Three watershed moments in my career (Hint: One just happened)

I’ve recently made a big shift in the career department. But rather than tell you what it is right off, I want to build up to it. I think it’s kind of a cool story, so if you’ll bear with me, here are the three watershed moments of my career thus far…

Watershed moment #1: Specialization leads to consulting

In 1992, I graduated college and went to work for Texas Instruments working on mainframes. Somehow, I got exposed to Lotus Notes development. I loved it. I dove in deep, eventually leaving for a job where I could be completely focused on Notes. Notes taught me a lot about managing unstructured data and how people collaborate to get work done. I learned that, for me, interesting IT problems are those where humans and systems have to work together to get something done. And it taught me a lot about what a passionate technical community looks like. Ultimately it led to a job at a small, but up-and-coming consulting firm where I would spend the next nine years. That decision to focus on Notes development was a watershed moment.

Watershed moment #2: My blog gets me a job in open source

Fast-forward to 2001. My content management practice was making a shift. Notes was falling out of favor and many of our clients were looking at WCM and DM solutions from large proprietary vendors. We started looking at open source technologies as well, but it was a tough sell to our traditional clients who had never heard of open source, and if they had, were skeptical or even fearful. We started implementing Documentum-based solutions and did that for the next three years, but I continued to dabble in open source. A revolution seemed afoot, but I couldn’t figure out the best way to jump in.

I started blogging in 2001, stopped, then started again in 2002. My rationale was simple: Writing helped me learn. And, for virtually no added cost, I could multiply the benefit by sharing what I learned–particularly with coworkers, but if others got value out of it, that was okay too. The idea that if my writing helped enough people it might help the open source movement in some tiny way was a romantic notion, but seemed remote.

Then I came across Alfresco. In October of 2005 I wrote my first Alfresco-related blog post. It said simply, “Alfresco is an open source enterprise content management solution founded by one of the co-founders of Documentum,” and then included a lengthy excerpt from a Gilbane post on Alfresco’s release candidate. A month later I published a more detailed review of the product. After three or four years of blogging, I was starting to find my voice. Little did I know that I had also found a passion.

By 2006, my firm had been acquired and Alfresco was starting to look like it had legs. I looked back on my past Documentum projects and realized that Alfresco was a viable alternative as the underlying repository in every case. Open source had been around for years but it had been sneaking quietly in the back doors of my clients in the form of operating systems, developer libraries, databases, and tooling. Alfresco, and other commercial open source companies, were poised to crash through the front door with business-facing open source applications. I wanted in. I left my firm to join Optaros, an open source consultancy I had discovered through fellow content management blogger and then Optaros employee, Seth Gottlieb. My blog had gotten me a job working with a technology I loved. That was the second watershed moment.

Watershed moment #3: Wait for it…

My four years at Optaros gave me the opportunity to focus on Alfresco full-time. Not just implementing projects, although there were many. Just as important, I was able to fully-engage with the Alfresco community. I wrote blog posts and tutorials. I created add-ons and integrations and released those as open source projects. I wrote a book. I conducted code camps. I attended every event Alfresco ever put on and gave talks at most of those. I didn’t set out to be an evangelist, but that’s what I became. Did it benefit me, Optaros, and later, my own start-up, Metaversant? Of course it did. But, here’s the kicker: Acting in my own self-interest turned out to be a huge benefit to the greater Alfresco community. And I’m not alone. Many people all around the world are participating in the community in all kinds of ways to everyone’s mutual benefit.

Which brings us to the next watershed moment: Alfresco has hired me as their new Chief Community Officer. My mission is essentially to make the Alfresco community an example for all other commercial open source companies to follow. It’s a significant challenge, and I’m going to need your help. Alfresco may sign my check, but I work for the community. Therefore, you’ve got to tell me where we should take this thing. We have our ideas but yours are critical.

What this means

I’ll give specifics on how you can help in a future post. I expect that the specific strategies we undertake together will fall roughly into these buckets:

  • Motivating community members, regardless of skill set or relationship to Alfresco to engage more deeply in the community
  • Enabling the community with tools, resources, and product enhancements that leverage community contributions
  • Exposing the greatness already existing in the community, whether that’s in the form of contributions that have been made that people just don’t know about or shining a light on community contributors doing awesome things

And, of course I get to continue to work on my own community contributions like my work with Apache Chemistry, my Google Code projects, the blog, and new stuff I haven’t even thought of yet.

It was a tough decision to put the growth of my content management-focused consulting firm, Metaversant, on hold, but when Alfresco approached me about this opportunity, I had to take it. My career and my passion are already dovetailed. I do what I love, and for that I am very lucky. Who wouldn’t take the opportunity to make that an even tighter fit?

I am very excited about what this means for the community and the importance Alfresco places on its growth and well-being. I hope you are excited too. Actually, “hope” is the wrong word–I need you to be excited. Who’s with me? Ready to pitch in?

43 comments

  2. Eddie says:

    Jeff,
    Congrats on the new job.

    I’ve used you book & found it, & your blogs, very useful – so thanks.

    What I’d love to see is an “official” app store, something along the lines of the Joomla extensions directory or the Drupal modules directory.

    These extensions might come in two flavours: commercial, which have been certified by Alfresco (ie, developer pays for Alfresco to test/certify). Support for these commercial offerings would be the responsibility of the vendor.
    &
    free: w/o warranty use at your own risk. Support would be voluntary. A bit like Google code, etc.

    Some of these extensions might be quick start apps (a widget to show a google map of content if geo tagged, for example) or more fully fledged solutions (a project management application, for example).

    The overall goals would be to lower the barrier to entry of using Alfresco as a solution & encouraging a wider application & developer eco-system.

    Just my two penny worth! & best wishes for your future job,

    Eddie

  4. Joram Barrez says:

    Awesome news, Jeff!

    I’m following your blog already for a long time (even before my Alfresco-time), and I’m convinced you’re the right person for the job. Glad to have you on board!

  6. Kyle Adams says:

    Congrats on the new job!

    I also had a watershed moment in my career when discovering Alfresco a year or two ago and now Activiti is blowing me away.

    Your blog has been instrumental in helping me transition from the evil IBM empire to open-source ECM. And I thank you for that!

  8. Justin Luzier says:

    Congrats! I can’t think of anyone else who would even come close to doing this position justice. I am excited about what this opportunity means for you and the Alfresco Community!

  10. Burke Autrey says:

    Congratulations Jeff. As others have already said, great fit for you and for Alfresco. And also good for the Dallas open source community! I wish you the best.

  14. Tom McQueeney says:

    Jeff,

    Congratulations on your new career direction. Your part-time work helping the Alfresco community over the years through your tutorials, tips, sample code, and your book have been tremendously valuable in easing Alfresco adoption. It will be great for Alfresco developers to have you devoting full time to creating a more vibrant community to share knowledge on how best to use the product.

    Good luck.

    -Tom

  18. Claudia Beatriz says:

    Jeff,

    awesome news!!!! It only makes sense and Alfresco is very lucky to have you!!!!
    Congratulations!

  20. Silvion Moesan says:

    Hi Jeff,

    Congratulations! I think every Alfrescian is reading your blogs and therefore you already are the link between the company Alfresco and the community. Hope to work with you soon and helping us set up the Dutch community!

    Silvion Moesan
    Senior Alfresco Consultant
    CIBER Netherlands

  21. David Whale says:

    Well done Jeff. Have enjoyed your articles even reading them upside down! Could do with a lot more support in NZ and the open source communtiy could do with a lot more cooperation between players. Not a coder, but a fiddler and hacker to try and deliver proof of concepts for people – otherwise they have little incentive to climb the steep learning curve that most OSS has.
    Once again congrats!

  23. Jim Munz says:

    Congrats Jeff! They picked the best person for the job and I wish you all the best. Let me know how I can help once you get settled in the new position.

  25. Dafydd James says:

    Congratulations Jeff! I have followed your blog since I started working with Alfresco nearly a year ago, it’s been very helpful to me and I wish you all the best in your new role.

    FYI, a group of us recently founded a Independent Alfresco UK User Group (with Alfresco’s blessing) – it would be great to chat some time about our thoughts on the Alfresco community and how matters could be improved. We’d love our activities to improve the general state of the Alfresco community.

  28. Igor Blanco says:

    Congratulations Jeff! Congratulations Alfresco! No better choice could be done.

    This is great news for all Alfresco Community users and developers, the community version was needing some love and Alfresco seems to be aware of it… great news.

  35. Marco Serpilli says:

    Congratulations Jeff !
    I’am sure communtiy will grow a lot in value and experience with your passion.

  36. Chris says:

    Not sure why it took me a few days to see this but let me add to the congratulations. It’s great news and I know it will mean good things for you and Alfresco. Looking forward to seeing what comes next!

  37. Cathie Armstrong says:

    Jeff – you are AWESOME!!! Congratulations to you! I’m both extremely pleased for you, and proud OF you! Great news and I wish you the very best of everything!!!!

  41. Patrick Harris says:

    Congratulations Jeff. I’ve been following your posts on Plone, Alfresco and Drupal for years, occasionally firing a selfrighteous “See, this guy GETS it!” at my carpeted cubicle. What would I like to see more of from Alfresco? Info and training, a clear product/technology path ahead with a well-signposted onramp for non-enterprise-funded individuals and small-business consultants. As it stands, Alfresco’s paid, professional certification programme looks like eight-hundred bucks and nowhere to go. Some find books published but no clear curricula at university.alfresco.com and the same short list of partners. We all need to make money, but I think Alfresco needs to be less afraid of the community and look to grow training from it. Finally, Asia — open-source friendly, growing (quickly, from a low base, in a relatively uncrowded enterprise-tech space with young institutions and people). Nobody here in Hong Kong — that’s a mistake. The very best of luck Jeff — haven’t been this excited about Alfresco since that Cignex webinar a few years back!

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