Work has been quite busy as of late. I had completed a vision for the future of our organization's network technology, but after review it was way too technical in nature. The vision was meant to be used as a document showing what the priorities in technology should be for our business unit in order to achieve our goals. My first version of the document ended up being more of an architecture description of how to do certain things and not an overview of how changes should be prioritized and specifically how those changes would achieve our business objectives.
The rewrite of the document was quite difficult for me. I am very proud of the doc now, but struggled as I worked to take my desire to stay technical and do my job of applying technology to business. I think it is the first work I've done that is of the type that a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) would do. I still have a way to go to realize my goal of becoming a CTO, but I look forward to the path and achieving the goal.
I'll probably be going back to Europe for a week or two over the summer which I am looking forward to. AOL has a goal of making our international business profitable (which is well underway) and I'll be going over to provide technical direction on the internal IT side. Last years visits to Paris and London were enjoyable and it was good to work with our international folks. Hopefully I'll be able to stay over at least one if not two weekends and get some hiking done. Would love to hike in Ireland or Scotland, but I guess that is a walking subject!
Recently I had a chance to hear one of my personal "heros" of the technology business speak at a small gathering. Vint Cerf was co-designer of TCP/IP, (you know the protocol that runs the Internet). We actually were able to arrange for a followup meeting with him in June. So about 5 of us will be meeting with him to discuss... um, to discuss some proprietary business and technology topics. I'm looking forward to it.
My other technology "heros" are Bob Metcalfe (Ethernet inventor), and Radia Perlman (Spanning Tree and IPX inventor, author of Interconnections). I have various reasons for my higher than average respect for all three of them, and yes I know there are folks who have had more of an impact than Bob and Radia, but they're my "heros", go find your own!
Well, lots of stuff going at work these days. Most of it I can't really discuss though. Sooooooo... you'll just have to trust me that it is interesting, challenging, and fun! The last couple of weeks were busy, busy... but things should be getting back to a more normal 9-10 hour day schedule. Woot!