Tim and I aren’t “businessmen” (though I joke about it), we’re edtechs who have an intimate understanding of higher ed. We have a strong sense of where technology and teaching converge in interesting ways, and remain committed to augmenting what we’ve helped build at UMW and share it far and wide.
We don’t advertise. We don’t use our interface to play psychological games. We don’t hate-sell through fear and uncertainty as so many in the web hosting world do. We don’t and won’t take VC funding. We won’t be bought, which means we won’t sell you out. And while we do have the best service and cheapest prices around, more than anything we have an ethos that is rooted in the vision of helping people understand how the web works and use that knowledge to return teaching and learning to the scale of the individual—the only way it can be done right. That is what education is, and that is what we are all about.
(emphasis mine) – look for any other edtech company that makes a strong statement for its users. Few and far between. I’ve been happily hosting all of my own stuff with Reclaim Hosting since day 1. Best hosting ever, paired with some really fantastic people running the show.
Thanks for the kind words D’Arcy. Your support from the early days of Hippie Hosting on has always been crucial, even when it felt like doing all of this wasn’t worth the trouble and risk. Some days it’s smooth sailing, other days (particularly recently for me) it’s a bit rougher. It means a lot to read this and know that it’s all worth it for the people.
It’s been a heck of a great journey from Hippiehosting days (do not tell Tim the old web url has a redirect loop, do not, he does not need to fix it). It’s been so long since I complained about my webhosting that I forget that it was a fairly regular activity.
Thanks Reclaim, let’s keep Tim smiling.
Couldn’t agree more, D’Arcy!
One of the other great things about Reclaim is that it is a venue for learning. Not just the teaching and learning that educators can tap into in their courses, but the personal learning that guys like me, who have pretty much no background in coding or computer science can engage in. Ever since I signed up for Reclaim, I’ve been empowered and encouraged by Jim, Tim, Alan, Brian, and you to get in there, make mistakes and come out the other end with more knowledge than before.
That’s pretty damn cool if you ask me.
Yeah – that’s what sets Reclaim apart from the other services that have come before it. Edublogs was great, but was just about a blog. Wikispaces was good too, but it was just a wiki. Reclaim gives people (nerds and non-nerds) access to the tools as well as the community of people who are playing with stuff. Hacking, even.
I was just at a Beakerhead session, where Patrick Finn was discussing technology as stemming from the Greek root “techne” – technology as skills and ability, not just the machinery. Reclaim kind of helps build capacity for both sides of that coin. Awesome.