02.08.2012 By Lara Swanson
The Ada Initiative: Supporting Women In Open Technology & Culture
Dyn’s charitable arm DynCares recently contributed to an organization close to my heart: the Ada Initiative. They describe themselves as a “non-profit organization dedicated to increasing participation of women in open technology and culture, which includes open source software, Wikipedia and other open data, and open social media”.
It’s named after Ada Lovelace, widely regarded as the world’s first computer programmer and someone who has her own day in October that I love celebrating every year. Eager to spread awareness of the organization and the good work they do, I asked Valerie Aurora, Executive Director of the Ada Initiative, a few questions about the organization and how individuals and companies can get involved.
Read More02.07.2012 By Gaf Fitch
Taking Aim With Email Delivery Braveheart-Style
In the movie Braveheart, there is a memorable scene involving arrows where archers line up by the score and fire in unison. The camera then beautifully follows the deluge that fills the sky in an unified arc, eventually raining down on our scrappy heroes with a few arrows painfully finding targets of chests, shoulders, and calves of those in their path (cringe).
I remember being in the theater watching this and seeing people in genuine awe of that power in numbers. I thought differently, however. As I watched most of the arrows hit the ground, I could only think in classic Yankee fashion: “Man, they’re wasting a ton of frickin’ arrows”.
Unfortunately, that waste is also far too common with email today.
Read More02.06.2012 By Adam Coughlin
Dyn Sports Beat: Soccer Club Picks Up First Win
Editor’s note: This is the first in a series that will chronicle the athletic exploits of some of Dyn’s employees, so make sure you properly stretch those hamstrings and then enjoy!
To say Chris Gonyea left it all on the field is an understatement.
Long known simply as the Senior Manager of Client Services at Dyn, Gonyea stepped away from the phones and onto the field of Bedford’s Edge Sports Center a week ago. Gonyea and his nimble footed colleagues dialed up a world of pain for their opponent and in the first match of the season, Team Wine & Dyn defeated Amoskeag, 3-2.
Jarrod Campbell, Brett Haynes and Ian MacDonald scored goals. However, the man of the match could go to none other than Gonyea not because of any particular athletic accolade but because he was the only member of the squad to vomit during the match.
Read More02.03.2012 By Lara Swanson
Retail Page Speed & Web Performance Report: How Did Dyn Stack Up?
Strangeloop recently published their State of the Union for Page Speed and Website Performance, focusing on retail industry websites. Their extraordinarily disappointing key finding was that retail sites are 60% slower than they expected with an average page speed of 11.21 seconds. It’s really too bad that websites, especially ecommerce sites, haven’t met site speed expectations.
Retail sites should be at the forefront of optimized page load time. There’s been plenty of research about the correlation between fast page load and revenue and I would guess every retail site wants to increase their revenue using established best practices like compressing text and images, combining JavaScript and CSS, using a CDN, and other tools mentioned in Strangeloop’s report.
Strangely, according to the report, most sites failed to implement these.
Read More02.02.2012 By Dyn News
Dyn’s Culture-Con Brings Business Community Together
Manchester, NH – February 1, 2012 - It seems like everyone derived some benefit from Dyn’s first-ever Culture-Con — even the keynote speaker.
“I got so many great ideas,” said Donavon Roberson, Director of Service Innovations at OOBE and formerly Culture Evangelist at Zappos.
More than 50 people crowded Dyn’s world headquarters at 150 Dow Street in Manchester’s historic mill district on Tuesday to participate in the event, which also featured a panel of local businesses talking about their own company cultures.
Roberson discussed the importance of creating a workplace that brings out the best in employees. He learned these lessons from Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh and is fine tuning them at South Carolina-based OOBE.
Read More01.31.2012 By Chris Gonyea
How To Switch Managed DNS Providers In Five Easy Steps
When talking to a potential or new customer, a constant fear I sense is how to switch to a new DNS provider without any downtime. Perhaps it was a past DNS move that didn’t go well or maybe it’s just resistance to the unknown, but it’s the job of myself and my awesome Concierge team to make transitions painless and ultimately successful.
I have some great news: moving DNS providers is easy and straightforward and you can accomplish it in just five easy steps, avoiding any downtime. If you have ever thought about switching but just can’t pull the trigger, let’s put those fears to rest forever!
Read More01.30.2012 By Lynda Elliott
Culture-Con Preview: Examining Dyn’s Culture And How We’re Different
In the business world, culture is defined as “a shared set of values, attitudes, practices and goals that make a company unique”. In essence, it is the character of the organization. Every company creates its own culture whether consciously aware of it or not.
Whether you are an employer or an employee, culture is very important and it impacts individuals as well as the company as a whole. For employers, culture affects morale, communications, productivity, growth, the bottom line and can ultimately make or break the company. For employees, a positive culture can motivate, inspire creativity, loyalty, cooperation and a desire to go above and beyond. On the other hand, it can erode trust, security and connectedness while increasing stress, indifference and job searches.
Dyn is definitely in the minority of companies ahead of the culture curve. Receiving regional recognition from Inc. Magazine as a winner in the 2011 Top Small Company Workplaces competition and being named one of the Top Small Businesses To Work For by Business NH Magazine for four years isn’t by happy accident. Dyn’s overall success and rapid growth is greatly attributed to the following three major culture factors:
- Dyn’s People: Priority One
- Dyn’s Practices: Transparency, Trust, Team Building, Timely Reviews
- Dyn’s Perks: Traditional and Fringe Benefits
01.27.2012 By Julie Parenteau
Five Tips For Creating Your Company Yearbook
Given that our yearbook was such a hit among Dyners (see some visuals in my previous yearbook post), I encourage your company to take on this endeavor and see what comes of it. It may seem like a daunting task, but to help out, I put together five thoughts to make your own yearbook creation process smooth.
Outline
We knew that we wanted each employee to have their own page in the book, so from the outset, we were looking at a 100 page book. Since we weren’t planning on making the book a part of the fitness program, we kept the additional content down to a minimum.
Remember to consider your bindery here. If going with a perfect bound book as we did, you’ll need to keep the page count divisible by 4.
Here’s how our outline looked:
Read More01.26.2012 By Mikel Steadman
Culture-Con Preview: From Disney To Dyn, Employees Matter
I have glanced at many of Dyn’s culture blogs recently and thought about a story I heard several months ago from a reliable source in the world of customer service, budgeting, planning, and business practice: my wife, Lisa.
It is about a company who had very humble beginnings, nearly closing its doors on a regular basis in its early years and then expanded beyond even the belief of its owner and board members. It is a business that is particularly good at driving a brand through every one of its employees, 133,000 and growing.
Here’s the story that you’ve also likely experienced.
Read More01.25.2012 By David Lemaire
Improving Sender Reputation With The Joan Jett Law Of Email Delivery
It’s hard for me to think about sender reputation without having Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation” getting stuck in my head. When it comes to being a sender of email (unlike Joan’s recommendation), you really should give a damn about your reputation!
Sender reputation is a combination of many elements. That reputation is critical to getting your messages into the inbox. So how do I get a bad or good reputation? Here’s a slew of suggestions on email content, volume, bounces, complaints and more that will give you some insight in improving your reputation or keeping it strong.
We’ll call it “The Joan Jett Law Of Email Delivery”.
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