Technology T'ai Chi

Well, 2009 has been quite a year.

I have found myself involved in some things that were not part of my consciousness at the beginning of the year.

When last January came in, I was working for a large midwestern bank, that had shortly before been eaten by another large midwestern bank.  So it goes.  (I miss Kurt.)

I learned a great deal there about enterprise computing.  And how it is possible to manage thousands of servers and tens of thousands of desktops and laptops without having everything just plain burst into flames.

I learned a lot about project management there, too.  That is a skillset that everyone needs.

So I have a great deal of gratitude for Large Midwestern Bank, now a part of Other Large Midwestern Bank.

But about halfway through the year, we parted  company, LMBnapoOLMB and I, so I took my consulting full time.  (I’ve been serving the small- and medium-sized business and small-office/home-office markets for about 16 years.)  Much of what applies in the enterprise can also be useful in the SMB/SOHO space.

But this is also the year that completely redefined networking, at least for me and many other “displaced persons” and “professionals in transition”.

I had always enjoyed getting out and meeting people – not a problem.  And I was on LinkedIn long before I left LMBnapoOLMB.  But I had eschewed Facebook and Twitter as frivolous.

Then I re-connected with some friends from High School. People I hadn’t seen in over twenty years.  Some in over thirty.  And I met a bunch of other people who I would not have otherwise met.  I gained a whole new respect for social media.  I have studiously avoided MySpace, however.  I mean, there are limits.

I took my own networking advice:  Go where you don’t belong. I started going to social media gatherings.  I went to one meeting (and plan to go back) of the Cleveland Digital Publishing Users Group.  I joined the Lake Erie Moose Society (that’s a group about blogging, in case you were wondering).  And of course, the Social Media Club of Cleveland.

These are all wonderful, friendly, upbeat, extremely smart people, most of whom are younger and ALL of whom are far cooler than I.

I am very grateful for the people I’ve met this year.  I could try to name you all, but I would miss someone.

I am not sure what the coming year will bring.  I have some things I want to get into, and I am pretty sure I’m going to try and sit for the CISSP exam.  I plan to get a new smartphone, as soon as I can build a business case.

Whatever comes along, I will try and approach the new year with the same calm I’ve exercised in the past.  I hope we get to meet so that I can help you do the same.

Until next time…

Phil

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 31st, 2009 at 5:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.