Ch-Ch-Changes (lyrics by David Bowie)

For the past 13 years I have been working on a Business Intelligence product sold mostly to manufacturing companies world-wide. Originally the tool we used was Forest & Trees; however, spending too much time dealing with its shortcomings as a lesser development tool we switched to Delphi 1 a few months after it was released. What a great decision that was!

With the advent of .NET and C#, I realized it was important to update my skills so for the past 3.5 years I have been learning .NET in my spare time. The main reason for my original blog was to track interesting posts on mostly .NET so I could go back and search on them at a later time. Things changed however at last year's DevConnections conference. I sat in on many SharePoint presentations and was instantly smitten with SharePoint. For the past 9 months, I have been reading up and messing around with SharePoint. I created a separate SharePoint-specific blog earlier this year to keep track of interesting SharePoint links.

Late last year a consulting company contacted me (after finding my blog) about the possibility of working for them. At the time I was not interested since I was not actively looking but after hearing about the opportunity and meeting different people, I became more and more interested in the possibility of making a move. After careful consideration, consultation from Andrew Connell and Jim Holmes, and discussions with my wife, I decided it was too good of an opportunity to pass up. The biggest reason is the ability to work with SharePoint on a daily basis and to work with wicked smart folks such as Sean and Leon who I know I can learn tons from. Therefore, I am happy to announce I will now be a full-time SharePoint and ASP.NET consultant for a consulting company here in Cincinnati starting July 30. It is definitely going to be a challenge since there is tons I need to learn with SharePoint but it is a challenge I am ready for and excited about.

As Scott mentioned in his post on making a move to Microsoft, leaving my current employer was a super difficult decision but it was the best decision for my family and I. My last day is tomorrow (July 23). I wish John, Tom, Mark, Michele, my wife, and the rest of the group the best of luck.

If you are in need of SharePoint consulting, let me know!