About 9 months ago, I went out for coffee, but got totally lost.
I don’t know if it was how mad I was going trying to get SharePoint Content Type Publishing to work or what. But 10 months ago, to the day, I had the hankering for an adventure, but had no idea what I was getting myself into. An adventure to me in those days was walking the two blocks from the CloudShare office for a nice coffee. It was rare that I would interact with the physical world, so moving those things they call legs, on a real life sidewalk was quite crazy. Most of what I do is in a virtual world. On that day, there was an extra amount of cloud cover. Probably one of the top three cloudiest days last year. I bravely took coffee orders from my favorite support guy Scott, my favorite curmudgeon Alex, oh and Adam too. I thought I knew where I was going, but it wasn’t until a few hours of wandering in the thick San Francisco clouds that I realized I was indeed lost.
Not just lost, this Cloud thing was following me everywhere, not a moment could I see more then 2 feet in front of me. The CloudShare team put up a reasonable effort to find me, but gave up after a few months, as any reasonable person would. It wasn’t until just last week that they found me! I was rolled up in the fetal position next to a CloudShare data center, nearly 3,000 miles away from where I started. I was extremely weak when they found me, but I managed to say “It was just too cloudy”. Fortunately I had been microchiped so my return to the San Mateo office was quick and safe. Are microchips like identities in the Cloud?
Anyway, I’M BACK!
Yep, I’m back. And this time, my only job is you! Today I re-join CloudShare as “Principle Technology Evangelist”. My stint away from CloudShare was hard. I missed the great team, and technology. While I was gone, I used Pro nearly every day. Sometimes for SharePointy things, sometimes for some PHP and BigData things. I could not imagine working without it.
You may recall, that right before I left we were working on some really cool things at CloudShare. The first was the API, and second TeamLabs. These two things have my inner child screaming “Mom I want that”. Can you imagine the possibilities? With just a CreateEntAppEnv() and a InviteEndUser() I can create an environment and share it, and I can do so while I’m sleeping, I like to sleep.
But if I use the API with TeamLabs, oh buddy, then I have like a Virtual Machine rave ( cue best techno beat ever ). Not just collaboration on the VMs, but a powerful scalable integration and development environment. And if you are like me, and seeing code makes you feel warm and fuzzy instead of that new-fangled jQuery and AJAX super easy to use interface like your find in Pro, you can do everything with just code. Automation bliss baby!
Don’t all stop what you’re doing to email me at once, but let me know what you have been doing while I was lost, my email is still Chris@CloudShare.com and as always @hoardinginfo on the Twitters. Say hi, tell me how you cried when I left, let me know what I can do for you.
What can you expect now that I’m back? The showcase will get a boost, I hope to do a lot of exploration with the API, and changing the way people collaborate with virtual machines.
I am sad to say we did lose a great colleague while I was away. Miss Lydia has graduated to new roles in Product Management. And no, she did not leave because I returned. I will miss her, but wish her well.
I’m thrilled to be back with a fun, familiar team, and working on such useful technology. Oh and Adam too.