Rogers On Demand Online is live now - really live, fully live! - to anyone who wants to get a look. Deep breath!
So it turns out there's a difference between launching to a select group of beta customers, and lifting the walled garden off the site that you've been working day and night on for the past 6 months and letting the whole world get a look.
Specifically, the level of nausea increases and the likelihood of something going wrong at 11pm the day before launch after you have spent the whole day at the office with your team QAing the site increases and your desire to crawl under your desk and just curl up and go to sleep at 12:30am even though you still need to review one more section of the site...increases.
Launch day started early, with a passing thought to actually having a shower (2 words - hair straightener - cures the worst bedhead) and a half gulped mug of tea on the way to the office. After a couple of nerve-wracking moments where the site sputtered to life at its brand-new url (www.rogersondemand.com) and whammo! My baby was live.
The thing about a online product launch in today's day and age is you get instant feedback - whether you like it or not. Twitter, Facebook - both a blessing and a curse. You get to find out right away that someone LOVES West Wing and Vegas Vacation, but also that Doug in Oshawa can't play video and thinks your site sucks. Thick skin needed. I should have brought a daisy to work today..they love me, they love me not. And then there's Google Alerts, shouting out headlines at me every five minutes. Google is nothing if not thorough.
Next up - a million things to work on. Marketing plans, content plans (how do I convince NBC to give me FNL and then fly me down to Texas to marry, uh i mean interview Kyle Chandler)? Newsletters, user engagement, usability, new features, new products. No rest for the wicked - seriously - I've become an Amarula-aholic (which combiend with warm milk is the only thing that shuts my brain down at night) and I think I've ground my back teeth into little stumps (reallly need to hit the dentist up for a mouth guard). But it's a wickedly cool product and I'm thrilled to be part of the team. We'll see where we go from here! Stay tuned!