9.6 Years: On Beyond Novell

A Brief Retrospective
I started working directly for Novell on September 26 of 1997. Prior to working for Novell, I was a Certified Novell Instructor, teaching all angles of NetWare, as well as other advanced network administration classes. I was recruited into Novell to do technical field sales. After two years, I took on a role as product evangelist for the new ZENworks product line, then briefly served as product manager for the management console iManager before becoming director of product management for the eDirectory product line. After that, I moved into marketing and served as director of marketing for GroupWise and Novell Linux Desktop, and finally shifted into my current role as user community guy/podcaster/blogger. In my current role I got to work with the members of Novell Users International, the open source community, and the brilliant engineers of SUSE and Ximian, as well as those of traditional Novell backgrounds. It has been a fantastic run.

April March 24th, 2007 was my final day working at Novell. Leaving will be anything but easy. The people who make up Novell’s technical community, both outside and inside of the company, have been wonderful to me. Still, I want to try something new. Spending almost a decade at a single company is a long time.

So where to?
This week, I started at Bungee Labs, an exciting start-up company based in Orem, Utah. Bungee Labs is making what open source business advocate Matt Asay called a “Sourceforge for the 21st Century.” Bungee’s debut at the O’Reilly Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco last week garnered this very thorough review. To me, Bungee Labs appears to be the first company that might be able to deliver on the promise (and hype) of Web 2.0, and on a grand scale rather than just one small niche area.

At the core of Bungee Labs’ strategy is the need to build a strong community of developers for the platform that Bungee offers. My job will be to help build that community. More specifically, I get to help guide the external awareness and advocacy effort for that company, and help to steer the company’s culture to be web savvy, engaged, and interactive with its community. Going to a company that has community at the very core of its strategy was a proposition too intriguing to pass up.

I’ll be working for one Alex Barnett, an extremely well-regarded technologist who, along with a few others such as Robert Scoble, helped to influence what became known as the “new” Microsoft. Of course the proposition of working with an ex-Microsoftie raised my suspicions, so before taking the job I researched Alex’s name thoroughly and could not find a single negative statement about him. The guy really seems to grasp how Internet social culture affects how businesses must relate to their various constituents and stakeholders. In other words, Alex groks community.

Loose Ends
As I understand it, Novell Open Audio will continue, with Erin Quill taking over where I leave off.

I plan to keep blogging, and I very much hope that many of my readers from both the open source and Novell communities will stick with me. Bungee Labs’ technology will be something to watch, and I will certainly continue to discuss issues involving free and open source software as they relate to Bungee’s platform.

To learn more about my new company, I encourage you to check out Bungee’s videos:

• Introduction to Bungee Concepts I
• Introduction to Bungee Builder
• Introduction to Bungee Concepts II

Lastly, please share your thoughts, either by public comment or private email. The new email address is “ted” at “bungeelabs” dot com.

Loose Ends Addenda:

• Yes, I will still be presenting on Novell’s behalf at LinuxFest Northwest.
• Yes, I will still be coming to LugRadio Live.
• Yes, Bungee’s site will soon be removing the iframes. (Sheesh!)