IT Weapons is 13 years old on Sunday June 16th. Visitors to our office occasionally notice the numbers above our reception desk. The superstitious types might think 13 is a source of worry – not us. Every ITW Anniversary is an opportunity to get nostalgic looking back, and excited looking ahead.
Jay and I drew a simple timeline on the whiteboard in our office and we’ve been asking Wepz to come in and mark all important dates/milestones from our collective history. In the coming months this will become an interactive mural in our office; and another important stop on our official office tour (fun fact: we’ve conducted over 500 tours since we moved to our Goreway facility). These milestones are the basis for the stories that we tell; they paint the pictures that define us, our culture, and our methods. Here are a couple milestones that emerged from our whiteboard project that you might find interesting.
This spring marks the 10th anniversary of the ITW Cloud. 5 visionary clients signed on for what we then called “Shared Services.” Along with dozens of others now, those first 5 cloud clients are still with us … As their businesses have grown, we’ve been inspired to innovate and grow with them.
You’ve seen our license plates right? Each member of our team is given a Wep # when they are hired and after 2 years on the team, we get them a license plate. The first 6 Wepz had license plates right away and our convention was “ITWEPONx”. Mine is ITWEPON1, Jay has ITWEPON2 (years later, these also ended up being our twitter handles). Unfortunately, after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, the government of Ontario issued a letter to us stating that “ITWEPON” was offensive and no new plates like this would be allowed. And so, since November of 2001, our plate convention has been “ITW XXX). Strange huh?
Looking ahead, what’s happening? More growth and a few new solution offerings. As of this week, we are 70 Wepz strong. We added 2 new departments and planted a few more seeds across Canada to help us grow geographically. Our Managed Print Services Pilot has been hugely successful. On the mobility front, our Next-Gen Mobile Device Management program is looking fantastic … In fact, our Security team has been demoing the technology with clients this week. Jay and I are very excited to see these two solutions formally launch this summer.
So, happy birthday IT Weapons, and here’s to 13 more Weapons Grade years.
