Siolon

Changing Jobs

Over the past few months I’ve started to look around at the IT field and started to ask ques­tions about where it’s going and what my role will be in it. I’ve noticed that things aren’t what they used to be when I started design­ing. Design­ers are a dime-a-dozen; that doesn’t mean they’re good, but cus­tomers look to dol­lars and not actual design work (most of the time). I’ve decided it’s time for me to change, and I embarked on that change.

The Back­ground

My cur­rent com­pany is well versed in the prac­tice of knowl­edge man­age­ment, and it has started to intrigue me more and more while I’ve been here. I got an entrance into enter­prise knowl­edge man­age­ment with my com­pany as the project man­ager for a USAID con­tract. I learned that I love work­ing with and beside cus­tomers solv­ing real busi­ness prob­lems. I also saw that enter­prise knowledge/content man­age­ment was on the rise even more so than in the past.

After doing my own mar­ket research on dif­fer­ent enter­prise solu­tions I con­vinced myself that Microsoft Share­Point was the future of the indus­try. Microsoft Office Share­Point Server (MOSS) 2003 wasn’t that great, but 2007 was much bet­ter, and I’m sure that 2011 will be a show stop­per. MOSS has incred­i­ble oppor­tu­nity to solve real busi­ness prob­lems, and it was at this time I started look­ing for oppor­tu­ni­ties in the Share­Point world.

My Foray Into MOSS

Although I had no expe­ri­ence doing MOSS con­sul­ta­tion, I used Win­dows Share­Point Ser­vices (scaled down MOSS) for all of my Siolon clients. With that under my belt I started look­ing with no real expec­ta­tion of find­ing some­one who would hire me. Then I found Mixon Con­sult­ing which is the brain child of Bob Mixon a Microsoft Share­Point MVP. I sent in my resume stat­ing that I have not worked with Share­Point as a con­sul­tant, but I wanted to get into it. Turns out my expe­ri­ence in UI, IA, UX, etc. was the per­fect entry into this line of work. I will, in fact, be doing enter­prise infor­ma­tion architecture.

My last day at my cur­rent job is May 2nd, and I look for­ward to my new job. There will be changes at Siolon, because I won’t have the time to work on design work with the new job. I haven’t yet decided what that looks like, but I’ll have a firmer idea when I get started.

Thanks for all of the sup­port, and look out for the blog to con­tain more top­ics relat­ing to my new career as a Share­Point Architect!