I spent the last month on vacation. This was the longest stretch of time I have ever taken off. I had such grand plans for it. I even began keeping a todo list and wrote down every cool idea I had. The list grew and grew. I checked off perhaps three things by the time the vacation was over. Ah, well. At least I played some WoW.
As my friends and colleagues know, I took the time to really think through what it was that I wanted to be doing and where I wanted to be doing it. I feel lucky and blessed that I had enough opportunities and options to make a considered decision. (And to everyone who helped me along the way -- especially those that I won't have a chance to work directly with this time around -- please know I wanted to, and thank you all so much!)
The ideal job (for me) is not only focused on something that I am passionate about, but also an opportunity that has the potential to have a big impact on people and change the world for the better. (And as an added degree of difficultly, geography played a huge part of the decision. While my profession is relatively location-agnostic, the world of finance is largely coupled to a handful of cities on the coasts. Plus we miss you, friends and family back in NYC. We really do.)
And thus I find myself happily one week into my new role at Google. As you know, I am passionate about building developer communities and ecosystems, on finding ways in which all of us working together can create more wonderful things than any of us can do on our own. Google is in an incredible position to bring value to that ecosystem. We've already seen what can happen with a bit of openness, and a whole lot of cool. And the best is yet to come, as we work with the community-at-large to understand what can be done together.
My role will undoubtedly be many things, but perhaps more than anything it will simply be listening to all of you. Consider me a conduit, an eager ear, someone who wants to learn from you what you need from us to help you build the next generation of technology and applications.
So check out my new "home" over at code.google.com. The teams working on this are absolutely incredible, and they have already done amazing things. I particularly love the work that has been done with the Open Source community, such as Summer of Code and the Open Source projects. And the APIs and protocols (my speciality) are already extending the boundaries of what can be done using the web as a platform. The best is no doubt yet to come. Especially when we work together to build it.
I will continue to post about the industry-at-large and general technology here on this site, but I'll be moving anything Google specific over to our official blogs. As always, nothing I write on this site is intended to reflect the opinions of my employer. If anything, expect to hear more from me here about all the incredible things that companies like Microsoft and Yahoo and Amazon are doing. I firmly believe that we are all in this together, that we are all allies in the bigger picture.
So again, thank you to everyone for your support in getting here. Fortunately, this new job will mean we will continue to work with one another in the future. So start thinking about how you would like to see us grow the developer ecosystem, and please don't be shy; come let me know what you are thinking.