It’s time to grow up! And that’s exactly what we are doing over here at GigaOM – growing a little bigger and adding two new members to the core GigaOM team. I present to you some of the changes we are making, as we expand our little publishing business.

For first six months, three of us – Katie, Liz and I – were running pretty hard, multitasking and watching out for each other, preempting our individual choke points without even trying.

Still, as we have grown, we have struggled to keep the wheels on the cart. From my own personal standpoint, it has been a new lesson in time management, and multitasking. Switching roles between business functions, reporter and editor, and part-time janitor has been tough – and very humbling. It is even harder for someone who has lead a relatively care-free life of a magazine writer.

Perhaps it was about month ago, a good friend (a non-techie to boot!) suggested that in order to grow you have to work with people who have a multiplier impact on your productivity. Productive teams are efficient teams, and eventually lead to profitable, stable companies. Good advice, and perhaps that was the yardstick I used when we started to look for new team members.

Given how closely Katie, Liz and I work, it was also important for me to make additions to the team, and still maintain that fine balance. Two people who fit the bill perfectly are Paul Kapustka and Joey Wan.

Paul, as some of you might have noticed, has already started as the Managing Editor of GigaOM Network. His primary task will be shepherding our two new properties – NewTeeVee and GigaGamez (to launch soon) – working with the writers and contributing bloggers to ensure that we maintain quality, and continue to offer a premium experience across the network.

In addition, Paul is going to write about video over IP and voice over IP. Why Paul? Simple – I have known him for years and always enjoyed his work, especially when he was writing for Information Week, Advanced IP Pipeline, and most recently at Pulver.com. VoIP bloggers know him well…. all too well.

He is a stable, sensible veteran who has been in the reporting trenches for a long time. He understands how to meld the new-fangled blogging with old-fashioned gumshoe styled reporting.

Paul would be an ideal mentor for some of our younger team members. But more than anything, he believes in our model of combining classic journalism with blogging and analysis. And perhaps, there will be fewer of those spelling errors, misplaced commas and late night rambling posts by me! Welcome buddy!

Next up is Joey Wan, who is joining us as Manager of Business Operations. While she starts on Monday next, she has already initiated some procedural changes that will help streamline the business aspect of GigaOM.

I owe Nick Douglas, former editor of Valleywag, for introducing me to Joey. He ran a poll, which Joey obviously won! Let’s just say, we had a reason to chat when I ran into her at a SF TechSessions event, and we started talking about the challenges of running a business … blah! blah! blah! She did not have the classic ‘manager’ experience, but her organizational skills impressed me.

She worked on STIRR events; she knows pretty much everyone in the little geek world we call Silicon Valley, and oh, did I say, she is organized. A blogger herself, she understood our business quite well. Rest of the team gave their thumbs up – and to make a long story longer – she starts on Monday. Maybe she can get that About page fixed and updated! Welcome Joey!

In addition to these two fine people, we have added Judi Sohn to our growing team of bloggers. Judi is going to be contributing to Web Worker Daily on a regular basis, and already she is busy making our lives better. She has 11 tips on how to better manage your time. (Judi, mind reading is not part of the job… Seriously!)

Sohn, who lives on the right side of the country, is an awesome blogger. Anne 2.0 introduced me to her, and I spent an entire evening reading her blog. I think she is destined for blogging stardom. Judi will be working with Anne Zelenka, Chris Gilmer, and Jackson West on WWD, a site that is very near and dear to my heart. We are putting out some great content on that site, and hopefully you will pay us a visit there.

So what does this all mean? First and foremost, we are responding to the needs and wishes of our reader community. This frees me up to write more, spend time with start-ups and also be able to bring more clarity into what we are doing and where we are going.

The addition of new members to the team comes at an opportune time. The next few weeks will be quite challenging for me on a very personal level, and I can rest assured that our blogs are in good hands, even when my eyes are turned away from the browser.

Finally a big thanks to our readers – old and new – for rewarding us with your time, thoughts and patronage. We strive to do better, and hopefully your tips, suggestions and criticisms will flow freely!

Photo by Joey Wan via Flickr