Reading Time: 3 minutes
Wow. This week marks 12 months back at Epic for me and what a year it has been! A slew of awesome Moodle sites, high growth in our open source services, a fantastic new open source team, getting stuck in at MoodleMoot and iMoot conferences and loads more exciting stuff. It’s been a jam packed year for sure. it was always going to be a bit weird rejoining a company I had been part of for 11 years prior to my three years at a competitor. But that three years doing a high growth startup (launching Kineo’s open source business) was a massive education, albeit one that went off in a direction that wasn’t a comfortable fit for me.
I was fortunate to return to Epic in July 2011 just as it was emerging from several years of decline which had started when the company was sold to Huveaux. I had left in July 2008, a mere one month after Andrew Brodie bought the business from Huveaux and put it under the stewardship of new MD, Jonathan Satchell. It took a few years and some experimentation to stabilise the company and return it to growth, but thanks to the remarkable work of a large number of people who stuck with it and saw things through, a declining business was transformed into a strong and vibrant company.
It’s safe to say that when I returned in July 2011, Epic was a completely unrecognisable company from the one I had left 3 years earlier. Morale was high, sales were good, the team structure worked, the management team were trusted, times were good again. By this point Epic had not just regained a market leading position but had innovated its way to the front of the pack by building a mobile learning authoring tool called GoMo Learning and stealing a major lead in the emerging mobile learning market. Put simply, it was a really attractive place to come and work again.
I have to say that I felt like a bit of a cheat at this point. I left Epic at a low ebb and returned when it was on the up again, and did absolutely nothing to contribute towards that turnaround! However, the open source business I came here to head up is already defying expectations and I’m really proud of what everyone involved in Epic’s open source services has achieved the past year, and our open source work with Moodle, Drupal and WordPress gives us an additional and innovative platform on which Epic can grow even further.
Excellent to have you back Mark. Looking forward to more game-changing Moodling from you and the gang. As the Bridgestone Account Manager, it’s a joy presenting them with such a ground-breaking piece of work and nothing beats a happy client in this game! All the best for the next 12 months and beyond.