Professionally, I mean.A couple of years' back, I started tossing around whether to rename my little one-man company to something groovy so I could pass for a "real" business. I think I had by this stage decided that I did not want to start one more little consultancy or body shop. So, my thoughts were more around creating the name, the brand if you will, and then co-ordinating loose, evolving, alliances of people to work on this project or that project. I wanted a name that signified qualities of elegant, adaptive, efficient, lean... Then one day I twigged that I already had a brand: me! I'd already established my name as a quality software developer and oracle on most things Oracle. So, the logical thing to do was to build on that.
Except that now, like Flemming Funch, I don't know what it is that I do. I used to be sort of an Oracle expert, if not really guru status. But my knowledge is dated now and I feel I'm becoming a dinosaur. I'm an OK analyst, designer and programmer -- at least within the sheltered confines of relational databases and corporate IT departments -- but I can't cope with the antiquated top-down SDLC that most of these places persist with. And I'd possibly never make it in the real world of software development. I'm increasingly consumed with communication, knowledge sharing, human social interaction, especially applied to organisations -- which is what led me to blogging -- but I'm no expert and don't really know how I'd earn money from nothing more than a strong conviction that most of what government and business does is inhuman and wrong, and that there's a better way. So, I write a little SQL, tune a few queries, dabble in Web stuff and XML, write the odd little analysis document. Mostly though, I seem to add most value connecting people who need to talk to each other to get the job done. But there's nothing much any more that I feel I can point to and say, "I do that." And I dream endlessly of building a different kind of enterprise.
9:33:03 AM
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