Tue, 11 Apr 2006

New Ventures

Yesterday was my first day working for Obtiva Corp., a small agile software development consulting company based in Naperville, Illinois. Kevin Taylor, the founder of Obtiva, lives in Wheaton, Illinois, about a mile from my house. My client is about 10 miles in the opposite direction. My commute yesterday morning ... was surreal. I've never in my life had a commute so short. I am excited about Obtiva for many reasons, and if you read this blog, you'll be hearing about those in the future. But first I want to relate another recent surreal experience ... leaving ThoughtWorks.

Two years ago I left the American Medical Association to work for ThoughtWorks. Getting hired at ThoughtWorks was my big break, and I will always appreciate ThoughtWorks for believing in me, and for hiring someone like me: someone with no CS education and only three years of programming experience. I met an unbelievable number of exceptional programmers there, and established friendships and collaborations that will endure for many years to come. Most of all, I learned ... so many different types of things. I obviously learned about technology, but more importantly, I learned about myself and my needs and limitations. One critical need I have is to tuck my kids into bed at night. And thankfully I had been working at ThoughtWorks and tucking my kids into bed at night for all of 2005-2006. But it couldn't last forever, and I wanted to be in a company that aligned more naturally with this need.

Despite my excitement about Obtiva, it was with a heavy heart that I left ThoughtWorks, which is surreal for me because I've always had a "don't look back" sort of mentality about former employers.

That said, my need to tuck my kids into bed at night was not the primary impetus for my job search. I will be blogging more about it in the future, so for now, I'll say that Obtiva isn't my only new venture. Some friends and I are working on a web site that we're hoping to launch in the not-too-distant future. On top of that, my canvas/Ajax work has attracted some attention and some interesting happenings are in the works there. So, I guess you could say that bubble 2.0 is the real culprit.

The work on the apprentice to journeyman patterns has slowed, and will be picked back up again after a couple of these ventures stabilize. Thankfully the content of the patterns is not going to get out of date, and therefore can be set down for a while. Ade is continuing to make progress on them, and will be presenting on them tonight at Xtc.

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