These are super exciting times in the DNN Community and so many great things are happening!  One area that is close to my heart and gets my juices flowing is our strategic moves along the way for the DNN Platform and our community as a whole.  I'll speak more to that in a bit, but first I would like to highlight some of our journey over the past two years since the acquisition of DNN Corp by ESW. 

On November 16, 2017, Andy Tryba (CEO, DNN Corp) after three months since the acquisition, posted a blog on his plan to rejuvenate the DNN Community.  I just took a few moments to reread the article and was so encouraged.  We were honestly in a state of chaos pre-acquisition, but the acquisition and collaboration thereafter helped to spark new life and establish a path for us in the right direction. 

Part of Andy's plan, as seen in that article, was the establishment of the Ecosystem Advisory Groups (EAGs) with four areas of focus: 

• Technology
• Developers
• Partners
• Awareness 

These areas all made sense at the time and my area of leadership was with the Partners Ecosystem Advisory Group.  Our group focused on three initiatives:  

• A new DNN Partner Program
• An Ecosystem Points/Reward System
• A new DNN Marketplace 

On April 3, 2018, Clint Patterson announced the new DNN Partner Program that was based on input from the Partners EAG.  The Ecosystem Points/Reward System was later shifted to the Awareness EAG and was recently implemented right here on the DNN Community website.  Lastly, the new DNN Marketplace is well underway and being implemented by DNN Corp as we speak.

As it became more apparent my work with the Partners group was coming to completion, the EAG leaders began to look more closely into our evolving needs as a community.  Much has changed over the past two years and thus our needs have changed.  After months of planning, we recently launched the new DNN Leadership Team.  You'll notice some familiarity in naming, but we are shifting to "areas of focus" rather than "groups".  While subtle, this helps us to better align with our actual needs as a community.    While group involvement and teamwork are still paramount to our success, some areas simply aren't all about rallying the masses.

We have also expanded the leadership team with key sub-areas of focus.  These sub-areas will be adapted over time to meet our continually growing needs and we are happy to welcome the following Area Leads to the team:

• Tycho de Waard (Community Website)
• Clint Patterson (Evangelism)
• Kelly Ford (Documentation)
• Daniel Valadas (Build & Release, Core Modules)
• Mariëtte Knap (Testing)

I'd like to wrap up this blog post with my new role in the area of Strategy.  I am stoked about this new role and have so many exciting things already in the works.  "Strategy" is not something that happens in a silo.  Rather, it happens in tight coordination with others.  Strategic direction cannot be set without full buy-in by all parties.  Therefore, I will continue to work closely with Mitchel Sellers as it relates to the Technology area of focus, with Peter Donker as it relates to the Development area of focus, and with Will Strohl as it relates to the Awareness area of focus.  

One of my first major initiatives will be to help set a more strategic direction for Issue Management on GitHub and to work towards the creation of an effective new mechanism to help nurture ideas from concept to creation.  Some changes, therefore, will be implemented on GitHub soon.  This will help shift our GitHub focus more towards effective and efficient bug and enhancement issue triage.

Thanks to everyone for your continued trust and support in helping to make DNN Platform so great, and for helping our vibrant and diverse DNN Community to thrive!