So, I'm Michael...

Dear John,

It’s not you, it’s me. At the same time, it almost seems oddly fitting that I tell you all this just before my birthday. 2011 was a somewhat complicated year for me, professionally. I released my book, dotCMS From the Ground Up, spoke at more events than I can remember, did about 25,000 miles in travel, accomplished some great research, and did the most consulting work of my career with other schools. It’s been an enormous amount of fun, but I’m also just very, very tired. Unlike Seth Odell, I like to sleep once in a while.

I started off 2012 with a plan. It was a grand plan, and one that seemed staged to really focus my work and help declutterfy my brain. We’re just a month into the year and that plan lie in ruins at my feet. It was not my intention, but when opportunity knocks, you need to at least open the door and have a chat. Which brings me to the point. Near the end of February, one month shy of six years, I will be leaving my current position as Director of Web Marketing of Pittsburg State University. It wasn’t an easy decision. The very opposite, actually. It was damn hard. And it was made all the harder because the company I will be going to work for is not related to higher ed. I have accepted a position with the marketing and design staffing firm Aquent, where I will be their senior interactive developer (translation: I’m gonna be doing some crazy cool things with dotCMS). While this means my contributions to higher ed may begin to wane, this affords me the opportunity to substantially increase my role within the dotCMS user community. On the flip side, I’m extremely interested to see if there’s some way I can connect Aquent’s unique ability for channeling talent with higher ed’s need to be more flexible and nimble in web design and marketing. We shall see.

Though I may have a new boyfriend, believe me when I say I am far from gone. I plan to still occasionally contribute, albeit in a somewhat more editorial fashion, to .eduGuru (I have a couple posts in the queue as we speak that still need to come out). I’ll also retain my role at nuCloud, which you’ll undoubtedly see me peddling the wares of at some of the standard higher ed conferences. Finally, I also plan to remain active on UWebD. You can take me out of higher ed, but you can’t take higher ed out of me.  For now, it looks like my adventure is just going to lead me down another path for a while, and I’m looking forward to a lot of new and different challenges. In the mean time, PSU is going to have a need for a talented web person, and I’d love to see one of you take that on. It’s a great place to work, and a fantastic opportunity for someone that wants to really leave a mark on an organization. For the record, at least for now I will be staying in the area, and I anticipate keeping myself available in case the school needs any support with some of the more technical, harder to replace components of the job. So you wouldn’t be without a sounding board if you had questions about how things were set up. Think about it, and if you’re curious about the position, feel free to shoot me some questions and I’ll answer them best I can. I’ll share out the job listing once it’s posted.

I’m not the first, and I won’t be the last to say that this community of people is something I’m damn proud to be a part of. I’ve made a hell of a lot of good friends here, and I plan to make a lot more still. In the mean time, stay in touch. You know where to find me: Twitter, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn.

Don’t ever stop being awesome. Ever.

Yours in respect, yours in friendship,

Michael Fienen

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