Saturday, June 20 was a milestone date for two reasons. First, it was the solstice (happy summer everyone!). And second, it was the 100th day since San Francisco issued its shelter-in-place order. On the one hand it’s hard to believe that the year is already halfway through, and on the other hand it’s equally unbelievable that this year is only halfway through. Remember the stupidity about storming Area 51? That was nine months ago.
How has DevonWay been faring away from the office? We’re very distributed, so a quarter of our company already worked from home. And we’d started transitioning in February to a more video-centric meeting format using Zoom, so the rest of us were able to adjust with little interruption. Of course we miss interacting with each other in person, but we’ve been able to maintain the feeling of working on a team, which has been crucial to keeping morale high.
What about travel? With much of the country starting to open, some of our customers have started asking when we’ll resume on-site visits. The short answer is that we’re going to continue taking a conservative approach and not allow on-site visits unless there’s a very specific critical need. As a cloud-based software firm, we’re lucky in that we can do all of our work remotely, so as much as we love having face time with our users, our overriding priority has to be the safety of our customers, our employees, and our extended families.
The good news is that we’re making solid progress against our 2020 initiatives. The new browser UI is progressing every week (we’ll be sharing screenshots soon, I promise), our mobile functionality is expanding with every release, we’ll be publishing the results of our machine learning proof of concept this summer, we’re constantly adding features to our solutions, and much more. I’m thrilled with the productivity the team has been able to maintain over the last few months.
In short, we’re getting through it. And assuming this year ends (it has to, right?) we’re looking forward to getting out to visit our customers and each other once again.