Compound Thinking

A New Chapter

I’ve decided that it’s time to change jobs. I just finished the TurboGears Book, and several Python related articles, and all of that reminded me how much I love Python, Agile Development, and teaching people.

Unfortunately, I don’t get to do any of those things enough in my current job.

Don’t get me wrong Humantech is a great company, that helps prevent a lot of unnecessary pain and injury, and I get to work with some fantastic people. So, it pains me to leave, but I don’t get to focus on doing what I do best. Instead I am pulled in a million different directions, and I find I spend more time than I’d like on things like monitoring people’s cell phone bills.

My main goal in making this change is to find something that lets me enhance my software development skills, or turns me loose in the coaching/training/advocacy side of things — preferably something that lets me do both.

In particular, I’d love to work on an XP team that’s actually walking the walk, and not just talking about how cool Agile is. I’ve been a fan of the ideas behind the whole Agile movement, and I’ve implemented some at Humantech, but it would be great to work with people who’ve been there, done that.

I also love talking to developers (and managers) about stuff that could improve their lives. I love training, and I think one-on-one coaching is an amazing opportunity, and would be thrilled to have a chance to do more of that as part of my regular job.

I’m looking for something in the Michigan area (preferably Ann Arbor) but I’d definitely telecommute, and travel for the right job.

If you, or somebody you know is looking to hire someone, let me know (Mark.Ramm at gmail dot com), and I’d be more than happy to talk to you.

TurboGears Jam Announced

Bruce Eckel just anounced the first ever TurboGears conference, the TurboGears Jam! The conference will be in Ann Arbor on January 14-16.

Details will evolve as people sign up and let us know what they want to do. But, I can promise that there’ll be something interesting to do for people of all experience levels, and that you’ll get to learn and work with some great people.

I’ll be there, will you?

While I wasn’t looking, things happened

Book News

As I was finishing up the last edits on the final 5 chapters of the book, the first half has appeared on Safari. They’ve got quite a good price for the PDF version (which you get now, and again when everything is finalized) or the print version.

Not only that, there has been quite a bit of talk about the possibility of a TurboGears event in Ann Arbor January, so keep your radio’s tuned.
Python Classes in SE Michigan

I’m finally getting back to planning for more Python training in South East Michigan. The online training part is being held up a bit by my need to migrate my Moodle instance to another server (my current shared hosting plan just won’t cut the bandwidth requirements!).

I’ll probably be pretty swamped for another week or so, but then you can expect more updates on ActionFlow, and I expect to have new news about the TurboGears event in January too.

Oh, and we’re Hiring

I’m also still looking for someone to do part time software development for my company in Ann Arbor. There’s probably some TurboGears, definitely some Python, and a bit of Java and web development.

E-mail your resume to mchristensen at Humantech.com if you are interested.