A new life

Yesterday was my last day working for a multi-billion dollar, many thousand employee multinational telephone and IT services organisation. I am now working with Mark Rittman and Jon Mead as part of Rittman Mead Consulting. Mark has already outlined some of the things I will be doing over the coming months. But now I would like to take the opportunity to talk about some of the other things I will be getting up to and the changes that come from moving from a big, generalist organisation to a small and agile specialist.

Moving on means handing back some of the trappings of corporate life, such as company issue laptop computers, cell phones, charge cards and the like. And acquiring my own tools to do the job. For example, I am now getting use to my new (self-provided) cellphone and my new Apple MacBook Pro and that also means getting use to new software and new key combinations to do tasks that were 'autopilot' activities in the past. Moving on also means saying good-bye to former colleagues and customers or to put it another way, friends. But this is not a separation on bad terms, the door is open for me to provide specialist consulting through Rittman Mead to my former customers.

One of the things that especially attracted me to working with Mark and Jon was the emphasis placed on research, study and sharing back to the community. It is expected that I should propose presentations for conferences, speak at user group meetings and write both here on my own blog and also as a contributor to the Rittman Mead Consulting website. In fact I have already put in my first proposal for a conference talk for Collaborate 08 in Denver, CO next April. I will be also be looking at writing BI pieces for other websites, but more on that later.

This is a trial posting through ecto software on my MacBook - I may decide to go back to LiveWriter if the trial does not go well