Experiences at Harris Interactive

Networking.

Recruited to create company's first IT Engineering project life-cycle and protfolio (QA), and test team (Test.) Built lab, recruited team, assessed projects in progress.

Assigned to recovery of both core polling infrastructure development projects in progress at the time.

While it is a technology-driven company it is a marketing services company - that's what they sell. The folks who make a difference there work with both.

Early e-business model, predates selling *things* over the internet. On-line results delivery and panel management was actually secondary to on-line polling. So, all the "dot-com" concerns actually a bit before the wave of dot-com hype.

Still no blogs.

The test team I was fortunate enough to make a place for at Harris was the best team there, but I'm biased.

Window office. Nice diggs, being a marketing services company. Lots of white-boards, being technology driven.

"The Planet Project" - the biggest project you never heard of. An attempt at a world-wide poll at the turn of the millennium. It was a technological success - system was verified scaled for 25 million respondents over 4 days. Business failure, however, because you've never heard of it.

For me:
1 - Catching a company making a deliberate, technology-enabled transition in the way their business operates.
2 - Doing a bit of broken field running because it was all new.
3 - Building a team from the ground up.

Business, more casual the more technical the role. Of course outward-facing marketing folks looked, well, like they do.