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Early Employees: Heather Champ & Flickr
March 20, 2013
A series of conversations with early employees of iconic tech companies.
If you have recommendations for future interviews, tweet them to me via @hunterwalk.
Flickr is sometimes described as the product which kicked off Web 2.0 bringing together user generated content with community and innovative design.
A: Co-authoring Flickr's Community Guidelines with George Oates. As the community grew, we wanted to find a way to document what Flickr was in a tangible way and the guidelines grew out of a conversation during our daily commute back and forth from San Francisco to Sunnyvale. We weren't sure that "Don’t be creepy. You know the guy. Don't be that guy." would pass muster with the lawyers, but it did. I continue to see fingerprints of Flickr's Community Guidelines throughout the web and it makes me happy.
Q: Did you have any traditions or rituals that helped define Flickr's culture?
A: For as long as possible, every new hire spent at least a couple of weeks answering member support emails. It was a great way for new team members to learn how Flickr worked, become comfortable with the system, and see the sorts of issues that our members were experiencing. I think it was a great way for people to build a base of knowledge when they started, especially as it was grounded within our community.
Q: How did you find out about the Yahoo acquisition? Were you involved in the discussions or heard once the deal was closed? What was your reaction?
A: I was hiking in Arches with friends and in a moment of signal the news trickled down through the ether. It's likely that I befouled the beautiful landscape with something like "ho-leeee fuuuccccckkkk...." I sent of a congratulatory email to Caterina and asked her to let her know if there was anything I could do to help. That was March. I started helping out with Member Support in April.
Q: How do you analyze the current social photo market - are there any companies/products which remind you of Flickr? Can Flickr regain momentum under Marissa?
A: Without sounding like I'm about three months from pulling up stakes and heading into to the wild to live off the grid, I'm pretty horrified by the current state of life online when it comes to privacy, community, what we share, our photos, and how our images may be used now, or in the future. I would hope that companies would really take stock of the decisions that they're making and what the long term implications are. Have you seen Black Mirror? I highly recommend the first season.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror_(TV_series)
Q: What are some Flickr alumni currently doing?
A: I think that it says a lot that people who've worked together at one company choose to work together again. There are chunks of Team Flickr that power Etsy, Urban Airship, Tiny Speck, and Tomfoolery. I'm working with Caterina Fake again at Findery, along with Maggie Nelson, whom I didn't have the pleasure of working with at Flickr, as she joined a few months after I left in 2010. Flickr alum are good people.
Did you enjoy this interview? Read more:
Post 1: Dave Shen/Yahoo
Post 2: Michael Dearing/eBay
Post 3: Craig Donato/Excite
Post 4: Stewart Bonn/Electronic Arts
Post 5: Paul McNamara/RedHat
Post 6: Jason Kincaid/TechCrunch
Post 7: Jason Shellen/Blogger
Post 8: Bob Poniatowski/TiVo
Post 9: Eva Ho, Applied Semantics
Flickr is sometimes described as the product which kicked off Web 2.0 bringing together user generated content with community and innovative design.
Heather Champ, Flickr (@hchamp)
Q: How many people were at Flickr when you started and how
did you get connected with the early team?
A: There were a few people who joined and left
Ludicorp before my time, but by April 2005 I was the 10th member of team and the
1st post-acquisition Yahoo! hire. While I joined the team in Sunnyvale when they
arrived in June, I was working behind the scene for a couple of months prior
helping out with the customer care queue. I created my account pre-launch in
January 2004 when Stewart messaged me from Vancouver. He and Caterina are old
friends of mine. Caterina was one of the first people that I'd met when I moved
to San Francisco in 2000 as she was a friend of my husband, Derek
Powazek.
Q: What was your initial role at Flickr and how'd this change over time?
A: I initially started out helping out with member support, writing blog posts and FAQs. I spent much of the first few years codifying Flickr's policies and processes around issues of abuse and advocacy. Ultimately, I became the person that the most challenging cases were escalated up to, and as a result, I learned a lot about how to deal with the most difficult people. I also had an active hand with the implementation of Filters (Flickr's adult wall), Internationalization, Video, and People in Photos (esp. with issues around privacy). I spent quite a bit of time on the phone with Yahoo lawyers around the world trying to better understand the ins and outs of laws to ensure that we were doing our very best for our members in protecting their rights and not settling for the easiest path.
Q: What was your most meaningful contribution(s) to Flickr
success?Q: What was your initial role at Flickr and how'd this change over time?
A: I initially started out helping out with member support, writing blog posts and FAQs. I spent much of the first few years codifying Flickr's policies and processes around issues of abuse and advocacy. Ultimately, I became the person that the most challenging cases were escalated up to, and as a result, I learned a lot about how to deal with the most difficult people. I also had an active hand with the implementation of Filters (Flickr's adult wall), Internationalization, Video, and People in Photos (esp. with issues around privacy). I spent quite a bit of time on the phone with Yahoo lawyers around the world trying to better understand the ins and outs of laws to ensure that we were doing our very best for our members in protecting their rights and not settling for the easiest path.
A: Co-authoring Flickr's Community Guidelines with George Oates. As the community grew, we wanted to find a way to document what Flickr was in a tangible way and the guidelines grew out of a conversation during our daily commute back and forth from San Francisco to Sunnyvale. We weren't sure that "Don’t be creepy. You know the guy. Don't be that guy." would pass muster with the lawyers, but it did. I continue to see fingerprints of Flickr's Community Guidelines throughout the web and it makes me happy.
Q: Did you have any traditions or rituals that helped define Flickr's culture?
A: For as long as possible, every new hire spent at least a couple of weeks answering member support emails. It was a great way for new team members to learn how Flickr worked, become comfortable with the system, and see the sorts of issues that our members were experiencing. I think it was a great way for people to build a base of knowledge when they started, especially as it was grounded within our community.
Q: How did you find out about the Yahoo acquisition? Were you involved in the discussions or heard once the deal was closed? What was your reaction?
A: I was hiking in Arches with friends and in a moment of signal the news trickled down through the ether. It's likely that I befouled the beautiful landscape with something like "ho-leeee fuuuccccckkkk...." I sent of a congratulatory email to Caterina and asked her to let her know if there was anything I could do to help. That was March. I started helping out with Member Support in April.
Q: How do you analyze the current social photo market - are there any companies/products which remind you of Flickr? Can Flickr regain momentum under Marissa?
A: Without sounding like I'm about three months from pulling up stakes and heading into to the wild to live off the grid, I'm pretty horrified by the current state of life online when it comes to privacy, community, what we share, our photos, and how our images may be used now, or in the future. I would hope that companies would really take stock of the decisions that they're making and what the long term implications are. Have you seen Black Mirror? I highly recommend the first season.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror_(TV_series)
Q: What are some Flickr alumni currently doing?
A: I think that it says a lot that people who've worked together at one company choose to work together again. There are chunks of Team Flickr that power Etsy, Urban Airship, Tiny Speck, and Tomfoolery. I'm working with Caterina Fake again at Findery, along with Maggie Nelson, whom I didn't have the pleasure of working with at Flickr, as she joined a few months after I left in 2010. Flickr alum are good people.
Did you enjoy this interview? Read more:
Post 1: Dave Shen/Yahoo
Post 2: Michael Dearing/eBay
Post 3: Craig Donato/Excite
Post 4: Stewart Bonn/Electronic Arts
Post 5: Paul McNamara/RedHat
Post 6: Jason Kincaid/TechCrunch
Post 7: Jason Shellen/Blogger
Post 8: Bob Poniatowski/TiVo
Post 9: Eva Ho, Applied Semantics
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