Hard work, of course, is important, but our real secret is collaboration.

At the outset, we formed an extremely active editorial advisory board. I recruited some terrific columnists, and we partnered with organizers of industry events in the hopes of finding good stories and authors. More recently, I have been using social media sites as a way to identify new authors.

All these approaches bear fruit.  Recently Jake Iskhakov of Safety Lift followed up on LinkedIn. He wrote, “I was interested to learn how you come up with the ideas for posts. Would you be interested in writing about Data Center Safety and including physical safety as a section?” Jake and I will be talking in the next few days to see what we can come up with.

We continue to partner and collaborate with as many industry figures as possible. I’m especially proud of our long-time partnership with the 7x24Exchange, one of our earliest partners. Time after time, we have supported each other’s efforts in small ways: contributing content to each other, hosting panels, and offering advice. And their events are a lot of fun.

More recently, we jointly developed an eight-page supplement to our November-December issue. You can find it in the center spread of our new issue. It will also be an independent handout that 7x24Exchange will use to improve its already substantial reach in the industry and to paint a current picture of itself to members and event attendees. We’re going to do more of these.

The lesson: Mission Critical depends on collaboration, and we are always discussing new ways to work with others. This philosophy extends to our sales, enews, webinar, marketing, video, events, research, and website departments. We may not be able to execute on every idea, but we are willing to build partnerships and develop content with all the vendors, trade groups, readers, and consultants in the industry. We want to hear your ideas. And if today’s idea doesn’t quite work, how about tomorrow’s idea?