I am one of the developers at PaperCut and don’t often write many blog posts. We developers are usually hidden behind our screens, drinking coffee and generating thousands of lines of code. Typically developers don’t get out and about to meet our customers and partners face to face. But PaperCut developers are far from typical…
I have been with PaperCut since the early days. (I am proud to say that I am employee #2, and the first female developer in the team.) One tradition here at PaperCut is that anyone who travels internationally is “required” to bring back a postcard and pin it on my desk. I’m not sure how it all started, but pretty soon that photo above is what my desk started looking like.
With customers and partners all over the world there is always someone travelling. The postcards were flooding in and my bucket list kept on growing.
Finally, it was my turn to travel and collect cards for my own desk!
It was a packed trip to the USA… full of customer visits, manufacturer meetings, trade show conferences, relationship building and of course, those internal US flights. We were hosted by our PaperCut family in the Portland office, plus our wonderful Authorized Solution Center (ASC) partners .
Our support team in Portland do an exceptional job answering the thousands of customer questions. I have always been told that the US had the most users of our PaperCut Print Management solution… but to see all the activity over there was amazing. Ridiculous volumes of phonecalls, online chats, and emails poured in… and the team handles them all with ease. I don’t know how they do it. (Those lines of code were looking much easier now.)
In the development team, we live and breathe PaperCut. To see that same passion amongst our ASCs and partners was inspiring. At the two trade shows I attended, our channel partners talked just as passionately about PaperCut as I did. They were presenting the product to customers from companies all around the world - what fun to be part of those discussions.
Working as a developer, you hardly get to know how the features you develop get used by the customers. One customer who worked at a hospital shared with me how useful the “ Printer Groups ” feature was for his organization. How wonderful to know first hand that a feature that I worked on had made his life so much easier.
As much fun as I had I am glad to be back in Melbourne, my home. I brought with me customer stories, feature requests, a renewed respect for our partners, new shoes (!) and of course that postcard!
I have been with PaperCut for 6 years. What an amazing experience to see the company grow and the opportunities grow with it. A big THANKS to all the partners, ASCs and customers who took the time to share their PaperCut experiences with me.
Travel does make you wiser. I am a developer with a broader perspective because of this trip. What will the next one bring?
