buying out Tim’s remaining share of Reclaim Hosting, and my mental stated reflected that transition. At the same time, one of the things I underestimated was just how resilient and awesome the team we’ve been building over the last several years has become. Meredith and Chris are the pillars of both support and infrastructure this new city on the hill is built upon, and in addition to that, bringing on Goutam Vijay Narang, Pilot Irwin, and Taylor Jadin almost three years ago ensured a solid base from which we could continue to provide the service our community is accustomed to, while at the same to building community through avenues like Reclaim TV, Discord, the Roundup Newsletter, and Reclaim the Blog—all of which we’ve never done to the same extent previously. In many ways we’re getting the word out better than ever before, and it’s still retains the tone and humor Reclaim always represented. Just 18 months ago we brought on Noah Dorsett who has done a phenomenal job shoring up security, which helps us all sleep that much better at night. But when Tim and Lauren were coming to the end of their reign, Meredith stepped up to play and all around manager; Pilot stepped up to manage support like a star; and Chris remained Chris keeping everything online.

Team Reclaim at Reclaim Open

It’s also worth noting, eight months after Noah came, we hired on Amanda Schmidt to buttress our growing Edtech group, which Taylor and Pilot were already helping us define. It has been truly rewarding to watch Edtech find its legs, part of which has been the push for community building, and we’ve been able to support Reclaim Cloud that much more effectively, as well as introduce new offerings such as ReclaimEDU and ReclaimPress, we’ve done anything but sit on our hands.

But when Lauren left there was a serious HR and operations gap that we got ridiculously lucky to be able to fill with Maren Deepwell, her impact was immediate and she was able to keep the team focused, while generously sharing her vast expertise—the mentoring has been invaluable. When I had to take more extensive time off during the winter of my discontent, she worked with Meredith and the entire Reclaim team to make sure everything remained on track, and we scarce missed a beat—that fact alone speaks volumes to how much we have grown with our current incarnation of Reclaim.

I think part of my musings here might be that I just finished up annual reviews, and it was both a relief and rewarding to see how happy folks are at Reclaim—that for me is the number one indicator of success. By that metric, we are by and large killing it. And our team is still growing, with a brilliant hire of superstar Jason Teitelman, whose has been an remarkably good fit to further reinforce out focus on all things support. And just this month we’ve added Cass le Fay into a hybrid support/infrastructure role to provide Chris some relief with all things sysadmin—long overdue.

I would be remiss if I did not end with one of the most impactful changes that has happened in just the last two months, bringing on Justin Webb as managing partner, to manage finances and bring some of his long-honed expertise in all matters IT to bear on Reclaim’s future. We’ve worked with Justin for more than 7 years as a consultant, after being colleagues at UMW for almost 7 more—so the ability to partner with a know entity who has seen the inner-workings of Reclaim for so many years was a true relief. As the reality of not being entirely alone takes hold, I can feel the pressure and dread turn once again to joy and possibility.

As Tim stepped away the infrastructure team felt that hit, just as Lauren’s departure had us scrambling organizationally, so bringing on both Maren and, six months later, Justin marks the beginning of yet another era of Reclaim that has me excited all over again. Managing growth and valuing our services appropriately has it’s real challenges, and given Reclaim was never the work of one person, the fact that we’ve built a team that’s as good, and arguably deeper, than the one we had out first ten years really has me excited for what’s to come. It’s all about the people, and Reclaim has made all the right moves!

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*If you look at MLB payrolls since 1998, the Yankees have consistently been amongst the biggest spenders, but that has led to only 1 championship in 23 years—although arguably 2 given the Astros cheated. So while money always matters, there was also something else at play with this group.

†It was also hard not to be drawn in by the Chicago Bulls of the mid-90s and the god-like talent of Jordan even if you were not a basketball fan. But that team seemed to struggle with the cult of Jordan—whereas the Yankees championships were not as predicated on the one superstar (in fact, the one superstar often is an albatross in baseball, A-Rod anyone?). Now this could be a difference of sports, granted, but Jordan’s persona and talent were so ridiculously great that it was hard for any other player on that team to get much of the glory, which is unfortunately still playing out between Pippen and Jordan. What’s more, Jordan and the Bulls made Basketball a global phenomenon, which no team or player has been able to do for baseball. In fact, I’m seeing the impact of Jordan’s footprint 30 years later with basketball’s immense popularity here in Italy.

‡I think the same was true of Shannon Hauser when she graduated and “left” UMW