A Year of Silence
One year.
365 days.
8,760 hours.
That's how long it's been since I wrote anything for my blog.
Wow.
Note to nit-pickers: yes, I know my last post was published May 21 of last year, but I wrote it on May 18 and let it stew a couple of days. So there!
2008 was a huge year for me and for Cogeian Systems, and I mean that in both a good and a bad way. I intend to share the story of 2008 here, in the hopes that it will be useful to other small consulting shops, or even developers who are looking to make the leap into running their own firm full-time. It's been a wild ride.
Roughly speaking, each quarter of 2008 had one big event:
- The Rush - there was a HUGE influx of projects at the start of 2008, both new and from existing clients. There was so much work to do, it almost sunk the company, believe it or not.
- The Move - I moved the company into new office space, which was a huge PITA, but very educational.
- The Team - I took on a (very green) assistant to help me run the office, and it worked out in ways that I didn't even foresee.
- The Skills - I personally fell into a project that required me to learn C# on the fly, which had some unintended consequences for me.
Those are the broad strokes; I'm still writing up the detailed accounts and trying to articulate what I learned. In a lot of ways it was a Year in Hell, but in other ways it was awesome; for example, my company is still in business and doing well.
More on all this later. For now, let me just say, it's good to be back!
P.S. I'm eager to start churning out more installments of Monday Consulting Questions, so if anyone has a question regarding me, my career, my company, or running a boutique consulting firm in general, Go ahead and send me an e-mail.
