Whatever happened to Jim?

As you may have noticed, I started what looked to be a largish project on this blog, and then promptly stopped posting for 3 months.  There are a number of reasons for that, all of which devolve down to 'things got a little busy at work'.  It's been a pretty eventful, and mostly good, few months.  I thought I'd share a few of the highlights.

To start with, our overall group went through a reorg.  This was to adjust for the number of projects that are nearing completion, and the number that are just starting up.  I'm not going to go into details on that, except to say that I'm excited by what I see, and believe that the next few years will be at least as exciting as the last few.

This came at the same time as our midyear 'discussions', which led to somewhat more work around those.  Since I lead a small dev team, that involved some more effort and time.  I came away as impressed as ever with the level of effort that our organization puts into these things.

I have also gotten involved in some of the future planning, and that, frankly, can take up as much time as I can give it just now. :)

I also attended a great workshop at Dagstuhl on Atomicity.  It was a very interesting three days, and a great opportunity to meet people that I'd only previously read, as well as meet again a few that I did know - even if only marginally.  It was fantastic to be able to step back from the day to day product grind and learn about ideas, and trade thoughts, with this community.

And, of course, there were a bunch of other detail items that I just won't bother with here.  The upshot is that the last three months have been a series of sprints, and that has kept me from posting until now.  Hopefully, I'll be able to balance this a bit more in the coming months.