Chris Grams

1699 points

Raleigh, NC

Chris Grams is the Head of Marketing at Tidelift and author of The Ad-Free Brand: Secrets to Building Successful Brands in a Digital World.

Twitter
LinkedIn
Email: chris(at)tidelift.com

Open Source Champion Author Founding Member Contributor Club

Authored Content

Of the community, not above the community

Since I've recently been on one of my Tom Sawyer rants again about the lack of humility I see in many community efforts, I thought I'd share a story that might help you…

This one goes out to the fence painters

I’m always looking for interesting new communities to highlight here on opensource.com. Over the past year, I’ve covered everything from Wikipedia to OpenIDEO to The White…

User-led innovation can't create breakthroughs. Really?

Earlier this week, Fast Company posted an article by Jens Martin Skibsted and Rasmus Bech Hansen (thanks to Gunnar Hellekson for sending it my way) that may be of interest to…

Five questions about open source and branding with Alina Wheeler

A few years back, a good friend recommended I pick up a copy of Designing Brand Identity: an essential guide for the whole branding team by Alina Wheeler. Now in its 3rd…

Your open source management approach: Red Team or Blue Team?

When I hear people in the technology industry talk about the benefits of open source software, one of things they mention often is their belief that open source software “gets…

Two different business organization charts

What does Google's management change say about the open source way?

Last week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced in a post on his blog he was stepping aside and Google co-founder Larry Page would take on management of Google's day-to-day…

Authored Comments

cgrams

15 Jun 2011

Are the "Best Companies to Work For" really the best companies to work for?

To put it in my brand positioning nerd mindset, for me personally, working for a mission-based company would be the "point of difference" and having decent benefits would be a "point of parity," meaning that the benefits would only have to be "good enough" that given how excited I am about the company, I'd still want to work there.

I agree with you that everyone does not think that way though. Many people have really good reasons why benefits would be their point of difference and having a great mission would just be a nice side benefit, and I totally respect that.

My big point is that there *are* other people out there like me who care more about the mission than the perks, and when you read the materials surrounding the Best Places to Work list (even though there are many companies on the list that DO have great missions), that doesn't seem to be a key thread in the way the listed is developed.

I think it should be.

cgrams

12 Apr 2011

Who will be the new face of openness at Google?

Hi Tarus... very interesting suggestion... wonder if Chris thinks of himself that way?