I learned yesterday that several more people are leaving DLI, or have already left. Michal left last Friday; Ross is leaving in a couple of weeks; David Johnson left sometime last week; Jim will be leaving at the end of the month; Paul of course left about three weeks ago; and Chuck will be quitting soon to go to mime school in Paris. That’s six folks in a matter of weeks. And of course it doesn’t count all the folks who stayed for a few days/weeks like the sociology content developer and the American History I product manager. And then there’s Trish, the WCiv I content developer. And of course all the people who got fired a couple of months ago. All told, that’s about twenty people since I began working there. I’m sure more will be quitting soon. It’s inevitable.

It’s especially inevitable when you take into account the tension that seems always to exist between production and QC. Chuck felt the full force of this yesterday. Kali and Adam made a decision and recommendation to Layne that the sociology text is not fit. Fit for what? For a focus group this weekend in D.C. It’s not going to be sold or anything — it’s just going to be shown to profs for initial feedback. I would say the purpose is to introduce the idea of an interactive textbook as much as anything. But now that this recommendation has been made, who knows if it will even take place. And so Chuck was fairly disgusted about the whole thing and rather frustrated as well. I met him and Wellington and that’s where he explained all this.