In July of this year I conducted an interview with the co-founders of Panic about transparency in software development which was published in September. Prior to that interview in a short, off-the-cuff, via email, discussion with Steven he mentioned that they had just been putting together a plan for 2010 to help "lift the veil" (my words, not his) on what Panic is up to.
The very next day Steven asked, via his own Web site, for some suggestions on what Panic could do to achieve the goal of being "more accessible and more open." While he offered some of his own ideas he asked for suggestions to be sent to his personal email address.
On December 7th, five months after the interview and who-knows-how many months of internal discussions at Panic, the company has an official blog. They have a Twitter account too but the Twitter account has been in use for some time (they even respond to inquiries about their products promptly).
This new blog, however, is the company’s largest leap forward towards transparency at Panic. Or, at least it has the potential to be. So far the company has used the blog for announcements and peeks at the culture within Panic. This is excellent, of course, but I hope they use their blog to let us in on some of the things coming in the future, to ask questions, to show the thought process behind a decision, etc. And I’m sure they will. The blog’s bindings haven’t even been broken yet so we’ll give them time to loosen it up. B’okay?
In usual Panic style their blog is incredibly gorgeous, unique in nearly every possible way, and shows off the company’s culture. Well done Panic.
Huzzah! And there was much rejoicing.