As we approach the one year anniversary of IdeaStorm, it's time to take a short walk down memory lane to see where we have been and what we have done as a community.
February 16, 2007: The birth of IdeaStorm. In the first 24 hours we had more than 250 members and almost 175 ideas.
In less than a month, offering Linux was one of the most requested and highly voted ideas. So, we launched a survey to find out what distribution of Linux our customers wanted most.
During the spring you continued to deliver great ideas, and we listened. From the conversations it was obvious that we should make Windows XP available again on several customer PC systems. Then began the open source revolution, and we announced that Dell would begin to offer Ubuntu on select consumer systems in the U.S. This was just the first of many open source announcements (Linux PCs worldwide and Ubuntu on XPS M1330).
In the summer months we had clear feedback to give our customers more options. We were excited to announce that on XPS systems, Inspiron notebooks and Dimension desktops customers could choose "no software pre-installed". In addition, for existing customer, we launched a software uninstall utility on Dimension and Inspiron systems in the U.S. Beyond functionality, we also added color and more innovative design to our consumer PCs.
The fall brought changes on IdeaStorm itself including a blog to make communication between the moderators and the community and a new look. Also, per your request, we made sure that Dell Financial Services customers knew how to opt-out of having their information shared with third-party marketers.
Over the past three months we gained several new team members, launched our own forum, StormRoom, and created a plan for site and process enhancements.
So, where to now? Over the past year the community has submitted more than 8,500 ideas and grown to almost 36,000 registered users. From this first year we have learned a lot and know there is still so much more that can be done to help make the IdeaStorm community more innovative.
Beginning this week, several changes will be made to the IdeaStorm site based on what you, the community have suggested. As of today, just a few changes have been made to clean up the look of IdeaStorm (no text overlap and better spacing).
Tomorrow, the graphic below will be more than just an image. IdeaStormers will be able to click on each part to post an idea, promote recent ideas, discuss on Storm Room and see our Ideas in Action.
Stay tuned for more announcements on site changes and watch for a few surprises as we celebrate one year of IdeaStorm. Thanks again to the entire IdeaStorm community for all your great ideas and contributions to the conversation!