2011 is turning out to be a pretty busy year and I’ve got some updates to mention in just about every area of my life.
Why the Updates?
It all starts from the same point: we’re having a second little girl later this year. She’s due in mid-August.
I naively thought that two babies wouldn’t be much more work than one. I’m already wrong.
First, my wife is about 50% of my brain correction, people who know us agree my wife is 100% of my brain. She runs the logistics for all our training classes and generally keeps me organized. I’ll probably struggle to put my pants on the correct leg while she’s on maternity leave.
Second, I do have regrets from our first little girl’s 18 months. Around the time of she was born, I agreed to write a Joomla 1.6 book and serve on the Open Source Matters (OSM) board. So, in addition to running two businesses, I quickly added a baby, a book and a board. 80-hour weeks became pretty common. It became quickly clear that I’d badly misunderestimated how long the book would take and how much energy Open Source Matters would absorb.
Things are quieter now. The book is nearly done and we have grown into a much larger team at OSM. Still, I’ve no desire to go backwards and it’s time to start shedding duties so that I’ve more family days.
Open Source Events
This year, I’m not going make a lot of conferences I normally attend: no CMSExpo, no JandBeyond, no Joomla Days. Oh, and no DrupalCon London, WordCamp San Francisco or others. In all likelihood, I’ll take a sabbatical from conferences until the end of the year.
Joomla Community
I was lucky enough to be elected to OSM alongside several outstanding people. We’re now about little more than 6 months from the end of our terms in February next year. We need to really start focusing on leaving the best possible situation for those who come after us. That includes meeting goals but also:
- Setting up and documenting processes. Joomla leadership has always suffered from doing things in an ad-hoc manner. Essentially we have always been reinventing the wheel. With the right processes we can make life much easier for everyone involved and introduce more continuity and stability.
- Finding the right people to take over. Now is the right time to be recruiting and training talented replacements. Look for more on this shortly.
Business
- We’re going to close the Joomla SEO Club on Alledia.com on July 1st. To some extent this has already happened. All the content has already moved over to OSTraining.com and that’s where all our efforts are focused. Essentially the SEO Club has proved to be a wonderful proving ground. We’re taking the lessons learned and applying them on a larger scale at OSTraining. Any existing members of the SEO Club can login and they’ll see a really great offer. I hope it will more than make up for the closure of the club.
- Alledia.com will become my personal blog.
- The company “Alledia Inc.” will focus on running a few of our large sites. AppalachianTrail.com is the most high-profile, but if you live in Georgia, you might also recognize LakeLanier.com and LakeAllatoona.com. I’ll be hiring someone to run these sites, so if you know an energetic, tech-savvy writer in Atlanta who needs a job, send an email.
- I really think we’ve got the chance to grow something special at OSTraining and that’s where I’m going to focus all my efforts. Look for lots of great new features in the new few months.
There’s an American expression, “go hard or go home”. Well, I’ve gone hard for several years. Now, it’s time to go home for while. That starts this afternoon by helping my very pregnant wife chase the little one around the house.