IBM Software Group had grown by silo, acquisition and had 25,000 developers around the world who never even knew the others existed. There had been no cross-brand communication. But in 2003, the company aggressively adopted an Open Source platform, and suddenly it became essential to speak to the community as one.

The process of discovery was exciting as we first had to find each lab and identify the leader. We built an intranet just for SWG developers that with notes from company leaders and loaded meaningful content, from IBM strategy to career development suggestions. On launch day, the new portal was highlighted on individual lab pages across the world had 13,000 unique visitors within the first three hours.