March 01, 2022
Dear Acumatica Community,
Note: I’m avoiding the names of countries and politicians to keep Google from indexing this post for searches related to Acumatica and a country that starts with the letter “r”.
First, I wanted to let you know that I’m pausing my social media activity. For now. I could change the content, add certain hashtags, etc. But my personal decision is to pause, reducing the social media feed “clutter” and allowing posts on the current worldwide topic at hand to come through more clearly.
Second, I’d like to request that you consider assessing your social media activity as well and maybe even make a change.
This is not a “change the world” request. I’m not saying that you should change anything. I’m just asking you to consider, just like how you considered your business processes when implementing Acumatica.
Last Friday, I posted this on LinkedIn:
Last Thursday was significant for me. It was the first time that I saw people face-to-face for something that was work-related since the pandemic began.
It was also the realization of something that I had dreamed of doing for over two years.
So, naturally, I wanted to tell people about it.
And I was thinking ahead. I even added something to the bottom of the quarterly sponsor stats (click here) with an idea about how sponsors could support local Acumatica User Groups worldwide.
But, after I made that post on LinkedIn, I felt very uneasy. I also felt uneasy Thursday night, but I felt even more uneasy after the post on Friday.
Why uneasy? I feel guilty for portraying “everything is normal” while the world is inundated with images from a dire situation. Sadly, regional human suffering is nothing new. If you don’t have a personal connection to a region that is suffering, then it likely doesn’t dominate your life. However, things are different right now, with the entire world standing on the precipice of WWIII.
My “uneasy” feeling was not an outward concern, a concern about “how this looks”, but an inward concern, a battle of conscience.
I use a tool called Buffer to queue up my posts once a month. Buffer has a pause button that you can press which keeps everything in the queue, but prevents it from getting posted. So that’s what I did.
I’m pausing my social media activity. For now.
The next day, on Saturday, February 26, 2022, I did this interview with someone from the Acumatica community who is in the midst of the situation. To avoid getting political and to make it more relevant for the Acumatica audience, we called it Working Remotely During a War
After that interview, I felt even more peaceful about pausing my social media activity.
I’m not turning into an “activist” because that’s not the focus of AUGForums.com. I’m just simply pausing my social media “voice” so that more relevant “voices” can be heard better.
On the point of being an “activist”, the “small activist” part of me wants to do something like pressure Acumatica to make a statement in support of “u”, given the strong Acumatica connection to “r”.
But, I recognize the difficult position that this could put Acumatica employees in, specifically the core team of developers who live in “m”, the main city in “r”.
I’m not defending “r” and I know nothing about where individual Acumatica employees stand regarding the current situation.
But, I think that those of us in “polarized America”, both on the “left” and on the “right”, can very much appreciate that no leader speaks for everyone. Not everyone who lives in a particular place can be blamed for problems caused by that particular place. In recent years, those of us in America have come to understand this better, something that the rest of the world has understood for a long time.
So, I’m not asking for anything from Acumatica and I’m not becoming an activist.
I’m just pausing my social media activity (LinkedIn and Twitter). For now.
Sincerely,
Tim Rodman
Update March 02, 2022:
Click here for a statement from Ali Jani, Chief Product Officer at Acumatica
Update March 10, 2022:
Click here for a statement from John Case, CEO at Acumatica (only his 10th day on the job)