This is pretty well-known by now, but I haven’t blogged it yet: I’ve left Navigator Systems (now Hitachi Consulting). On Monday I start my new gig with Optaros and I couldn’t be more excited.

Leaving was one of the toughest decisions I’ve ever had to make. I started working for Navigator almost nine years ago as employee number twenty-five. During that time I worked with extremely sharp people on some of the best clients in Dallas (and a couple elsewhere).

Beyond the sharp people and the cool projects, Navigator was just a great place to work. The character of the leadership, the radically open communication, and highly collaborative environment were all critical cultural elements.

In the end, though, it was time to move on. Time to start a new chapter. And I’m pretty pumped about who I’ve chosen to write that chapter with. Optaros first caught my eye a year or so ago. I came across Seth Gottlieb’s blog and added it to my blogroll immediately. Seth heads up the ECM practice at Optaros so at the time I figured he’d have some really relevant insights to leverage as I built out my practice.

As a followed his posts (and upon talking to Seth in-person at a conference) I could tell Optaros was a company that potentially had many of the same cultural characteristics as Navigator. And with its focus on open source it was pretty hard to resist.

So, long story short, I start with Optaros on Monday. I’ll be working with Optaros’ local business development guy to grow Dallas and the surrounding geography, playing architect roles on multiple projects, and working with Seth and others on open source content management research, publications, and presentations.