Welcome: A Linux Site for the Rest of Us

Welcome to Works With U, from the folks at Nine Lives Media Inc. We’re set to document the rise of Ubuntu Linux in academia, business and consumer settings. We’ll show readers how to unlock the full power of Ubuntu in their organizations. And we’ll help millions of readers understand that Ubuntu is a true platform — mobile, desktop, server — for the modern age. Here’s some background about this site, and what we hope to achieve.

Back in May 2007, my eventual business partner (Amy Katz) and I started to realize that Ubuntu was something special. Rumors were spreading that Dell was going to pre-load Ubuntu Linux on some PCs and laptops. Think about that for a moment:

“The very year that Microsoft was launching a major upgrade (Windows Vista), Dell was hedging its bets and offering true customer choice with Ubuntu Linux.”

It was a landmark event. So in May 2007, we launched a “beta” version of this site, called All About Ubuntu (www.allaboutubuntu.com). It was crude, but more than 70,000 page views later, we knew readers wanted more info on Ubuntu.

The Bigger Picture

Amy and I worked for multiple media companies over the years — CMP Media, Ziff Davis, Microcast Communications. We dabbled in some Web 2.0 efforts during our time at Microcast. By January of 2008, we embarked on our own venture: Nine Lives Media Inc., which takes aim at niche IT audiences.

While Amy runs our business — sales, business development, finance — I focus on the content concepts and editorial development. The partnership is going well. Journalists and sales experts rarely see eye to eye. Somehow, we actually raise each other’s game.

We launched The VAR Guy (www.thevarguy.com) and MSPmentor (www.mspmentor.net) the first week of January 2008. Those sites are now the fastest-growing destinations within the IT channel, according to Technorati.com. So far, so good.

Our initial sites are consuming all of our time. Still, Ubuntu haunted us. My Dell PC at home runs Ubuntu. Some of my best sources at Dell, Sun and MySQL kept talking about Ubuntu. I couldn’t shake it. And neither could Amy.

By early March of 2008, we were thinking about our long-term business strategy. We talked about several content concepts — a few of them may even debut later this year or in 2009. But ultimately, our next move seemed obvious: Launch an Ubuntu-focused media destination.

We don’t talk much about “how” we pull these sites together. We have a clear vision and a great development partner, and I’ll leave it at that.

Help Us Help You

So here we are. A great site ready to tell the world about Ubuntu. We’re very interested in deployment case studies, integrator stories, and information that helps our readers understand how Ubuntu can help their businesses, schools and home systems.

If you’d like to learn more about this site or share some of your Ubuntu stories, please be sure to contact us. Thanks for visiting. And welcome to Works With U.