Random Technology Ramblings

Well, I have landed but before I talk about where let me tell you what I have been doing with myself. November 11th was technically my last day with Microsoft but the 6th was my hard deadline for completing all projects. The weekend of the 7th my son and I had a campout planned with the Webelos. This campout was not only a great bonding weekend with my son, but it proved to be very enlightening for me personally as well. I took the opportunity to speak with several of the Dad?s many who had experienced their own layoffs over the years. I learned a lot and I returned home with some new personal commitments to keep me busy during my transition.

These commitments included:

1. I would never eat lunch alone.
   • This commitment would allow me to work my professional networks and it turned out to be a great way to capitalize on a lot of free lunches.
2. I would read one non-technical book per day.
   • This was a huge thing for me. I just don?t do non-geek well but I really wanted to take the opportunity to stretch myself.
3. I would apply for one new job each day and talk to someone about a job every day.
   • This commitment slipped quickly as I knew what I would be doing fairly soon.

So how did I do?

With #1 I am happy to report except for one day I had lunch with someone every day. Okay, well yes, I am counting a few with my wife as ?with someone?. This goal was a lot of fun and did open up some interesting opportunities. I plan to continue this commitment at some level even while working. I hope to have lunch with someone outside my organization at least once a week but I will try for twice a week.

Commitment #2 was by far the most challenging. Not the reading part, but finding books that I wanted to read proved to be difficult. My goal was to read professional or personal development books but man, there are a lot of crap books out there! By far my favorite book was my reread of The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. This book will remain nearby as I plan to read it often! Next was my reread of Getting Things Done by David Allen. This book sparked me to re-GTD myself and this time I did it in my home office. Wow, everyone needs to pick up a copy of this book and more importantly DO IT! I read many other books, so many I had to start going to the library as my wife did not like all of the Amazon boxes piling up. I will try to do a post on my favorites soon.

Well, with #3 I did a good job for the first week but as several offers seemed to come in quite quickly I spent my time focusing on them.

Now the big news and the reason for this post! I am now happily employed at Neudesic. w00t! While searching for a new employment opportunity I passed up several programming consulting offers in favor of looking for a company that met both my personal and professional goal to get back to being more product focused. I wanted to develop products.

Neudesic offered me quite an exciting job and an interesting title as well. I am now Director of Product Incubation where I will be responsible for the initial justification (product research proofs of concepts and initial implementation) of product ideas for Neudesic. Neudesic has already started to work on two different product concepts and I will immediately dive into these. I am super excited to have been given this opportunity and Neudesic has been incredibly supportive. The people I have met have been outstanding!

So, that is it? I am back working and again loving what I do! Thank you to all who had let me know you were thinking of me and who helped me find all the different opportunities.