Two-Thousand, Thirteen Days…

May 31st, 2013, will coincidentally my 2013th day working for DTS and my last. The time has come to move on. The last five+ years have been an amazing opportunity to lead an incredible team, who’s great work and dedication created so many amazing solutions over the years. But, starting Monday, I will be changing gears from a “coding CTO” to a “full-time coder”, focusing on doing ambitious things with Javascript.

Downshifting?

Now, some people are surely thinking “Wha? Changing from CTO to a ‘developer’? Y U SO CRAZY?!!?”. So here’s what I’ve learned about that. First, the “executive” title is really cool and calling the shots is awesome, but the fact is that my real passion has always been writing code. Waaaaay back in 1983 I got a Commodore VIC 20… and promptly started writing code on it. By the time that died we got an Apple II clone, and I’d gotten way into skateboarding. I promptly did what all skater dudes did, and taught myself the basics of relational databases so I could track the various combinations of skateboard decks/trucks/wheel in the AppleWorks database. In University, I got into GIS back in the dark days of command line ArcInfo and solaris. And yep, cranking out some mean AML. Then VB6, VB.NET, C#, HTML, Javascript, a little ruby and node and, well, you get the point.

So, despite the upsides of the position, all the proposals, spreadsheets, telcons, meetings and power points really just got in the way of what I really wanted to be doing. Combine that with an amazing opportunity, and now seemed like a good time to step aside let others “lead the charge”.

I wish the DTS executive team Allen, Trey, Jason and Cynthia all the best - Thanks for an incredible opportunity I've learned a ton, and it's been really fun working with you all.

As for the Fort Collins development team (aka DTSAgile) you all rock. Keep on building awesome apps that raise the bar for the entire Esri ecosystem. From the winning the Mashup Contest in 2010 to winning the 2013 Esri Partner Award for "Best Public Website", your work is simply top notch, and I'm excited to see your future projects in blog posts, videos and at the Dev Summit and meet ups . Until then, follow @dtsagile @mjuniper @jeffgermain @srailsback and @bbinckes.

And if you're a mountain biker, hit Mike's mobile web app SingleTracker.net and help crowd-source trail conditions everywhere.

Finally Thanks to all our great clients over the years. Your trust in our team has really been the key ingredient in being able to push technology forward. All the best and I hope to catch up at conferences in the coming years.

Where Next?

I’m taking a position as a remote member of the Esri DC Research Center (@EsriDC) team. I’ve known Andrew Turner (@ajturner) and Chris Helm (@cwhelm) for many years now, and I’m excited to be able to work with them and the rest of the team on a wide range of projects. I expect to continue blogging / tweeting / speaking about the technology I’m working with as usual, as well as contributing more github goodness.

See you all at the UC!