Re-pacing myself

This week I started my new job at Applied Minds, and I’ve been down in Glendale this week meeting people, ramping up, and brainstorming what we can do. It’s an amazing place, as you might imagine, filled with brilliant people with amazing ideas. But it’s also a workplace with things that need improving, so I’ve managed, with some help, to scrounge up a server to install Socialtext on, so that I can collaborate with my management team and some other teams can use it for their projects.

It’s funny, coming from a company which is all-collaboration-all-the-time to go to a company which is brilliant in so many other ways, but which hasn’t spent much time thinking through ways to reduce redundancy and build shared understanding on things. Since I’m going to be a remote worker (basically the only one they have) I’m strongly motivated to create processes and systems to make it simple for the mother ship to know what I’m working on, provide feedback and participate in collaborative activities.

For the first few months, I plan to come down here for about a week each month, so that I can both establish myself as a useful AMI team member in general and take advantage of the mighty brainpower assembled here. The atmosphere here is really delightful, so that’s a draw as well.

After Labor Day weekend, I was pretty darned tired, and I’m trying very hard to keep reminding myself that there’s no need to rush here. I’ve put together a list of things I need to explore, and I’ve set aside two weeks to explore and experiment and write up ideas, and then we’ll come back together at the end of the month to discuss the options, tune them further, and decide on an overall strategy.

It’s really odd to come from a company where there was a true sense of urgency (the company struggled at various times) throughout my time there, compounded by a false sense of urgency contributed by some of the management team and by myself as well due to the nature of my position. Here, I’m supposed to take my time and be deliberate. Slowing down and taking my time isn’t something I have a lot of experience with, so here’s hoping I find my way there.

I was happy to see that my OpenID talk was accepted at the Pittsburgh Perl Workshop. Should be a lot of fun.