This year marks a significant change for me, and I am both excited and terrified at the same time (if that’s even possible). I have decided to leave my full-time employment and start my own venture.
Why?
Well, the answer needs some context…
I have worked as a Business Intelligence consultant (or some variation thereof) for more than 12 years. And during those 12 years, I’ve been extremely fortunate to have worked for some awesome companies (most recently Catapult Systems) and with extremely talented groups of people. On top of this I’ve worked on some pretty cool projects over the years as well.
Sounds like a perfect career, right? So why the change?
I love to help customers make sense of their data, whether it is helping them build a data warehouse or implementing the tools to analyze the data they already have. I also love community involvement and education, and being an independent consultant gives me the opportunity and freedom I need to focus on the projects, technologies and community initiatives that are important to me at this point of my professional career.
My personal goals are just not aligning with what the corporate system can give me right now, and I feel that the time is right to give my own venture a chance. I’d hate to look back at my career some day and wonder what it would have been like to give it a try, and that’s why I’m doing it.
What can you look forward to from me this year?
I will be available for independent consulting projects through my new company 28twelve consulting in the next few weeks, and I’d be more than happy to chat to you or your company in that regard.
More blog posts! I’ve said it before (and didn’t deliver), but this year I am going to provide a lot more useful technical content through this blog, sharing my experiences and hopefully answering some tough questions in the process.
More community involvement! Look out for me at more SQL Saturdays this year. The SQL Server community is very important to me, and I plan on attending at least 5 events this year (and hopefully speaking too). I’ll publish my schedule for anyone who’s interested.
Education! I have a few ideas that still need to be flushed out, but in short I believe there is a shortage of good (ground-up) educational content, especially when it comes to Business Intelligence and Analytics. I’d like to change some of that.
Almost done…
I’m looking forward to an exciting 2018, but before I wrap this blog post up I’d like to thank all those people who’ve helped make this new venture a reality. From airing my concerns to talking about the logistics, many of you have listened to my risk-averse contemplation and offered much needed guidance and perspective. Thank you!
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