As a company grows, a lot of different things start needing to get done. And, let’s face it: developers are better suited to some things than others.

So the need arises for a special kind of person. A person who finds how people interact with computers really, really interesting. Who can speak and translate geek, business, and lay person. Tease out the needs and wants of the user community. Explain to and convince potential users how AideRSS can make them more awesome every day.

And, most importantly, a person who bakes really excellent cookies.

That person would be me.

My name is Melanie Baker, and I am AideRSS’ new Community Manager and social media relations person. My background is mostly in web, marketing, and QA, with some writing and editing on the side. I’ve worked in tech since the early dot-com, in environments ranging from sub-10 person start-ups to 15000+ person enterprises.

What can I do for you? Hopefully…

  • Improve our communications — blog posts, FAQs, product info, etc., as well as just engaging with folks all over the web.
  • Learn from, and educate current and future users — whether power users who are masters of information management or people like my Mom who don’t know what RSS is quite yet.
  • Help develop kick-ass products — by performing SQA, asking questions of, and listening to our user community and tech minds online in general, and by learning how people in the real world use our stuff and sharing that with the developers.
  • Troubleshoot from the frontlines — keeping an eye on the internet trenches and helping folks out when I can, and triaging and forwarding more technical issues when I can’t.

You’ll be hearing from me here on the blog, on Twitter (I handle the @aiderss account, and I’m also @melle – say hi!), around the blogosphere, and out and about in the tech community. My email is melanie@aiderss.com. Feel free to drop me a line just to chat, ask questions, or request cookie recipes.