A funny thing happened on the way to my redundancy.

The email when it came was brief and to the point.
"I would like to invite you to attend an important meeting this afternoon with myself at 1.30pm in Le Pole House, 4th Floor Boardroom"

The trigger was being pulled. After over 12 years and various roles in GE redundancy loomed. Not unexpected. Not surprising. Briefly shocking all the same. It had been coming for quite a while. Two rounds of large scale redundancies over the past 18 months. This was round three. Time to active the contingency plan. (Small bit of advice for the government when you suspect the shit is going to hit the fan then prepare a plan in advance. During a crisis is no time to start planning). So there was a plan. It involved taking time out full time to complete my PhD, adding to my lecturing and starting my own consultancy business to keep the cashflow running.

In many ways the impending redundancy came as a relief. Anyone who's connected to me on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or elsewhere knows that I don't talk about the day job. Despite what Mark Zuckerberg says privacy ain't dead. Briefly breaking a habit. Working in GE has for the most part been great. As a techie I've gotten to work on many great pieces of technology, run a lot of projects and worked with some outstanding people. Even when I disagree with the corporate machine there is always something to learn. And I've worked with some stunning people in GE. @clareconway is one example of what I'm talking about. I've had exposure to some of the highest levels in the business, had an MBA sponsored by the company, developed strategy, built systems that generated muliple millions in income, built systems that saved multiple millions in costs and had some fun along the way.

The past 18 months or so have been hard. Talking to a friend whose business is having things rough I compared it to the difference between being on an Atlantic convoy during World War 2 and being on the Titanic. In the former its tough, you're under heavy fire and there is hope of a good outcome, in the latter its a question of wondering if you'll go down with the ship or not. And its hard. Hard on those who have left the company, hard on those staying behind.

Shortly before news of my impending doom I came a cross the following 5 lines in a screenshot by  @rowan_manahan 

• Follow your passion
• Find playmates smarter than you are
• Solve the important problems
• Share your toys
• Build tools
• Make magic

It resonated with me. Sufficiently for me to print it out and stick it to on my desk. And a number of things I've done over the past few months - talking at Ignite, talking at Business Camp have been about those principles.  And so has twitter.

I actively started using twitter about 15 months ago. My stats say 8697 tweets, 1021 followers, 693 friends, 349 favourites & 531 DMs. A lot of chat.  I intended to write a blogpost called "the year of twittering furiously". Consider this a substitute. Twitter in that time has provided conversation, entertainment, enhanced TV viewing, real information, challenged my thinking, opportunity and fun. There's been @Tupp_Ed and live blogging TV.  My twitter stats say over 250 of those followers I've had conversations with. (I hate the word follower can we just replace it with mate or something else).

Anyway on 7th November last picked up this tweet. I dropped Mark an email. Long story short I'll be working with Mark fulltime on the Global News project as COO/CTO starting tomorrow.  There has been some planning and discussions over the past few weeks and tomorrow the big adventure begins

In case anyone has been in hibernation for the past few months the background to what I'm saying is here.






Last night on twitter I said "My last day in GE tomorrow after lots of years. My really big adventure begins Tuesday. You're all invited, 'cause you're all involved"  I had replies from @conoro @PaulSweeney
@helentreacy @tnteacherTim @niamhyb @Mediaflash @stephencredmond @LaurenFisher @aquigley @maoiliosak @  @BrianHonan @donkearns all within a few minutes wishing me well. And a number of DMs to boot. So when I said you're all involved I was serious, hell you're partly reponsible.
And this is the blogpost that explains what I was tweeting about.

So here's to the blue skys ahead. The audio track to video to this explains my current mood.
The last few lines of dialogue are important too.



And to answer a question before its asked, I'm not planning on tweeting, blogging or facebooking the new role any more than I did the last.