A Django site.
September 2, 2008

Jesse Stay
obfuscated, Uncle_Jesse
Stay N' Alive » OSS
» Picture 1.png

Picture 1.pngI mentioned earlier I was going to announce a big change this week. I’m “on the move“, as Jeremiah Owyang would put it. Today was my first day working full time at a new Silicon Valley startup with offices here in Utah, where I will be leading their Social Product strategy moving forward. I am phasing off my regular consulting, and moving to this new Entrepreneurial effort in helping them grow.

At the moment, I can’t reveal much more, other than the fact that we’re building the next era in Interactive Entertainment on the iPhone. The company I’m working with right now started out as a client of mine, and I liked their product so much I decided it would be worth helping them out full time. I believe fully that we are going to change much of the way you watch TV today. We will be launching most likely next week, and you can follow the Twitter account @MediaMyWay to catch our launch announcement and follow our updates (I’ll also point you there from my Twitter account when we launch - we’ll announce it there first!). Other Twitter accounts you can follow for updates and “clues” are @JustintheWhitt, @Romay, and our CEO, @BradPelo.

How will this affect the other stuff I do? In reality, not much is changing, other than what I do full time. I have received permission to keep SocialToo.com going part-time, as it has, unless it takes off. Expect some very cool things to come from SocialToo in the near future - we’re working on a completely new design and a really cool new feature that will be released in the next couple weeks.

As far as my blogging and book-writing is concerned, I see nothing changing, and I intend fully to continue blogging regular, unbiased articles that I feel inspire and educate. I will disclose where necessary if I feel my current employment has any influence in what I am writing. I still hope to continue writing in other capacities as well, as long as speak as I’m asked to do (I’m speaking in Dallas next week to the Dallas Chamber of Commerce, in fact - come see me speak!).

So, keep watching the @MediaMyWay Twitter account, and you can also follow this blog and I’ll be sure you’re aware of the latest of our happenings (we’ll have a company blog here shortly, which I’ll let you know about). In the meantime I’ll keep posting regular, educational, and original content as I always have and always will. “Stay” Tuned!

August 28, 2008

Gabriel Gunderson
gundy
gundy dot org
» More work stuff

Wow, landing contract work can be time consuming. Sometimes it takes more work to find the contracts than to fill the commitments. In the last couple weeks I was able to land a few good deals and get few solid leads, but I had to let a big one fall through so I could attend an out-of-state family funeral.

I think I’ve pretty much decided against the full-time employment route. Contract work has been fun so far, but it’ll probably be a month or two before the flow of contracts becomes more or less steady. With that in mind, I’m starting to think that in the long run I’d rather sell a product than my time. I guess I’ll keep looking for contract work, meanwhile revisiting some of the business plans I’ve drawn up in the past…

I noticed that there will be a few voip-related tracks at UTOSC tomorrow. If you’re going to be there want to talk shop on open-source telephony, I’m game.

A big thanks to those that have reached out with employment and contract leads. I’m sincerely grateful. Make no mistake, no matter what entrepreneurial schemes I come up with, I’ll still need any work I can get. After all, I’ve still got mouths to feed. ;)

August 15, 2008

Gabriel Gunderson
gundy
gundy dot org
» Putting on a brave face

Scary and exciting. That’s how I would describe my new occupational path. I’m going to be accepting contracting work while I look for a more stable arrangement (read: get-a-job). I want to be able to look around and get to know some of the many businesses in the valley that have need of a Linux sysadmin/programmer before I make the choice to join one of them. I don’t want to be overly needy when searching for the right fit.

Anyway, if anyone has advice on job searching, contracting, resume building, networking or has any other general advice they would like to share, I’m all ears.

I also feel like I need to get plugged back in. I’ve been pretty heads down for the last year and a half. I haven’t been hanging out on IRC, blogging, posting to mailing lists, attending local user/business groups, volunteering or developing my skills. Heck, I haven’t even been logged into IM more then a handful of times during that period.

Along those lines (getting plugged back in)…

I’m changing over my IM contact to gabe@gundy.org using Jabber (XMPP). Feel free to add me to your buddies if you use Google Talk or another Jabber service. If we already chat using my old account, you’ll notice a change sometime later today.

It’s also a good time for me to breath life into my LinkedIn profile. If you and I have worked, played, studied or chilled together, send me a LinkedIn invite so I can keep in touch and see what others are up to. BTW, I don’t do “social web” stuff very often, but LinkedIn is one service that I find useful.

Lastly, if you (or anyone you know) has need of an experienced Linux sysadmin, drop a line. I can do just about anything, but I mostly enjoy and work with Linux, Asterisk, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Python, Mono, C#, Bash, IPTables, Django, Postfix, Mailman, Apache, Subversion, Django, FreeSWITCH and all things Open Source.

Thanks and I’ll be seeing more of you!