Although I still haven’t had time to build my new company a virtual HQ, a real HQ has been found in a small village called Ubley, a short commute out of Bristol. The reason for this location is that we will be sharing office space with my business partners other company (and the company I have been building an eCommerce web app for), who have warehouses on this site. I went to have a look today and was blown away by the view across blagdon lake. I won’t be working out here all the time, but i’m looking forward to it
Thought i’d better check in for a quick update since it’s been a while since I posted. I’m pleased to say that I have been incredibly busy since going it alone, working on lots of different projects for different people – consultancy, php/asp/plone back end development, html/css front end work and even some design. I’m loving the variety, and now feeling quite happy about the fact that I have diverse enough skills to do all these types of work. It used to bother me that I might be a “jack of all trades, master of none”, but I think more accurately i’m a “jack of all trades, master of some”. The only downside so far is that I have been too busy – as a new business with barely any money in the bank yet, I don’t feel like I can turn anything down yet! I’m loving being my own boss, but it was handy before having a boss to take the awkward phonecalls when I down tools at 5pm!
I’ve actually got loads of random things in my mind to blog about, maybe when things calm down a bit I will get round to it…
I once remember reading somewhere that leaving a steady job to set up your own business is the adult equivalent of running off to join the circus. But that’s what i’ve decided to do – as of June the 1st I will be my own boss, as after a lot of deliberation and heel dragging I have decided to bite the bullet and leave my contented job at Netsight to go into business with a friend of mine. I have always wanted to start my own business, but for various reasons I haven’t, and a business opportunity was put in front of me, that if I didn’t take then maybe it would never happen. At this point I wanted to link to the website of my new web application development company, but embarassingly I haven’t built it yet, so I’ll post about that when I have done it, and talk more about the new company, and the products and services we will be providing.
A few people have asked me if I will be continuing to work with Plone and the answer is basically this: The core business of my new company will be packaged web applications and these will not be built in plone, as the applications aren’t CMS-like, and plone wouldn’t be relevant. The applications will be built using some* scripting language/framework plus a RDMS. Zope 3 is a contender, but I don’t have the experience to hit the ground running with that, but i’ll certainly endeavour to get up to speed on it when time allows. However, the company will also be offering bespoke and ad-hoc development services and these will include Plone. For larger Plone projects and implementations I will refer enquiries to Netsight, as beyond the Plone skinning and customisation expertise that I have built up at Netsight over the last three years, the new company will not have the resources or expertise to support large plone projects. I will also still be contracting/freelancing for Netsight on Plone work – intially a couple of days a week, until they change the locks 😉
Anyway, new company website to follow, and more details about exactly what we will be doing.
* probably unpopular amongst plonistas – check out my previous commercial experience and fill in the blanks yourself!
(Or… er… work near Blagdon.)
Fintan 2007-08-07 10:53:37