Transitions can be special times, full or grey areas, vieled agendas and often littered with misdirected intentions. They are almost always packed with adventure and, in my experience, incredible lessons. My recent forray into public companies was a fascinating transition though it proved to be extraordinarily brief - the long and short of it is that my public company vessel has now cast off and set sail back into the shark filled but more lucrative private waters. These are waters and reefs that I know well; I feel no desire to venture back into waters I've tread for so many years just yet. So I hoisted my anchor (thankfully not my petard!) and have set my sights on new land.
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architent boats career p parters vancouver Posted on: January 30th, 2011 under lifelines.
For years I've been enmeshed in startups, enjoying the adrenaline filled funding cycles, wacky ideas, breakneck development cycles and incredible people. I've finally been tempted off the midway rides by a Vancouver post-startup, one45 Software. The promise of working on a mature project with a very large user base to solve problems that will have large societal impacts was a powerful pull. Couple that with smart people and a stable, revenue positive company in a funky heritage building and I was hooked.
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career one45 reflection vancouver work Posted on: October 16th, 2010 under lifelines with 1 comments .
As I was walking to work last week I was astounded to see the ground littered with oranges and yellows — fall had pounced upon me like a stealthy cat. Back in my old Vancouver haunting grounds I knew that all was green and verdant but Calgary had already succumbed and the crisp air hinted of the snow and ice to come. This revelation both foreshadowed and provided background to the rest of the week. All changes bring mixed emotions; rarely in my life do they provide me with the absolutes; this week was no exception. Some good and some not good but overall, I think I’m ahead of the game.
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So, without much ado, I’m no longer with Cogneto and am joining my two friends Andy Dale and John Bradley to bring solid, usable, user-centric identity and authentication to the world under the mighty rubric of Wingaa.
As is often the case, transitioning from one job to another was rockier than it first looked. It was full of bitter-sweet moments mixed liberally with some sad moments and a huge swelling of excitement and hope for the future. I’ve gained a pile of insight and a good set of lessons to take to my next venture. I try when I leave a job to figure out what the best lesson was and I think that, in retrospect, we didn’t have enough transparency and that should have been a warning sign. We had a very smart group of people who were kept from seeing or helping with problems because they didn’t know about them. That’s my key lesson from this job – transparency is a hallmark of a good company.
See the sample report for an idea of that this program does.
TSM is a data management solution that is offered by IBM. It’s a huge, sprawling, flexible monstrosity that work perfectly… if you watch it and keep it fed and watered. TSM is also very scriptable and extensible.
This program attempts to give a TSM administrator a daily report that contains all the things that need to be periodically looked at. Wherever possible it will offer advice on how to fix problems found or attempt to resolve them itself. It will generate a nice email with the report and will modify the subject to flag and problems found so that you know when it’s really important to have a peek inside the report.
If you know of anything that you’d like added, you find a bug, or just can’t get it to run for you, please email me at [email protected] and I’ll see what I can do to help. Please Note: I no longer have regular access to a TSM system for testing, if you’d like troubleshooting I can probably work something remotely.
Thanks to the many people that have passed along code or suggestions and to the Wellcome Trust for funding my time at the University of Dundee.