JotBlog

Here at JotSpot we honestly want to be an ‘open’ company. Transparency, “do no evil", real conversation with your market – these are a few of the hallmarks of an open company in 2005.

Random bits of evidence suggest we’re trying. For example our CEO Joe Kraus talks straight talk to customers about a situation we’re embarrassed about, or blogs about openness within a company. And our CTO Graham Spencer blogs about our commitment to open data…

But how might we measure our openness? Jonathan Nolen recently posted his version of an open company test, and I thought it would be interesting to take it for a spin. Here we go, one by one.

“1. Open Sourcecode: Do you have access to the sourcecode? True open source is great, but simple access to the source code, even if it’s not under an open source license, is often enough.”

[buzzer sound]… Nope. We don’t provide the source code. But we’ve thought a lot about this choice…

“2. Open Data: Can you easily get your data into or out of the application, should the need arise?”

Yes, this is a commitment we’ve made, and will continue to deliver on. It’s bordering on religion here at Jot. (this link applies again!)

“3. Open APIs: Can your other software interact with the application? The best applications provide different means of access: GUI, command-line, RSS, SOAP or REST, for example. These additional avenues of access enable you to build more complex and customized solutions using the product. Remember the philosophy of small pieces, loosely joined.”

Yes. This is practically our mission in life. (Or maybe it’s just one of our top goals, and my personal mission, given I’m heading up developer relations…)

“4. Open Pricing: Can you easily find out from the company’s website how much the product costs, or do you have to talk to a sales-person? If it’s the latter, they’re hiding that information for a reason.”

Not yet. We use the, “we’re still in beta still” rationalization right now. We openly share our pricing when asked, but are waiting to formalize it 100% before baking it on a public web page.

“5. Open Bugtracking: Can you access the real bug tracking system (not a neutered, customer-only bug ghetto)? Not all bugs (like security bugs) or information (like resource assignment) must necessarily be available, but the more the better.”

Yes. Our bug tracking system is out in the open in our Jot community site.

“6. Open Feature Voting: Can you vote for your most critical issues and influence, to some degree, the allocation of development resources? There is obviously no guarantee, and there are dozens of factors that determine which bugs or features will be worked on in a given time period. But a user-visible voting system allows you to know that your voice is being heard and see how your request is balanced against other influences to effect the product.”

Mostly. We have a “Feedback/Requests” forum in our Jot Community site, and it includes a way for a customer to say, “Do it Now!” or “Keep it in mind". But I like an explicit voting mechanism, where people cast explicit votes or spend “feature request dollars". This is now on my to-do list.

“7. Open Communication / Open Community: Are you able to communicate with other users and with the developers of the product? There are many venues where this communication can occur: mailing lists, discussion forums, blogs (both employee author and customer authored) or wikis. But the critical threshold is the participation of company employees who are capable of understanding problems and offering solutions – not just human firewalls whose only job is to make sure that the riff-raff doesn’t disturb the developers. ”

Yes. This is the mission of our Jot community site. And the current Jot folks who hang out there, Jim Haljun, Reuben Antman, and myself (Scott McMullan), are definitely not human firewalls!

“8. Open Documentation: Can users contribute to the product documentation? As I mentioned here, allowing users to help each other creates better, more accurate documentation. Knowledge hard-won through actual deployment and use should be shared as efficiently and directly as possible for the benefit of all.”

Yes. We’re a wiki company after all. There’s an edit button on each page of our documentation.

“9. Open Customer Support: Can you see tech support issues filed by other customers? Not every customer issue is appropriate to share with the world, but openness should be the default. Learning from other user’s problems can help prevent your own.”

Yes. Again, our Jot community site shows all questions asked by other customers, including bug reports, feature requests and feedback.

So how did we do? Pretty well I think. Even though we have a “no” or two, overall we’re pretty darn open according to Jonathan’s metrics. Now I’m biased because I work here, and I personally value openness, so I really really want us to be open. It’s actually one of the reasons I joined JotSpot – Joe and Graham told me they were building an open company. (E.g., I get to do blog posts like this )

But what I or we intend to be doesn’t matter – it’s how our prospects and customers perceive us. And we’re listening, so let us know!