Life between Gigs
Occasionally someone will ask me how I spend my time in between consulting gigs. As I ponder the answer I am struck by how easy it is to stay busy without an active consulting adventure. First of all, there’s the rush to catch up on personal and family projects. I enjoy having more time to catch up with friends and colleagues as well as to make new industry contacts.
Some months ago I delivered a talk titled “The Wild and Wacky World of an Interim VPE.” Occasionally I make a stab at expanding the related powerpoint slides into a magazine article. More recently I spoke on the topic of “Geographically Distributed Project Teams” another topic I plan to develop into a more comprehensive document.
I am involved with two Silicon Valley industry groups, SDForum (www.sdforum.org) and FountainBlue. (www.fountainblue.biz) With the former I participate in the Engineering Leadership Special Interest Group and my ongoing contribution is to drive the effort to have a related Blog. (www.sdforumelsig.blogspot.com)
FountainBlue, headed up by the amazing Linda Holroyd, is a membership-based, for-profit, collaborative organization designed to positively impact the way people, businesses and organizations work. Both these organizations have enabled me to meet and establish ongoing relationships with an increasing number of other Silicon Valley professionals. As a consultant I need to be able to tap my network formally and informally on behalf of my clients so this type of people networking is key to my success; it’s interesting and enjoyable as well.
Down the road a bit I want to find a way to combine my technology background, management talent and Spanish fluency. I thus invest some effort now in making relevant connections. There are several Latin America related business accelerators with an office in Silicon Valley and I’ve obtained introductions to the leaders of two of them (so far.)
I also advise one or two unfunded startups, laying the groundwork for paid collaboration if/when they obtain funding. All this in addition to looking for my next gig keeps me entertained and mostly out of trouble :)
Some months ago I delivered a talk titled “The Wild and Wacky World of an Interim VPE.” Occasionally I make a stab at expanding the related powerpoint slides into a magazine article. More recently I spoke on the topic of “Geographically Distributed Project Teams” another topic I plan to develop into a more comprehensive document.
I am involved with two Silicon Valley industry groups, SDForum (www.sdforum.org) and FountainBlue. (www.fountainblue.biz) With the former I participate in the Engineering Leadership Special Interest Group and my ongoing contribution is to drive the effort to have a related Blog. (www.sdforumelsig.blogspot.com)
FountainBlue, headed up by the amazing Linda Holroyd, is a membership-based, for-profit, collaborative organization designed to positively impact the way people, businesses and organizations work. Both these organizations have enabled me to meet and establish ongoing relationships with an increasing number of other Silicon Valley professionals. As a consultant I need to be able to tap my network formally and informally on behalf of my clients so this type of people networking is key to my success; it’s interesting and enjoyable as well.
Down the road a bit I want to find a way to combine my technology background, management talent and Spanish fluency. I thus invest some effort now in making relevant connections. There are several Latin America related business accelerators with an office in Silicon Valley and I’ve obtained introductions to the leaders of two of them (so far.)
I also advise one or two unfunded startups, laying the groundwork for paid collaboration if/when they obtain funding. All this in addition to looking for my next gig keeps me entertained and mostly out of trouble :)
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posted @ 6:51 PM
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