Welcome

Greetings and welcome to my blog. I appreciate your stopping by and am thrilled to introduce this blog. I will post blog entries at least once a week with a goal of two a week, and I will try to establish a pace and a rhythm as I get more accustomed to this activity.

Until fairly recently (May 19, 2009 to be precise) I worked at a social media company. Unemployment is a state I have rarely found myself in over the past 21 years of being a career career guy. The last time I found myself laid off was in 2002, similarly dismissed from a distressed dot com at a time when everybody in Internet business was also being laid off.

Things are a little different this time around. First, I am not as panicked. Perhaps I should be, I am seven years older and theoretically have that many more responsibilities. Second, it seemed like a scarlet letter back then--to be laid off was sort of embarrassing. Now I literally find myself in an elite club. "Which wave were you let go in?" becomes the hallmark question to determine which chapter of the club I belong to. It isn't a stamp of rejection, it has become a badge of pride. Perhaps that's because this is pandemic across all industries, in all countries this time around.

I was released in the "second wave" of layoffs along with some very prestigious compatriots. Somehow to be let go with social media pioneers Rusty Williams and Chip Matthes took some of the sting out of the experience. If the company could afford to let either of those guys go, then it is natural to expect they can let me go, or a magnificent software architect like Robert Gillis. These people are legends to me--they think WAAAY outside the box and at least two years ahead of their time at all times. Rusty is a genius at seeing the potential of a social media application as a business solution. Chip connects logical concepts in pioneering ways. Gillis is a die-hard big-picture guy--he doesn't make software, he makes software factories.

That isn't to say that others in my wave (or in other waves) weren't amazing folks, or to say that their dismissals didn't contribute to the calm I am experiencing in my own unemployment. There were too many names to cite in this blog post, but a lot of good folks were let go that day. I am pleased to hear that already a few are starting new work. The other two names I will cite in this post are Jon Bourne and Stephanie Shane.

I mention these two not only because they had so much to do with making the company I worked at successful at its height, but also because of how many places we have all worked together. Although you will see in a few paragraphs that I won't name the company I was released from, I will mention all the other places I worked with Jon and Steph. They were part of the crew that interviewed me for a job I eventually got at SilverPlatter. We next worked together at a company called Inforonics. Then it was Prospero, which was acquired by the company I will not name. Four companies in total, and at each one, these two were dynamos.

It is thanks to the advent and prevalence of social media that this unemployed club exists and that we are as well or better connected than when we all worked under the same roof every day. I am in touch with as many or more (former) co-workers on a daily basis than I ever was when I worked and attended meetings literally all day long.

While I was working, I had been asked many times to start blogging for the company. While I had many ideas for blog posts, I am in many ways glad I resisted the requests--these are my ideas; I didn't have these ideas at work (most of them likely occurred in the shower) and I don't feel they would have come to any worth as the intellectual property of a struggling social media dot com. They would have served as fodder, just more UGC for the sake of demonstrating that our company emits UGC. No one was going to act on these ideas. Not that posting them in my own blog is going to see them acted on, but at least they will be credited to me and I will "own" them.

I should add that I contractually agreed not to say disparaging things about my former employer...not that I would anyway, but you will note that I am not going to name them in this blog, nor will I permit comments that either name them or disparage them to remain on this blog. It was a good company, with good intentions, started by people with good ideas. There are still a ton of great people there, they have a great product, and the best customers in the world. How could I say anything against them? My dismissal wasn't divisive, it was for their own survival. I am still friends with some of the customers on Facebook and if anything, my "not parking so close to the building" every day has drawn me closer to many of my former teammates.

So with that, you see that I have a propensity to ramble, and that is the only warning I will give that I do go on, and the closest I will come to an apology for it. I can write at length on any and every topic and have many friends who will attest to my ability to fill a text field to the rim.

Please feel free to drop comments or email me with ideas and reactions to the notions I put in these posts. I love interacting with folks online and appreciate your time.