There are times where you feel you would want to share with the whole world the really good news on something special you have just experienced; there are times where you are just so excited that you are not sure whether you would want to blog about it or not, but the increasing urge to share the news with everyone else is just that big you can’t hold it much longer anymore; there are times where that life changing experience you always wanted to go through at some point in time kicks in and you want to share glimpses of it with those folks who, through one way or another, have been exposed to it to a certain extent already, but now you would want to, finally, share the whole thing with them; there are times where there is a place to make an announcement to everyone out there, who may be listening, about some big big piece of news that you know will have a significant impact in yourself, and, hopefully in others, too, for some time to come!
Well, today is the day. Today is the day where I am officially announcing that as of the 31st of December 2008 I shall be leaving IBM, after having worked there for nearly 12 years! Yes, indeed, 12 years!! But I guess, like the title of this blog post states, life goes on and that certainly means it is time for me to move on!
Errr, WHAT?!?!?! … Shocking news, eh? I bet most folks out there who know me personally would probably say that they would have never seen that coming along, specially after having landed in my dream job a little bit over a year ago doing what I like the most… But like I said earlier on, I guess there is always a time to move on and perhaps mine may have just arrived as we speak.
Errr, WHAT?!?!?!? (Again). Are you serious? You really mean you are leaving IBM? Well, yes and no! Ok, now I am confused! Well, don’t be. Like I said, yes and no!
Yes, it is true! I will be leaving IBM as of the 31st of December, but that would be leaving IBM Netherlands, the company I have been working for for nearly 12 years, the last nine of them as a full time employee, having done lots of work around the world of Knowledge Management, Collaboration, Community Building and Social Computing! So that would be the yes! As far as the no! is concerned, as of the 1st of January 2009, I shall be joining IBM Spain as a full time employee working for the IBM Software group.
WOW! That’s big news! Ok, so what does that mean, then? You are not leaving IBM, right? Well, no, I am not. I am just moving countries, which in reality is something that I started progressing towards to for a couple of years already and it is just now the time when it has finally become a reality. From January 2009 I shall be an IBM Spanish employee! Yay!!!
Ok, ok, I am sure that by now most of you folks would be wondering what would be the difference, right? I mean, what will change is probably what you would be most interested in by now after reading all of this. I am sure. Well, to start with nothing much will change. At least, for most of you folks out there (Specially those not working for IBM) things will be almost the same. Like I said, I will now be part of the IBM Software group, but I will still be doing the same job I have been doing in the last year: helping accelerate the adoption rate of Social Software within IBM for the client facing teams, and, as a result of that, to the entire of IBM!
That basically means I will continue doing what I have been doing all along, i.e. sharing that passion on how social computing is changing the corporate world and the enterprise as we all know it. But, instead of having the flag from IBM Netherlands behind me, from next year onwards it will be IBM Spain’s. I will be falling into the Spanish organisation of the company, with a manager based in Madrid (That will be my default office location as well!) although I will still be working remotely with the Social Software Programs & Enablement team, a.k.a. BlueIQ.
Thus as you would be able to see, very little changes coming through externally, yet, from an IBM internal perspective, it would be a huge change for me (And for the better, too!), and those who may have been going through something similar could surely confirm those big changes. Starting with one’s own physical and virtual presence behind the corporate firewall, where almost everything changes. But I guess we will have to go through that one step at a time!
The important piece of news for those of you out there interested, is the fact that in a couple of weeks I will no longer be working for IBM Netherlands, but instead I will be moving into IBM Spain. A new path in my professional career has just started and all along I surely am planning on sharing plenty more details on what that transition has been. There will be bits and pieces I will be able to blog externally and some others where I will keep things behind the firewall.
Does that mean you are now finally going to give up on giving up on e-mail? Does that mean you will go back to e-mail once again as your primary method of communication and collaboration? Not likely! Quite the opposite! Going stronger than ever before, more than anything else to try to prove the point of how, even if you are new to a company, you would still be able to survive without making use of e-mail. At least, I am going to give it my very best try and see how things would go from there. After all, I will be moving forward by then into the 11th month in a row without using corporate e-mail and should be an interesting continuation of the experiment.
Things will change, I am sure. In fact, I am already planning on the next phase of what I have been doing all along, putting together a new presentation, a new pitch, an enhanced weekly progress report, getting down to an even lower number of e-mails per week and so forth. And I am just really excited to see how it would all turn around in the end. But we will have to wait and see for another couple of weeks, before things will kick in with the new job.
For now, it is time for me to continue wrapping up 12 wonderful years where tons and tons of life changing experiences have been happening and which I may venture into sharing a couple of them as highlights as I am moving closer to the final transfer date. This week would be my last working week before I head over for some more holidays till beginning of 2009, And although it is promising to be quite a hectic one, not to worry, this would not be the last time that I get to post a blog entry over here as an IBM Dutch employee… Oh, more than anything else, because there is one other massive surprise I would be sharing shortly. And that one would surely affect all of those folks reading http://www.elsua.net. Thus stay tuned for more to come …
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