Mergers and Acquisitions: Redefining Business as Usual

all the positive buzz is worthless if we don’t pull off a great integration between Nine Lives and the Penton Technology Group, a highly successful media organization that serves IT administrators and IT developers.

There is plenty of off-line chatter, too. I’ve received voicemails from readers asking if I’m really staying. (Answer: Absolutely yes.)

Some folks are asking about Nine Lives co-founder Amy Katz’s strategy to run Nine Lives as a division of Penton. (Short answer: She’ll rock.)

Amy is now president of Nine Lives Media, a division of Penton Media. Amy reports to Peg Miller, market leader for Penton Media’s Technology Group. There’s a long-term plan for Nine Lives’ continued growth under Penton’s ownership. Sorry, I have not attached a PDF of the plan…

I’m here. I’m pumped. And I’m running editorial operations for the Nine Lives brands. Why would I walk away from the brands and communities that our team has worked so hard to build? You can’t fake my fanatical interest in our sites, our communities and our industry. I don’t co-own the sites anymore. But my DNA is in them. And I don’t plan on extracting my DNA anytime soon. Rumor has it, The VAR Guy feels the same way.

Some readers haven’t noticed some key growth steps we’ve taken in the past three-plus years. Let’s focus purely on editorial and content for a moment. Do you realize our team of contributing bloggers has grown to include Dan Berthiaume, David Courbanou, John Moore, Nicholas Mukhar, Charlene O’Hanlon and Matt Weinberger? Courbanou and Weinberger have each written more than 1,000 blogs across our sites since October 2009. And O’Hanlon has edited or written more than 1,000 blogs for us since around December 2010. But this is more than a “volume” story. Our team cares deeply about every blog they write and edit.

Yes, we’re committed to delivering the high-quality content and sponsorship programs you expect from us.

Yes, I still love what I do. (And I think Amy would say the same thing about her role.)

Yes, we’ve got a talented team of contributors. I hope they continue to love the Nine Lives brands as much as I do.

No, we can’t say everything will be “exactly the same.” We’d be idiots to do everything exactly the same for years to come. The worlds of media and IT evolve too quickly to sit still and rest on our laurels. Penton has some incredible resources that could help us to further accelerate our business. We’d be fools not to leverage those resources while maintaining the best of what we have — our brands, our insights and our community relationships.