Feb 22 2010
One Door closes. Other Doors Open.
Life’s weird, it puts you in odd, uncomfortable situations and occasionally out of the chaos potentially wonderful opportunities materialize when you least expect them. For example:
This week I am winding down a consulting gig that got cut short by the client’s management who decided 2 weeks ago to cut the budget on the project I was on. Really disappointing given the effort the firm made to drag me in (and the things I put on hold in order to take the gig!), and of course there’s the loss of the income. (*sigh*)… but this is the life of a consultant. Stuff happens, gigs occasionally get pulled out from under you.
The day after that happened (10 days ago) I got a call from a recruiter in San Jose about an interesting opportunity with a company in the South Bay. A few days later I had a good phone interview with the CTO. Then, I got to the next stage: a phone interview this past week with one of the firm’s directors which went spectacularly well and was one of the most enjoyable work/intro conversations I’ve had in a long time. So interesting in fact I am flying out to San Francisco next week to drive down and meet the whole team to see if the chemistry continues.
(And, because of the insanity of airline ticket pricing I’ll have to stay in SF for a week or the ticket prices go thru’ the roof. [yes, yes, poor me: a week in SF!] I am trying to arrange a few more interviews to fill out the week: anyone having interesting gigs I might be a fit for in San Francisco — see my LinkedIn profile — should feel free to drop me a note!)
But, as the saying goes “Wait! there’s more…” At the end of last week a good friend of mine called with the news that a mutual friend of ours would like me to help out with a new firm-wide architecture development plan he’s working on at a major financial firm. That would be very cool too.
Last week also saw my other little side venture, MacIndie (a very nifty resource for Mac and iPhone/iPad Developers) start to gain some traction with several hundred new readers and a bunch of new followers on Twitter and mention in a few other developer blogs. (more like this please!)
Then, to make matters even more interesting (wait, there’s still more…) – I just starting playing with an idea that could turn into the #1 killer business app for the new Apple iPad. I can’t give away any details, but suffice it to say this would be to enterprise and mobile productivity what Excel was to accounting/business-analysis or Photoshop was to graphics design. Of course it’s one of those things that’s big enough that I can’t do it alone – it’s going to require at least some Angel or a small amount of VC funding to pull off and a couple of other programers (there’s only so much code I can write by myself) and a really good user-experience designer, but if I can get it rolling, it’ll be big. Really, really, really big.
What to do .. what do do… ? Two possibly great leads in the span of 1 week, some good MacIndie traction and one really freakin’ huge, monster killer idea. Coolness.
One door closes, other doors open. The hard part is knowing which door(s) to step through, and keeping your balance (and your wits about you) until you do…
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